The Social Contract - is it broken?

The Social Contract is being assaulted and is tattered and torn.  We can rise to repair it or sink inexorably into a Police State.  The Social Contract, when pervasive, mandates that we willingly submit to the rule of law.  At a mundane level this might mean we sit at a red light at 2 am with no traffic in sight.  Going up the scale we pay our taxes, refrain from punching our obnoxious neighbor in the nose, stay in our highway lane, stow our trash, pay for items we want at the store, etc.  At the top of the hierarchy we accept the results of certified elections even if we suspect Russia put their thumb on the scale as happened in 2016 (this was validated by a Republican led Senate committee, 17 intel agencies, and common sense).

The Social Contract is only partially enforced. There are simply not enough police in our society to force compliance up and down the scale.  It is rather embedded into our way of thinking. When freedom is threatened by oppressive rule, the contract begins to break down and the numbers of police, paid informers, spies, military personnel and regulators skyrockets.  Public trust in government and each other plummets.  Wealth, property and privilege, become an ever greater barrier to equality.  

Even in a Police State it is hard to have enough police. Two common methods used to leverage the efficacy of police are brutality and fear.  Beating a protestor to death goes a long way toward discouraging dissent.  Fear driven by threats and follow up brutality is transactional but it is not a contract.  A contract is a two way deal, a win/win.  Fear becomes the currency of compliance and a society ruled by fear loses its soul.

But why does a society dissolve its Social Contract?  How does a Police State arise?  Ironically it often relies upon a popular uprising characterized by fear, hatred and lies and fueled by inequality.  The forces in support of the Social Contract do not simply disappear overnight.  Hitler, for example, failed repeatedly during the 1920’s in a Germany worn down by war reparations.  He persisted until he finally wore down the system using thugs dressed up in brown shirts to bully the system.  He still lost the election in 1933 but was close enough that the leaders decided to let him be Chancellor where they could keep an eye on him.  (Does a minority vote putting in a despotic leader, sound familiar?)  The rest is history. 

There is nothing like a gun to turn a person who feels powerless into a thug. The majority then can be overwhelmed by thugs, armed thugs with torches. Add in a uniform, and give them a leader spewing hate and lies and you have a movement.  The Social Contract becomes lopsided with some desperately trying to keep it in place while foundations beneath their feet turn to sand.

So we turn then to the question of whether or not the Social Contract in the United States of America is broken?  Has Trump flouted so many social and political norms and spouted so many lies and touted his own prowess so senselessly that we are in serious danger?  Maybe so.  But before we lay all of this at Trump’s feet, we should look more deeply at the conditions that allow for such things to happen.  Why was Germany so vulnerable in the 1920’s?  Is the issue primarily fear and hate or is it the underlying condition of inequality?

Let us boldly state that the Social Contract is not dead.  The pool of good will may be narrow but it runs deep.  However, let us also boldly state that the system will break within ten years if the underlying conditions of racism and inequality are not addressed.  Broadly speaking we prospered and began addressing injustices for 25 years following WWII.  But for the last 50 years reactionary forces have driven down low end wages, rolled back civil rights gains and set the stage for Trumpism.  Jim Crow was cowed but not erased in the post WWII era.  The .1%, MiLords* we call them, were checked but started clawing their way back with Nixon setting the stage and Reagan acting on it (pun intended). Trump did not create racism and inequality, he merely rode them into power (with a little help from his Russian managers).

Biden enters the fray sporting a Centrist hat, riding a Left tilting lame horse into a dark alley.  An arena where the Social Contract is in deep trouble.  Proud Boy thugs, Qanon Republicans, Christian hypocrites, aspiring 2024 candidate traitors, dark money (foreign and domestic), and gullible Trumpers lurk in the shadows ready to feed watery lies into mud pits that would bog down a Clydesdale.  The Social Contract is not broken but it will only survive if patriots rise to the occasion and defend truth by brandishing their own torches, torches of light penetrating the dark corners of our national soul.

Let the light shine.

       * MiLords are defined in earlier posts being one in a thousand (mil) who control.