We do a lot of dick swinging these days, via the convenience of being able to redefine so easily what counts as progress. Is capital growth progress? Is extending the average life expectancy progress? Is exhaustive levels of individualism progress? Is being able to fuck kids on a private island, while none of the poor people know about it, progress? Is being able to kill a large animal progress?

I don’t think any one of those should necessarily count as progress. Especially not the one involving kids, though that seems to be in opposition to what our billionaire class believes.

Progress comes relative to a shared value system. The world’s leading economic and military superpower does not really have a shared value system anymore. That makes none of them capable of any meaningful progress, unless they find a way to come together as one. That’s going to be hard when your billionaire class controls your media platforms. Would you call that control they wield “progress?”