“Humans are not rational animals, but rationalizing ones.”
Trenz Pruca
I. Introduction: America’s Favorite Fairy Tale
America loves to pretend it came into the world already dressed for the costume ball—powdered wig straight, Declaration crisp as linen, choir of angels humming “all men are created equal.”
It is an exquisite story.
It’s also a fairy tale, complete with its own moral universe, villains, and invisible hierarchies.
Yuval Noah Harari, in Sapiens (2014), politely stripped the varnish off this story.
He noted that the American imagined order—our founding myth—proclaimed universal equality while immediately erecting tiered platforms of privilege, each stacked neatly atop the other like those diagrams of Dante’s Inferno.
Americans pride themselves on equality the way a chain-smoker prides himself on clean lungs: it’s a nice aspiration, but the X-ray says otherwise.
In this updated essay, we will revisit Harari’s thesis, test it against the historical record, and bring it up to date—through Obama, through Trump I, through Biden, and into Trump II’s ongoing project of re-hierarchizing American life.
Think of this as the 2025 structural inspection report for the American house of equality. Spoiler: the beams are cracked, somebody’s stripped the copper piping again, and a former President is chewing holes in the drywall.
II. Harari’s Thesis: The Hierarchies Beneath the Equality Myth
Harari’s argument, found around page 134 of Sapiens,* is deceptively simple:
Every society runs on “imagined orders”—shared fictions that feel natural only because we’ve forgotten we made them up.
The American imagined order of 1776 claimed equality while legally enforcing inequality.
His core points:
1. Gender Hierarchy
“All men” meant what it said.
Women were political spectators until 1920 and economic dependents long after.
They were not overlooked—they were deliberately excluded.
2. Racial Hierarchy
Whites were the default “persons.”
Blacks and Indigenous peoples were the labor force, the conquered, or the inconvenient obstacle to be removed.
Jefferson wrote lyrical passages about liberty while owning over 600 human beings. Harari’s point:
They did not consider themselves hypocrites.
They simply didn’t define “men” to include the people they were profiting from.
3. Class Hierarchy
Equality before the law, yes.
Equality of opportunity, no.
The founders assumed the wealthy deserved their wealth because Providence had smiled on their industriousness, not their inherited plantations.
4. Property Over People
Liberty, in 1776, meant “the state cannot seize my stuff.”
It did not mean “you have a right to food, health, safety, or any practical means to exercise your theoretical freedom.”
Harari concludes:
These hierarchies claimed to reflect nature, not invention.
Slaves were slaves by nature; women were subordinate by nature; wealth signaled merit by nature.
He is correct—not because he is original, but because the founders themselves said so.
*Republished in Trens Pruca’s Journal (2016) https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2016/06/24/hierarchy-of-american-belief-in-equality/
III. How Accurate Is Harari?
Let us be blunt:
Harari did not carve a new table of truth. He pointed at the table that was already rotting.
1. The Founding Was Philosophically Radical, Socially Reactionary
The founders detonated monarchy while preserving patriarchy, slavery, racial caste, and the rights of the wealthy. They opened voting to white men but locked it away from everyone else.
This is not a contradiction.
It is the operating system.
2. Equality Was Aspirational, Never Structural
Even Lincoln, our great emancipator, believed Blacks and whites could not live in the same democracy as equal citizens.
His preferred solution was colonization.
Harari’s point stands tall:
Equality existed at the altitude of rhetoric, not reality.
3. Hierarchy Was Not a Bug — It Was the Feature
The early American republic rested on slavery’s profits, women’s unpaid care work, Indigenous land dispossession, and the legal shielding of wealth.
This is not interpretation—it’s bookkeeping.
Harari’s accuracy here is nearly perfect:
American equality has always been tiered equality.
IV. The Evolution of America’s Belief in Equality: 2014 → 2025
In the eleven years since Harari published Sapiens, the American belief in equality has undergone something like a neurological seizure—some synapses died, others misfired, and a few new connections grew in strange directions.
1. America Now Has Two Competing Definitions of Equality
A. “Thick equality” (the modern, civic version):
Access to opportunity, dignity, representation, and the actual means to exercise freedom.
B. “Thin equality” (the 1776 version resurrected):
Same laws apply to rich and poor; whatever happens after that is “merit.”
The right increasingly embraces thin equality.
The left, thick equality.
The center pretends both are compatible if we all just calm down and read more David Brooks.
2. The Hierarchies Have Not Disappeared — They’ve Rebranded
Instead of divine authority or “natural order,” we now hear:
These are new labels on old hierarchies.
3. The New Additions Since Harari
Since 2014, equality fractures have intensified along:
The wealthy increasingly live in a different reality—one with concierge medicine, private police, private schools, tax shelters, and the quiet comfort of laws that never seem to touch them.
Meanwhile, the bottom 40% live in the economic equivalent of a permanent undertow.
Harari’s thesis, far from outdated, is now a more precise description than ever.
V. The Hierarchy in 1776, 2016, and 2025
Here is the elevator version:
1776 Hierarchy (Original American Operating System)
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White male property owners
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White men without property
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White women
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Free Blacks (rare)
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Indigenous peoples (targets)
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Enslaved people (property)
2016 Hierarchy (Pre-Trump Breakdown)
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Billionaires and corporations
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White professionals
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White working class
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Non-white professionals
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Immigrants
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The poor
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The undocumented
2025 Hierarchy (The Re-Hierarchized Republic)
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Tech oligarchs (Musk, Bezos, Thiel)
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Trumpist plutocrats and political heirs
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Christian nationalist elites
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White Christian identity
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White women aligned with MAGA worldview
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Non-white citizens with conditional belonging
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Immigrants and LGBTQ citizens, precarious and surveilled
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The poor, the unhoused, and the chronically ill
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The bureaucratically disposable (refugees, asylum seekers, detainees)
The hierarchy has not disappeared.
It has simply been rearranged by ideology, grievance, and algorithm.
VI. Trump’s Contortion of the Equality Myth (2016–2021; 2025–)
If Harari described how hierarchies hide their origins, Trump’s innovation was this:
He broadcast the hierarchy proudly and told Americans it was “common sense.”
1. The Trump Doctrine of Human Value
Under Trumpism, the measure of American worth is:
The hierarchy is openly moralized:
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The wealthy are “producers.”
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White Christians are “foundational.”
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Democrats, journalists, civil servants, and academics are “enemies.”
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Immigrants are “invaders.”
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The poor are failures of character.
This is the most aggressive reassertion of pre-modern hierarchy in 150 years.
2. Institutional Contortions to Enforce the New Hierarchy
Trumpism has reshaped:
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the judiciary (through ideologues who reject “thick equality”)
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the civil service (via loyalty purges)
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education (removal of equity frameworks)
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immigration (preferential treatment by racial and religious criteria)
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voting access (purges, closures, strict ID regimes)
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reproductive rights (repositioning women as vessels of state morality)
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policing (encouraging selective enforcement)
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public health (treating illness as moral failing)
This is not conservatism.
This is hierarchy restoration.
3. The Rise of Hierarchy Populism
Ordinary Americans are told:
“You are losing your rightful place. The elites are conspiring against your supremacy.”
This is a populism that defends not equality but a threatened pecking order.
4. Trump II’s 2025 Reconfiguration
Since returning to political leadership, Trump and his circle have:
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explicitly called for “retribution” against political opponents
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proposed mass deportations (a hierarchy weapon)
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encouraged law enforcement to treat dissent as threat
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undermined scientific, judicial, and journalistic legitimacy
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reshaped federal policy to privilege one religion
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eliminated DEI programs
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further restricted reproductive autonomy
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promoted school policies that erase LGBTQ identities
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sought national databases for immigrants and activists
Every one of these actions tightens the caste system.
Harari would recognize it immediately:
the hierarchy has shed its disguise and now claims divine, natural, and patriotic justification.
VII. What Has Become of America’s Belief in Equality in 2025?
America did not lose its belief in equality so much as bifurcate it:
1. The Majority Still Believes in Expanding Equality
Polling shows strong support for:
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interracial equality
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women’s equality
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LGBTQ rights
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voting access
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healthcare access
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education equity
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fair wages
The majority still believes in thick equality—rights you can actually use.
2. A Minority Believes Equality Is the Problem
Roughly 30–35% of the country believes:
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extending equality threatens their status
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diversity is a conspiracy
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expertise is elitism
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freedom means dominance, not mutuality
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the state exists to protect hierarchy, not equal rights
This minority controls:
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one major political party
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the Supreme Court
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several state governments
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a major media ecosystem
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large sections of law enforcement
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political militias (formal and informal)
This is enough to bend the national narrative.
3. The Struggle Is Not Over Equality Itself
It is over the definition of personhood.
Who counts?
Who is protected?
Who is “us”?
Who is “other”?
Who is expendable?
We are living through Harari’s imagined order being torn down and rebuilt by competing visions.
VIII. Conclusion: Harari’s Iron Rule Holds — Harder Than Ever
Harari wrote:
“Every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.”
Trumpism demonstrates the next phase of that rule:
When threatened, the hierarchy becomes aggressive, moralized, and punitive.
We are not debating tax rates or infrastructure or privacy or regulation.
We are debating something more primal:
Whether equality is a human right or a temporary privilege of the dominant group.
The equality myth of 1776 was always a promise waiting to be redeemed.
The question of 2025 is whether the country will expand that promise—or retreat fully into the founding hierarchy with modern branding.
We are living inside that negotiation, every day, every election, every headline.
The fairy tale of equality is beautiful.
The fight to make it real is brutal.
And the hierarchy being rebuilt around us is no myth at all.
Sources & References
Harari and Founding Documents
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Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. HarperCollins (2014).
https://harperscollins.com/products/sapiens
2.The U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776).
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration
Historical Hierarchies
3. Jefferson’s slaveholding records (Monticello Foundation).
https://www.monticello.org/slavery
4. Lincoln’s views on colonization (Library of Congress).
https://www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/Modern Inequality Indicators
5. Pew Research Center on public attitudes toward equality (2020–2024).
https://www.pewresearch.org
6. Economic Policy Institute – Wealth inequality data.
https://epi.orgRacial and Gender Equality
7. Brennan Center on voting restrictions.
https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/voting-rights
8. Guttmacher Institute on reproductive rights.
https://www.guttmacher.orgTrumpism and Hierarchy
9. Analysis of Trump’s political ideology (Brookings).
https://www.brookings.edu/research
10. International Crisis Group on democratic backsliding in the U.S.
https://www.crisisgroup.orgChristian Nationalism
11. PRRI Report on Christian nationalism and American politics.
https://www.prri.org/research
Why would anyone be morally bound or wish to be morally bound to a civil society that does not share the goal that it’s citizens deserve a fair distribution of wealth, income and power? If the civil society is not dedicated to that end what else could it possibly be dedicated to? What is freedom, to those without wealth, income or power?
Trenz Pruca
