I was going to write about an essay that I read in the magazine Foreign Affairs by George Packer titled The Broken Contract. It’s a summary of the timeline for the growth of the wealth inequality in our country that has recently started coming to a head, focusing on congressional actions that have enabled this disparity. I had some problems with some of his views but overall found the article to be very enlightening and downright depressing in the end. So I decided to not go any further into it this morning except to say that the country has definitely lost sight of the contract of social responsibility implied in Packer’s article.
According to Packer, if the world were represented by the movie It’s a Wonderful Life ( we are quickly heading into the holiday season, after all), the most egregious actions of the greedy Mr.Potter have become the accepted norm and are no longer subject to any sort of public shaming, as they had once been. George Bailey would be even more helpless to the economic and legal machinations of Potter.
That’s my analogy, not Packer’s.
Anyway, that’s as far as I want to take it this morning. Here’s a little music to fit the tone of this subject, at least in title. It’s Wicked Game from Chris Isaak from back in 1989. Hard to believe this song is that old.
Redtree Times 