Friday, May 03, 2013
A Crumbling Social Contract
The collapse of the modern state in terms of providing adequate social structure to meet basic human needs creates in turn numerous psychoses: economic panic, religious hysteria, and various dissociative symptoms. Within this scenario of a crumbling social contract, fear and anger -- mobilized into hate and revenge -- are perhaps most disconcerting, but communities living in denial about the waxing political power of such moral aberrations as the Tea Party, anti-Indian movement and Christian Patriots cannot long continue breathing their own exhaust if they want to avoid normalizing hate. Responses in the form of moral theatrics are fine for careers in political theatre, but they do not affect the political change that can only come about by contesting political power as exercised through research, education and organizing. Watching the anti-democratic movement -- exemplified by the Tea Party -- conduct candidate trainings and activist workshops on a daily basis, while horrified liberals merely sign petitions protesting the latest outrage, is not encouraging.
