Much of the political disaster unfolding over the last several years can be boiled down the deliberate breaking of often-informal peace treaties.

I think this framing is useful for people who care about integrity, consistency, and morality. It provides a model to talk about what you want to achieve without becoming a victim of those who would exploit your goodwill.

For example, the First Amendment is an agreement that nobody will abuse government power to hurt people just for saying things a politician doesn't like hearing, yet it's being broken quite a bit now. [0] Or the idea that Congress would impeach a President that violates the laws, instead of ignoring him as long as they are laws Republican legislators didn't care much about.

[0] https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/writing-an-op-ed-is-no...