Social contract, intelligent discourse under increasing fire in the age of Trump

CANADIANS’ TOP PRIORITIES TEND to be social ones, such as health care, education, unemployment and child poverty. When asked directly, Canadians are more likely to say that more generous social programs should be a high priority than ensuring that the government interferes as little as possible with the free market.

In that regard, we are different from our neighbours in the U.S., especially on the Republican side of the ledger. And likely more so for supporters of Donald Trump, who is preparing to load up his cabinet with unqualified candidates seemingly intent on stripping apart the government departments they’ll oversee.

Canadians differ from Americans, then, in how we view the social contract.

While we care about programs such as health care, we aren’t necessarily supportive of government and its institutions, unlike the flag-waving inclinations of many Americans who see no irony in their statist positions. (Much like the so-called Christian right is blind to the massive hypocrisy in their claims of religiosity and support for war, the death penalty and dismantling of welfare provisions.)

That dichotomy begs a host of questions, not least of which is what exactly is it that we owe each other as humans, citizens and residents? It’s a question that goes back millennia, and forms the basis of social contract philosophy, from the ancient Greeks through Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Hmmm, I sense a yawn coming on, kind of like when I go on about pension reform.

At any rate, the topic flows naturally from a discussion of the impact of groups calling attention to inequities in our society, from job-killing trade deals to the still-unincarcerated hucksters running the financial services industry. Even some Trump supporters – in yet another irony – are challenging the rest of us to think about a political and economic system that in essence encourages us to be selfish and not to take into consideration what we can do for each other as a community – to forego our humanity.

That so many of us are starting to see the inequities gives lie to the notion that our system of government – our democracy – is based on the consent of the governed. Government policies that run contrary to the public interest – an increasing proportion of its actions – surely are the opposite of what we’d consent to. They benefit the one per cent at the expense of the 99.

Who is responsible for that? Certainly those who’ve benefited have fostered an unending propaganda campaign that’s been every bit as effective in sweeping aside citizenship as the corporate marketing has been in turning us into consumers. We’ve happily abdicated power and responsibility for the comforts of our lives. Excuses about being busy are just that. Still, we’ve opted for the distractions, and can’t even be bothered to show up at the voting booth for five minutes every four years. As a result, we’ve got the government we deserve, one that acts against our interests and against the common good.

We’ve tuned out, bought into consumerism and the ideal of rugged individualism while enjoying the fruits of what years of community-minded spirit and policies brought us.

Many Trump supporters would bristle at the suggestion they support arguments made on the left, but that’s the reality – see, for instance, the similarities in statements made by Trump and Bernie Sanders. But Trump’s actions to date indicate he’s likely to disappoint many that voted for him, willing to gut the very aspects of government that those in the Rust Belt states in essence voted for.

In selecting people for his upcoming administration, Trump appears ready to alter the social contract, argues Henry Giroux, a prominent scholar and social critic, who has decried the involvement of “racists” and “right wing ultra-nationalists” such as Michael Flynn and Stephen Bannon and Mike Pompeo.

“He’s hiring anti-intellectuals who deny climate change, and are utterly incompetent. I mean, Ben Carson has been hired to run as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and he believes that social provisions simply weaken the social fabric. Can you imagine?” says Giroux, an American-born academic who is now Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton.

“Rick Perry is a climate change denier, who wanted to abolish the department, and he couldn’t even remember the name in an earlier presidential primary of the department he wanted to abolish. Scott Pruitt is a climate change denier and is a puppet of the fossil fuel industry, and now Betsy DeVos ... this is a trip: Betsy DeVos is a religious extremist, who’s going to head the Department of Education and hates public education, and has no experience with higher education. She once said, Kim, if you can believe this, that education is a way to advance God’s Kingdom. I mean ... and of course, then there’s Linda MacMahon, whose only qualification is she ran the premier prowrestling league, World Wrestling Entertainment.

“I mean, this couldn’t be made up. I mean, this group of stooges, cronies and misfits, I mean, it would be hard for Orwell, Huxley or Kafka, to even have imagined that one day in the United States, you would have a government with this assemblage of people who basically as a whole, speak to a kind of authoritarianism that breeds not just misfortune and hate and intolerance, but prides itself on its own incompetence.”

This kind of anti-intellectualism has become a hallmark of the right, no more so than in the Republican party and with Trump himself, who seems to think running the country is akin to running his checkered business empire, or perhaps hosting The Apprentice.

That government-as-

business philosophy doesn’t bode well, notes Giroux.

“It’s a bad idea because it seems to me it operates off the assumption, that the most important thing that you can say about a democracy, is that it basically is about the accumulation of capital and the massive production of inequalities and one that basically sees the social contract as a nuisance,” he says.

“I think that one of the things that we see in this kind of economic logic, is the argument that economic activity should be divorced from social cost, and so there’s no conception whatsoever of what it might mean to provide provisions that enhance people’s lives, that in a sense eliminate inequities, in other words, when you talk about running the country as a business, you’re talking about running a country in a way that has nothing to do with economic, political and social justice. That’s not a democracy – that’s a business.”