The people who are losing their minds over the word "reset" are the same people who benefit from inequality. Just as slave owners in the antebellum southern states vigorously defended owning other human beings because that system benefitted them greatly.

They are afraid. They are afraid, not of what a change would mean for the common people, but of what it might do to their position, status, power, and wealth.

Their affluence is predicated on other people having less; less money, less power, less status, fewer opportunities. This is the underlying fear upon which 19th century US Vice President John C. Calhoun based his defence of slavery and his attack on democracy.

Calhoun proposed that the wealthy, most of whom lived in the south during his time, were victims of a government which was too concerned about what the common people thought, and not concerned enough about men like himself.

He sought to constrain government influence over economic liberty - the freedom to amass wealth by any means. Conservatives are still beating the same drum today. They want less regulation, fewer protections for workers and consumers, more leeway for profiteers.

This is the same fear of losing something, losing wealth, status, power, that underlies the work of James McGill Buchanan in the 20th century. The belief that democracy is inherently harmful to some because it allows the wishes of the many to impinge of the goals of the few.

Calhoun, Buchanan, Charles Koch, and so many active now in conservative parties around the world, tout "property rights" as sacrosanct. In Calhoun's time, that included the right to own other humans.

In more recent times, it is the right to hoard wealth, and to protect objects with lethal force. This has led to "stand your ground" laws in the US which permit shooting trespassers. Certain right-wing Canadians seem to want such laws here as well.

These people believe that their rights are important, and other people's rights are unimportant or non-existent. It was incomprehensible to Calhoun that the people he owned had any agency, any hopes, dreams, or emotions.

To more recent adherents of this ideology, it is incomprehensible that other people are anything more than useful to them, or not useful. And those people's hopes, dreams, emotions, and goals are irrelevant to them, except when they can be played for a vote.

And so we have a group of people who are reacting very badly indeed to the idea that some people want to work together to make the world a better place. To them this smacks of robbery. They are filled with dread. They might lose something in the change.

I have seen people observe that conservatives conserve nothing, which is true in environmental terms. But they do want to protect what they feel is their inherent right to superiority.

Whether it is ethnic superiority, religious superiority, financial superiority, or gender superiority, they will fight anything that they feel threatens their position. While others embrace the opportunity for those less fortunate to rise in the world, they abhor it.

Petr Kropotkin once wrote, "Conservatism is the dread fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal."

Instead of feeling hope and joy that finally, FINALLY, countries are talking to each other about how to end starvation, bring the necessities of life to the most impoverished regions of the world so that all may have a chance for a better future...

Those who are railing against this, suggesting it is some sort of evil global takeover, are in fact responding to what they perceive as a threat to their hegemony. And they are trying to manipulate their followers to see it as an evil conspiracy, instead of collaboration for good

That is incredibly self-serving, sociopathic, and evil. Sorry, but it is. I can hardly believe there are people so greedy that they would try to prevent COVID vaccine from reaching poor countries, or prevent people from being able to access the basic necessities...

because it might impinge on their privilege. I am struggling for words to describe how vile that ideological position is. To vilify an initiative to improve the condition of humanity around the world, to improve the way we treat our planet, and to move us forward together...

That's a special kind of evil. Callous, cruel, immoral, base, dishonourable, vicious, hateful, and wicked.... For those of us who have sought to change the world for decades, who have been frustrated by the inaction of governments...

This is a hopeful beginning. To see world leaders actually begin to talk about how to make this work, that is almost more than I thought might happen in my lifetime. But, it is also very sobering to know that there is opposition to the greater good.

To see people try to turn this into something nefarious gives us a glimpse into the Stygian darkness of their souls.