March 3, 2025
Breach
An act of breaking or failing to observe a law,
agreement, obligation, or code of conduct.
The breach is now pervasive and clear. This administration is taking a wrecking ball to all of the social contracts that have for so long been embedded in our democratic culture. Explicit and implicit. Contracts tied to this nation’s founding promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Contracts of safety, security, and freedom. They are all being shattered. And with that, our sense of who we are as a people.
I could spend pages highlighting the frequency and nature of this breach. But we are all seeing it in dizzying and gut wrenching real time. Dennis has reflected that governments fail and fall when they no longer honor those social contracts. We can only hope. From those reflections he created this piece of art, ‘Breach’.
In these times, it’s important to focus on the fact that the social contract with our government is not the only social contract. As much this regime would have us be consumed by the devastation of seeing laws broken, obligations ignored, and codes of conduct violated, they do not hold power over all our social contracts. Joe Walsh, former Republican Congressman and current political commentator, has a new byline for his podcast. The Social Contract. It’s On Us.
It is on us to do what we can to reclaim and restructure any semblance of a governmental and institutional national social contract, even though most of us are probably not as empowered as we would wish to participate in that.
It is also on us to claim the power of other social contracts. Because we do have power in those. The social contract of our shared values we hold with our family, friends, and communities. The social contract of our personal values with hold with ourselves. We must stand strong and rooted in those. They are the very foundation of a national and global contract. And we need those strong foundations to forge a strong future where obligations are honored, laws are followed, and codes of conduct guide actions.
Social contracts are now on us. And we will reach beyond this breach to make it so.
Beannacht,
Judith