On Double Standards & the American System

American government exists for the people, by the people, and of the people. It derives its power, its wealth and its legitimacy from the will of the people, albeit indirectly within an electoral system of republican representation. It exists by the mandate of the people, and for no other purpose than to serve the needs and best interests of the people. No administrator or elected representative or appointed official should equivocate or be uncertain of where their fundamental loyalties must lie, or who pays their lifestyle, or who can remove them from their positions of power and privilege.

In this case, the people can be definitely defined as a collective entity, as a group of common individuals who share a common society amicably and mutually. Within this framework, political equality under the law is a basic constitutional cornerstone, as is individual liberty and freedom. Political equality entails that all people, under the law must be treated equally without regard to station, means, race, ethnoculture or religious beliefs or affiliation.

The problem of the American government is that the definition of political equality has been compromised by double standards and the structural institutionalization of an alternate form of social equality that is based upon communal identity and promotion of communal interest. A quota system based upon preferential treatment and promotion of some designated groups, at the expense of others, has been legitimated and justified on grounds that conflict fundamentally with the definition of political equality, and it has lead to the structural ossification of a system of double, indeed, multiple standards, that entails as a consequence the differential treatment of different categories of people.

At the same time, the guarantee of political equality and the basic public mandate of our government has been compromised by conflict of interest, such that individuals, and private institutions acting as if individuals, are capable of making demands and influencing government decision making, selection and action, at the expense of the common good or public will, or at least in lieu of or in basic disregard of common or collective interest. The more powerful these private and self-motivated institutions and individuals, the more organized and resourceful their platforms, the more influential they are in putting forward and compromising public good  in promotion of their own profitability and wealth. This basic conflict of interest has become deeply ingrained in American government and was an unresolved contradiction from the beginning of our governments formation. It has been a conflict that has grown in proportions of basic corruption as the system has grown more powerful and wealthy by the decade.

At the same time, in the wake of this, has grown up and become embedded a culture of denial that fails consistently, institutionally, to confront in any clear and undivided sense its own internal contradictions, and hence the governmental system and the society as a whole sets itself fundamentally beyond the possibility of its own self reform.

The American people, especially the members of minority groups, should be wary of the embedded racism and implicit "white man's burden" codependency that is reified and enshrined by quota systems and institutional frameworks that serve to label and segregate people into different political categories based upon ethnic heritage, color of skin, etc. They should come to the realization as well that these ideological tropes serve to disguise the realities of an inveterate, vertical and closing class systems, marked by increasing stratification and distance between the rich and the poor. If one follows the pattern of violence and violation of human rights in the world, one sees clearly and undeniably that it follows structural lines of class stratification, and only incidentally cross-sects with national, racial or ethnic difference, especially when the latter become institutionalized as a function of government policy, organization and articulation of power.

We all stand as victims of a form of globalization that has as its core self-interest and greed, that consistently stands in the way of meaningful progress and reform, and that promotes patterns of development and action that have in the larger frame destructive consequences. Even the power elite who stand to gain most from the status quo of modern globalization strategies, are in the long run the victims of their own policies and programs that serve to inhibit human development, democratization, and promotion of sensible development policies.

In this we may say that the fundamental contradiction that the US system has failed so far to resolve in itself is the conflict of interest between what can be considered private capitalist motivated interest, subsumed under the general phrase "pursuit of private property" and the public interest of the nation as a whole, undivided by notions of race, class or geographic region, that is defined within the framework of a representative democracy marked by the balance of powers. Because we value individual freedom and interest, we have put a premium upon capitalism and have not only permitted its development, but often promoted it as a function of government policy. But we need to be clear that money should not morally buy a politician, and that a politician serves the people first and foremost, defined in a political equal framework, undivided by double standards of creed or color.

The beginning of democratic reform is the general acknowledgement and implementation of policies which sets no one above the law, and in which the law is the same, regardless of other differences, for all  people. A system that institutionalizes double standards leads to a pattern of social authoritarianism that is contradictory to and destructive of democratic reform in a fundamental sense. It leads to a culture of denial that puts itself beyond the possibility of reform, and a pattern of socially reinforced codependency that inhibits and prevents people from pulling themselves up by their own boot-straps. Anything less than unequivocal commitment to a system of single standards, defined by political equality and the will and consent of the governed, or contractual versus communal oriented government,  is clearly unacceptable. Knowing this, there is no room for fudging, no gray area by which private interest may be smuggled into the general formula or planning.