Written by Don Washington   

In “normal” times the social contract is easy enough to abide by and enforce. In times of crisis assumptions of what it means to be an American should reflect our nation’s best values and aspirations not unleash the worst demons of our lesser souls. A nation is defined by how it responds when its values and identity are under stress.

When dramatic events confront a country its rhetoric, history and laws mean nothing and its actions mean everything. Our nation’s sorry history in the 21st century, under Republicans and Democrats has now made it abundantly clear that our government has lost the capacity to live up to its end of the social contract.

You’ve already heard the media’s “deep” analysis of the sorry spectacle of the debt ceiling charade. Our government is paralyzed and it’s creating uncertainty in the Stock Market and on Wall Street. On one side the GOP can’t break free of its radical base’s “intransigence” to come to some common ground. On the other side the unflappable, pragmatic, grown-up President fighting to win something called the “center” and offering up, without being asked Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as the “balanced” side of shared sacrifice. He’s leaving the “comfort zone” of advocating for the rights and protections that keep American poverty from becoming identical to that of the third world.

But even as you listen you know it makes no sense because our government is not paralyzed. It is moving against the interests and welfare of the commonweal and the common public good in favor of the concentrated interests of the powerful and the wealthy. What we are seeing is class warfare as public policy where the “pragmatic center” is the death knell of social programs that could not be disposed of within the frame of the ordinary democratic process. This is the gradual elimination of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; not the end of some “Grand Bargain” but the opening ante for austerity and a shattering the social contract on an epic scale.

This is a confirmation of something that was evident when the response to terrorism was a fast-tracked curtailment of civil liberties; which opened the door to illegal wire-tapping made legal and now endless detention without due process or habeas corpus is the law of the land. The spectacle of a Democratic President presiding over the further impoverishment and dispossession of the elderly, injured, jobless and sick as a sign of balance is more proof that there is no crisis that our government will properly respond to.

What you are feeling, be it rage, helplessness, resignation or exasperation is justified. If you cannot make sense of the nonsensical media coverage that is telling you that both sides want the same thing; to balance the budget on the backs and bones of the least powerful members of our society; but they just can’t agree on how much damage that they should do to poor it’s not your fault.

You understand the Preamble of the Constitution and they do not. You know that our government has abandoned the social contract between us and them by breaking the civic handshake that the governed will obey the rule of law and the governed will rule in defense of the commonweal, on behalf of the common public good and in name of equality, reciprocity and democracy. The truth is that there is no crisis that our government will properly respond to because it has walked away from the social contract.

When the collective entity known as Wall Street destroyed the lives of millions of Americans, fleecing them literally out of house and home while mismanaging themselves and a huge chunk of our economy into the ground through a number of criminal actions what was done? Our government gave them over $16 trillion dollars in relief and chose to leave ordinary mortgage holders to fend for themselves.

Think on it for just a moment. After the Savings and Loans Crisis thousands of bankers went to jail after this no one. Just like with torture and abrogating civil rights. Just like starting two illegal wars that are now two endless occupations. Just like allowing BP to kill eleven people and control the clean-up operations and the compensation fund for the people of the Gulf Coast. In every case we see government abdicating its role as spelled out in the Preamble of the Constitution and setting the social contract on fire.

Facing the worst recession since the Great Depression, with corporations sitting on trillions of dollars because the private sector has already decided that hiring Americans is an expensive proposition and that their future profits are in emerging markets like China or India our government is not willing to deploy any kind of public policy that would alter this reality. Instead it is cutting programs, which will increase unemployment and drive even more money out of the economy at a time when we already know we need more money in the economy.

This is government and leaving the people to the mercies of a private sector that has already said how it feels about ordinary Americans. It does not need them as consumers and it does not want them as workers. America and its people are the past not the future and the government makes not one move to create public policy to constrain their greed. This is the social contract being defaced by the ideology of toddlers and bullies. The only thing that matters is short term gain and anything the strong take from the weak is the weak’s fault for not being strong enough to stop them.

These are not the missteps of a well-intentioned government trying to strike the proper balance between the haves and have-nots. Think about it. By giving the financial sector $16 trillion in taxpayer money to save them and then still not regulate them we created a $13 trillion dollar hole in our nation’s finances. Now the plan is to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and a number of other public programs to make up the difference instead of demanding some of that money back via taxes where the wealth is now concentrated.

There is even a punch line, over 60% of the money we’re borrowing to add to that debt comes from the very people we just gave $16 trillion dollars to… so some of the debt we have is to them and some of the money we is owe is money we gave them, which they get to write off on their taxes when they buy our debt in the form of bonds. Our government has not lost control of the financial sector it has joined it and we are all being sacrificed on the altar of calculated greed and amoral power.

Obama heard Emanuel when he asked: “Where are the liberals gonna go?” These are two men who haven’t the moral center to follow a social contract and we need to start treating them both as if that is the case. It is true that their partners the Republicans are worse but that’s the problem, the Republicans are their partners not their opponents. There is no “other side” there’s just a government firmly wedged in corporate pockets and us hoping against hope that they will uphold a contract that they no longer understand or believe in.

All of that being said we can’t just lie down and die. We can’t allow our government to walk away from the social contract and rule by decree through crisis. All of this should give you pause as the “deadline” on the debt ceiling ticks closer THIS time because there will be a next time and another time and another and from time to time this will happen again and the consequences will keep getting worse unless we act.

We don’t get to give up... we need to stand up. We need to because government has sided with the concentrated special interests of the few and the powerful over the diffuse and all pervading interests and needs of the public. We need to because they believe that the public lacks the capacity to hold them accountable… but that’s not true.

We need to demand that our government abides by the social contract. We need it to create and enforce laws for the common, public good. We need it to reflect the principles of reciprocity of the rule of law over the impunity of class and privilege. We need it to champion the equality of opportunity, access to the means of survival and citizenship over the inequality of wealth and the venality of preventing people from participating in society at every level except as consumers. We need our government to rally to the side of democracy and civil liberties instead of siding with the tripartite tyrannies of oligarchy, plutocracy and repression.

The America of We the People in order to form a more perfect union has been sacrificed on the altar of finance and corporate domination. The concentrated interests of the avarice-ridden and soul-dead few are winning the day but we need to social contract back in place to bring that to a halt. We need to re-establish that there is no one beyond justice. We need to make it plain that you will not be allowed to get rich by destroying tranquility, ignoring the general welfare and only embracing to “liberty” to act without restraint.

We have become a nation where the powerful trample the ordinary underfoot without consequence or care. We have a government that has lost its soul because it has broken the social contract and we are the hands and minds that will fix it because in the end all we have as Americans is each other and that will be enough when we decide that we’ve had enough.

Don Washington is an Award-Winning AP Writer. A professional trouble-shooter, the keeper of two large and mischievous cats, who is not afraid of ninja and practices social justice & citizenship somewhere in the world everyday but he lives in Chicago.