Two Compacts

Summer is easy. That’s the gift of it. Slow mornings. Slow work. Even writing slows down—less urgency, more breath between thoughts. This trip to Mexico came at the right time. It’s nice to take a deep breath.

We zip-lined through jungle canopies, watched sea turtles nest in the moonlight, and walked beaches still warm from the day. It all felt far from the chaos back home. The ICE raids. The street protests. The crackdown, the silence, the fear.

I support the immigrants. I support the protesters. No one in a democracy should have to steel themselves against their own government—or against armed bandits claiming its authority. Sometimes they feel indistinguishable. And now we learn the raids are paused—not out of mercy, but because targeting hotels and restaurants might cost the president votes. It’s not principle. It’s performance. Fear, deployed selectively, to serve power.

But I’m not racing back to meet the news cycle head-on. I’ll keep the slow pace. I’ll return to my students, to summer classes and unfinished writing, with a rhythm that resists panic. Slow and steady. Deliberate. Incremental.

Still, there’s something I can’t shake: we’re living under two social compacts now.

One compact—call it constitutional, civic, or just democratic—says that power flows from the people. That institutions, though imperfect, are supposed to be steered by public deliberation, bounded by law, and answerable to human dignity. It’s what I teach. What I believe. What I thought was still broadly shared.

But alongside it, another compact has taken root. This one isn’t written down, but it’s practiced daily. It says the state exists to protect “us” from “them.” That rights are conditional. That institutions are tools of dominance, not mediation. That elections are valid only when they deliver the right result. This compact thrives on resentment and performance. It doesn’t govern, it stages.

The tension isn’t new. But it’s more exposed now. We see it in police raids passed off as public safety. In legislation crafted not to solve problems, but to provoke outrage. In courts that oscillate between restraint and raw partisanship. In the quiet bureaucrats who try to hold the line—and the louder ones who no longer pretend to.

This isn’t just polarization. It’s a foundational rupture over what binds us, and who belongs.

There’s no clean resolution to that. No tidy theory of change. But there is work to do—teaching, mentoring, reflecting, organizing. Deliberate work. Necessary work. Public work.

I’ll head home, sand still in my shoes, holding tight to the older compact. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s the only one that asks us to share power rather than hoard it. To build rather than punish. To serve rather than dominate.