“War” © DL Polonsky

 

Above the Law

The trouble with the social contract is not that it is complicated. It is simple. We agree to live by rules so that no one must live by fear. We surrender certain freedoms so that others cannot take everything. We accept law not because it is perfect, but because it is preferable to the will of men.

This has always been the bargain.

When it breaks, it does not break loudly at first. It frays. It thins. It is tugged at by those who insist they are special cases, emergencies, exceptions. It breaks when power decides that obedience is for the governed and discretion is for the governors.

There is a saying that belongs to republics, not monarchies: no one is above the law. It is repeated so often that it risks becoming decorative. But its inverse is the real test. If anyone is above the law, then no one is beneath it. The floor disappears when the ceiling lifts.

I watched this happen the way most people do now—through screens, in fragments. A judge’s order ignored. A subpoena treated like a suggestion. An investigation dismissed not on its merits, but on the grounds that it was inconvenient. Each incident explained away as necessary, justified, exaggerated by enemies. Always temporary. Always for our own good.

The language was familiar. It always is.

The administration spoke often of law and order. It spoke of crime with reverence, as if it were a natural disaster rather than a policy failure. It spoke of borders as if they were moral achievements and of force as if it were clarity. But when the law turned inward—when it asked something of them—it was suddenly political, unfair, illegitimate.

They demanded obedience while modeling defiance.

There is a particular arrogance in breaking rules while insisting others respect them. It is not subtle. It does not need to be. Power rarely bothers with irony.

I noticed how often the word witch hunt appeared. It was used to describe courts, prosecutors, journalists, civil servants. Anyone who insisted that process mattered. Anyone who asked for documents. Anyone who remembered dates.

Facts became harassment. Accountability became persecution. The law became an enemy because it refused to be loyal.

This is how the contract weakens—not when laws are harsh, but when they are selective. When punishment is real only for the small and theoretical for the powerful. When crimes committed in suits are described as misunderstandings, and crimes committed in desperation are described as threats to civilization.

I thought of a man I once saw at a courthouse early in the morning. He stood in line with a paper envelope folded and refolded in his hands. He had arrived before the doors opened. He had shaved carefully. He wore a jacket too thin for the season. When the guard told him he was missing a form, he nodded and stepped aside without protest. He did not argue. He did not appeal. He simply left the line and sat down. The law was not confused for him. It was immediate.

He was beneath it.

The administration liked to speak of strength. Strength in refusing oversight. Strength in ignoring norms. Strength in attacking judges by name. Strength in pardoning allies while condemning strangers. Strength in demanding loyalty to personalities rather than institutions.

It was a strange kind of strength. Loud. Defensive. Constantly injured.

A strong government does not fear records. It does not fear inspectors. It does not fear testimony under oath. It does not fear losing an election. These are not threats. They are proof.

But this government treated exposure as violence and restraint as sabotage. It acted as if law were an obstacle rather than a foundation.

There were moments when the breach became impossible to ignore. When officials were found to have violated statutes designed to protect public trust. When ethics offices resigned rather than pretend. When watchdogs were fired for watching. When oversight was dismissed as disloyalty.

Each time, the response followed a pattern. Denial first. Delay second. Demand last.

You must follow the law.
You must respect authority.
You must accept the outcome.

But the outcome was never accepted when it went the other way.

This is the oldest maneuver in politics: to treat rules as sacred when they bind others and optional when they bind you. It is the logic of the aristocrat, not the citizen.

I thought about taxes. About how precisely they are collected from wages that never touch a bank account before they are reduced. About audits that fall hardest on those least able to contest them. About penalties that accumulate without mercy.

Then I thought about forgiven debts. Deferred prosecutions. Expired statutes. Immunities floated like trial balloons. I thought about how quickly complexity appears when power is involved, and how quickly simplicity is demanded of everyone else.

The law became elastic. Stretchable upward. Rigid downward.

This was not corruption in the cinematic sense. There were no suitcases of cash. No smoky rooms. It was more efficient than that. It was corruption by normalization. By exhaustion. By precedent.

People grew tired of being angry. Tired of hearings that led nowhere. Tired of investigations that produced sound but not consequence. Tired of being told this was unprecedented while watching it continue.

Fatigue became the ally of impunity.

The administration understood this. It governed as if outrage were finite. As if attention would wander. As if norms, once broken, would not be missed.

And perhaps they were right. Many did look away. Others defended the behavior because they liked the outcomes. This is another way the contract breaks—not through force, but through consent.

There was always a reason offered. He fights. They all do it. At least he’s honest about it. The other side is worse.

These were not arguments. They were permissions.

When law becomes partisan, it stops being law. When justice becomes a team sport, it becomes revenge. When leaders teach that rules are weapons, citizens learn to carry them the same way.

The language changed. Enemies of the people. Rigged. Illegitimate. Words once reserved for regimes that fear their own citizens were spoken casually at podiums with seals behind them.

The press was accused of treason. Courts were accused of conspiracy. Elections were accused of fraud before they happened. This was not preparation for governance. It was preparation for excuse.

A leader who plans to obey the law does not need to preemptively discredit it.

What struck me most was not the brazenness, but the expectation. The certainty that consequences were theoretical. That delay was victory. That power could outlast scrutiny.

This is the moment when a republic reveals what it is. Not when the law is convenient, but when it is inconvenient. Not when it flatters us, but when it restrains us.

The social contract does not fail because people demand too much of government. It fails because government demands too little of itself.

If anyone is above the law, then no one is beneath it.

That means the worker has no more protection than the whim of a boss. The protester no more safety than the mood of a line of shields. The voter no more power than the tolerance of the winner.

Law becomes ceremony without substance. A script read by actors who no longer believe in the play.

This is how democracies rot. Not with tanks, but with exemptions. Not with declarations, but with footnotes. Not with terror, but with precedent.

The administration liked to call itself revolutionary. But there is nothing revolutionary about placing oneself above consequence. That is the oldest ambition in politics.

What is radical is restraint. What is radical is submission to judgment. What is radical is losing and leaving.

I do not write this as a partisan. I write it as an observer. As someone who has watched the same pattern unfold elsewhere, under different flags, with the same results.

The law is not sacred because it is perfect. It is sacred because without it, there is nothing left to appeal to but force.

And force, once normalized, does not stay loyal.

The contract can be repaired. But only if it is acknowledged as broken. Only if leaders are held to the same standards they demand. Only if the idea that power excuses behavior is rejected outright.

No one is above the law. That sentence is not a slogan. It is a condition.

And if we allow it to become false at the top, it will soon be meaningless at the bottom.

That is not outrage.
That is arithmetic.

 

Grady VanWright is a poet, author, and playwright based in Houston, Texas. He writes in a style he calls muscular lyricism—a fusion of Hemingway’s grit, Joyce’s lyricism, and Camus’ philosophy of the absurd, where clarity and compression meet rhythm and existential depth.
His poems balance strength and tenderness, silence and rhythm, absurdity and hope. He has been published in Washington Square Review (2025), The McNeese Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Oddball Magazine, Blood+Honey, Querencia Press, The Genre Society, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Sheila-Na-Gig, Mayday Magazine, The ManifestStation Magazine, and other literary journals. He is a member of The Authors Guild and The Poetry Society of New York.

DL Polonsky is a Boston area artist, writer, and filmmaker. His caricatures have appeared in The Boston Herald and His written work includes the children’s book The Letter Bandits from T.B.W. Books.