The “Ethics Truce” reported in the Washington Post and declared by both major parties in the United States Congress to essentially not target each other’s wrong-doings, is a clear abandonment of a duty to represent this nation’s citizens. Half-truths, lies, or any avoidance of issues are all part and parcel of a bona-fide license to “lie” about an accurate and current state of political affairs within one of our most important institutions.
If any one of your local representatives in your state’s legislature was engaging in a “truce” with either party peers or opponents, wouldn’t you be very quick to work against their re-election?
Such truces are the cradle of the disaffected.
Why aren’t we infuriated over outsourcing? Why aren’t we all pushing to require mass notice of mass outsourcing? We are not pushing because we have accepted such events as mere extensions of those lay-off policies that never quite captured the media’s attention until they reached a “critical” number. So, savvy employers just implemented lay offs in small baby-steps via separate moves that invariably came just under the media’s “critical mass” for attention. The result was that outsourcing became just another extension of NAFTA-like policy, clearly supported by large, special interests, and our Congress. With another 14 million jobs vulnerable to further outsourcing, why aren’t we screaming for corporate and congressional accountability, and responsibility?
When complaints from the outside of any agency, company, populace, or government entity are barred, we maintain static, lame, and totally ineffective institutions by default. Any first-year social and political science student recognizes that change, vitality, and responsiveness always comes from the edge, that truth and insight do not emerge from within cozy, protected environments of the disaffected.
An “ethics truce” is patent disregard for the dynamics of a healthy democracy in which discourse, dialogue, and even argument and accusations all play vital roles.
What’s next? We can count on a lack of social justice. We can count on a lack of comprehensive discovery around any matter our nation deems serious. We can count on a political system that will serve only an elite and very special population.
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