A pyramid standing on its base is stable, although unlike the Egyptian pyramids, the pyramids of economies and political systems are made of stuff that changes from generation to generation: agriculture and human/animal power, coal and steam power, oil and industrial power, solar and cooperative power.
As you make the transition into a new world and a new economy, rising out of the ashes of the crash your generation of Economic Royalists brought you, always remember that they will still be there. They’ll be watching and planning and grasping for the levers that will bring them back on top. Be careful and—as Dwight Eisenhower warned my generation in his Farewell Address—be “ever vigilant” against that “misplaced power” that they are seeking.
It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to stop altogether the rise of the Economic Royalists during the lifetimes of your children and grandchildren. They’ve always figured out a way to pull it off, all the way back to the era of Gilgamesh, seven thousand years ago in Uruk (what we now call Iraq).
But please do your best to send a warning to your future generations. Don’t do like we did with Reaganomics and blow up the protections for your working people. Don’t jump into the equivalent of our Clinton/Gingrich/Greenspan experiment of deregulating the institutions owned by the Economic Royalists.
Tell your children, and ask them to tell theirs.
Maybe, just maybe, you and your peers can break these cycles of history, stop the boom-bust-war merry-go-round that this nation (and the world) has endured for more than half a millennium since Elizabeth I chartered the East India Company in 1601.
Because, just as democracies will always have Economic Royalists looking for ways to subvert them to their own ends, they will also always have people who remember the lessons of history. People who know the possibility of a stable world at peace. People willing to sacrifice and work and put themselves on the front lines of history to build a better world.
Find them. Celebrate them. Become one of them.
Tag, you’re “It.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thom Hartmann is a progressive national and internationally syndicated radio and TV talk show host whose shows are available every weekday in more than a half-billion homes in 104 countries worldwide. He’s the New York Times best-selling, four-time Project Censored Award–winning author of twenty-four books in print in seventeen languages on five continents.
Thom has written extensively about culture, ecology, psychology, politics, and economics. His most well-known book on the intersection of ecology and anthropology, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, inspired Leonardo DiCaprio to make the movie The 11th Hour (in which Thom appears). His book Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception sparked a national debate, both in the psychology/psychiatry community and among the general public, on ADD/ADHD and neurological differences ranging from giftedness to autism. His book Rebooting the American Dream so inspired Senator Bernie Sanders that he wrote a cover letter to accompany the delivery of the book to his ninety-nine colleagues in the United States Senate and he read from it extensively on the floor of the Senate during his famous filibuster.
In addition to being an accomplished writer, Thom and his wife, Louise, have also started a number of successful businesses and a community and school for abused children. Thom’s also helped start programs ranging from famine relief to medical centers to schools on four continents.
He and Louise live on a boat in Washington, DC, with their attack cat, Higgins.
Also by Thom Hartmann:
ADD: A Different Perception
ADHD Secrets of Success: Coaching Yourself to
Fulfillment in the Business World
Focus Your Energy: Hunting for Success in Business
ADD Success Stories
Think Fast! with Jane Bowman and Susan Burgess Beyond ADD
The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century
Thom Hartmann’s Complete Guide to ADHD:
Help for Your Family at Home, School and Work
The Edison Gene
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight
The Prophet’s Way
We the People: A Call to Take Back America
What Would Jefferson Do?
Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK by Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-Being
Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle
Class—And What We Can Do About It
Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America’s Original Vision
Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination by Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture
Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became
“People”—And How You Can Fight Back
Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country
Air America: The Playbook: What a Bunch of Left-Wing
Media Types Have to Say about a World Gone Right
Imagine What America Could Be in the 21st Century, edited by Marianne Williamson
From the Ashes: A Spiritual Response to the Attack on America
NOTES
1 Statement of Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich before the Subcommittee on Deficits, Debt Management and Long-Term Growth, Senate Committee on Finance, December 7, 1994, http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/reich/congress/120794rr.htm.
2 http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500395_162-1293943.html.
3 Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Pinkney, September 30, 1820, in The Declaration of Independence and Letters, Richard S. Poppen, ed. (University of Virginia, 1904).
4 Asher Price, “Suicide Pilot Joe Stack Had History of Shutting Doors on People,” March 7, 2010, Statesman.com, http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/suicide-pilot-joe-stack-had-history-of-shutting-do/nRq6N/.
5 Ibid.
6 From a web posting authorities believed to be written by Joe Stack, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,586627,00.html.
7 CBS Los Angeles, “Newbury Park Woman Faces Eviction After Husband’s Suicide,” May 16, 2012, http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/05/16/newbury-park-woman-faces-eviction-after-husbands-suicide/.