Something wasn’t adding up in our March 7, 2025, Inquiry Circle.
We’ve been watching, reading, and analyzing. Why does everything feel unstable? Why do our rights seem conditional? Why does the economy feel like a game where the rules keep changing—but only for us?
That’s where we started our Symphony ’77 Inquiry Circle. We came with questions, and we left with answers. Curiosity led to connection.
And what did we uncover? A system operating in plain sight, designed to keep us struggling while consolidating power and profit for a small elite. A system that manufactures precarity, controls information, and rigs every outcome in its favor.
We cracked the code. We gave it a name: Private Equity State Capitalism (PESC).
Step 1: Following the Money—The Hostile Takeover of Democracy
We started where every good mystery starts: Who benefits?
Governments are no longer governing—they’re managing assets. They sell off water, energy, transportation, education, and democracy. We aren’t citizens anymore—we’re revenue streams.
Under PESC, the goal isn’t public service—it’s the concentration of power and profit. If something isn’t profitable, it gets eliminated. If you can’t turn something into a private investment, sell it.
Step 2: The Key to Control—Precarity as an Organizing Principle
- Everything is unstable—on purpose.
We found that PESC isn’t just about extracting wealth—it’s about ensuring we can never fight back.
How? By making everything uncertain. - Economic precarity – Job insecurity, housing instability, debt traps. You can’t organize when you’re in survival mode.
- Political precarity – Rights are conditional, voting laws change overnight, and legal protections are rolled back quietly.
- Social precarity – Communities are divided, people are isolated, and outrage cycles replace deep organizing.
The system isn’t broken. It was designed this way.
Step 3: The Enforcers—The Authoritarian Quartet
We followed the threads and uncovered four forces working together to uphold PESC.
Trumpism – The Con Game
Trumpism pretends to be for the people, against the elite. But when we peeled back the layers, we saw the truth: it’s about Trump’s personal wealth and power, using nationalism as a smokescreen for corporate giveaways.
MAGAism – The Cult of Chaos
MAGAism is what happens when Trumpism outgrows Trump. It creates constant chaos, fuels culture wars, and keeps people too exhausted to organize.
Muskism – The Tech Overlords
Muskism promotes the belief that billionaires are our saviors. It privatizes infrastructure under the guise of innovation, but its goal is to replace democratic governance with corporate monopolies.
Christian Nationalism – The Moral Justification for Oppression
PESC needed a reason why inequality is righteous. Christian Nationalism justifies merging religious fundamentalism with corporate power to normalize hierarchy.
Step 4: The Counter-System—AfricanAmericanism & The 4-Fold Path
AfricanAmericanism is Applied Black History. It’s about taking the lessons of Black resistance and applying them to today’s struggles.
It recognizes that:
– History is a weapon to fight back
– Freedom is never given—it must be taken, built, and practiced.
– Black self-determination is a blueprint for liberation beyond capitalism.
From these principles, we developed The AfricanAmericanist 4-Fold Path.
Step 5: How We Used the 4-Fold Path in the Inquiry Circle
We didn’t just study oppression. We practiced resistance.
– Testifying (Bearing Witness to Truth) – We called out how PESC operates.
– Unshackling (Releasing Internalized Oppression) – We examined how confusion is used to control us.
– Reclaiming Agency (Walking in Power) – We studied historical Black resistance movements.
– Becoming Free (Living Beyond Limits): We envisioned a world beyond PESC.
Step 6: The Four-Level Response Plan—How We Fight PESC at Every Level
To fight PESC, we must act on four interconnected levels:
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- Micro-Level – Individual awareness and action (self-liberation, knowledge-building, personal resistance).
- Meso-Level – Community organizing and institution-building (local networks, alternative economies, collective agency).
- Macro-Level – Systemic interventions (policy change, legal battles, structural resistance).
- Transcendent-Level – Reimagining and creating beyond existing systems (new paradigms, visionary movements, spiritual shifts).
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Final Takeaways—We Cracked the Code. Now What?
PESC is about power and profit. The system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly as designed.
Precarity is the weapon they use. The more unstable everything feels, the easier we are to control.
Confusion is the smokescreen. If people don’t know what’s real, they can’t resist.
The 4-Fold Path is the strategy. It’s not just history—it’s a roadmap for action.
We cracked the code. Now, it’s time to act.