Or Else What
One phrase that has been coming to my mind lately is or else what. We need to think hard about which institutions and characters we count on to enforce the laws, rules, and norms that we have agreed to as a society when someone breaks them, because in the past decade it’s evident that in many, many cases involving some particular classes of people, there isn’t anyone there.
Laws, rules, and norms only mean something when there are people who enforce consequences for breaking them. If you can be an insurrectionist, convicted felon yet to serve time, an “adjudicated rapist”, a habitual liar, and still get to be president, do laws really exist at all?
Any time someone intends to knowingly break a law, rule, or norm, the inevitable question of or else what runs through their mind. When the evidence of their observation leads them to believe the answer is “nothing”, then there’s every reason for them to proceed.
Honestly, the answer to or else what has always depended on one’s wealth, class, family tree, or other privileged attribute. But the grand progress of civil rights and human enlightenment has been in the struggle to continually narrow that gap, to levy the same just and equitable consequence on anyone who broke the law. Within this process, it’s inevitable that people in privilege be made to surrender their special status under force (sometimes a great deal of force—ask Louis XVI). People look for such events to know that the system is working well.
In order for a society to have trust in their government, they must see this grand struggle play out within the institutions: they must see concrete examples of how today has brought forth more justice than yesterday. When there is a lack of evidence of progress, people will eventually give up on their institutions and begin to look for justice elsewhere—or begin hatching schemes to exploit the flaw in the system for their own gain at the expense of others.