I wish it were only the political system, but it is also the social contract that is being broken.
Not everything in a society can and should be regulated by law. For example, we know not to cough or sneeze in someone else’s face, but to put our arm or hand in front of our face. It’s not a law and yet 99% of people know it and do it and call out people who don’t.
The US political system worked well for a while because there were do’s and don’ts that weren’t made into law, but every politician respected them to some degree. The GOP no longer respects anyone or anything, not an unwritten rule or even a written law, but they want to be respected, they want their rights to be respected.
This is not just happening in the US, I see it happening in the UK and Germany for example. Basic respect for each other is being lost more and more, between families, between neighbours, even between politicians. How do you get that back?
We don’t know how to deal with it as a society. We can’t have a law for everything. We depend on people and politicians to keep within the minimum social rules and follow an unwritten code, and we have nothing to punish them if they don’t and they just ignore these rules and spit on them.
This is literally why China adopted a social credit system, which penalizes spitting in general but also includes spitting on rules.
Not saying it is the best solution, just saying it exists.
