When I look at our society's structure, then I am not surprised. Our USA foundation is slanted, so how can we not slide, right?

Our (political) power is organized for us on a slant. We go into the voting booth as equals, and we come out as winners and losers. How is that for a slant!

In the past, when most of the world was not all that democratic, we got so much out of this slant. By compressing the ones below, the ones above were able to reap enormous profits. Since this ended up trickling down to the center of society (but not to the bottom of society), the majority felt good.

The majority of our people felt good (and didn't care about the minority being compressed).

Then the rest of the world became far more democratic than ever before. Interestingly, even when they had equality in the voting booth and equality in the outcome -- better than what we have -- they still ended up playing our game; they still ended up giving more to the top than the bottom.

Why?

They had to.

In order to compete with us, they have to give their rich at least something toward what they would be getting here if they invested their extra money here.

So, while our bottom segment is compressed, our open market causes their bottom segments to be compressed to some extent as well. Not as bad as our situation, but we are depressing all bottom segments in the world when we have the most exclusive format of democracy.

In the modern world, more are directly competing with us. Call it globalization. But the point is that we did not change; we stayed the same 18th Century democracy.

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Interestingly, there are a number of ways to turn a democracy into an exclusive democracy.

The UK has first past the post, which is far worse than our winner-take-all. The candidates need just 35 - 42 percent to win a seat. Yet the UK benefit is that they do not have an empowered president. So they don't vote three times and then have their three votes fight with everyone three times and several times in-between.

Some parts of the world have full representation (Scandinavia, Low Countries, Spain). The voters are each others equals in all manners. They don't exist in a new normal. They are normal; they have a hard time being abnormal.

Some parts of the world have full representation and an empowered president (South America). They have SNAFU for sure. All is normal, and then the president yanks the game left, right, up, down, front, back — at will.

The only places with normal societies in the Americas are former British colonies because they don't have a president.

Bottom rung in the Americas? Move to Canada where you will be best off in society of all Americans. Jamaica? Not as rich, but more sunshine than Canada and the bottom tiers have more indeed than elsewhere in the Americas.

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We need to stop saying that the world is in a New Normal. Anyone saying something true and then apply the world, everyone, all human beings, human history based on their own experiences, those writers are not paying attention to the box we are in ourselves. They mistake the box of the United States with the box of the world. Not the same. When looking in the mirror, we see ourselves; we are not seeing the world.

Allow me to say it: It is the new normal. Wake up.