The Cold (un)Civil War
"Nine people appointed by presidents should not be in control of the rights of our citizens."
"This is an activist court and the president should stack it with justices on the other side as soon as possible."
"This ruling ignores the rights of Americans with no voice."
Sounds familiar to someone who was alive and living in Wichita, Kansas as Operation Rescue launched its anti-abortion campaign. Sounds familiar to anyone living today as the GOP-majority SCOTUS overturned the 1973 landmark decision granting a Constitutional right to abortion.
The current SCOTUS seems to be on a tear to eliminate the gains made in so many areas we on the Left eventually took for granted for the past three generations. Following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, it looks like twenty-three states will be banning abortion outright within their borders. In Maine, it has been established by the six members of the right wing of the court that religious schools can receive public funding. In NYC, a law on the books for over one hundred years requiring 'special circumstances' to be granted a conceal/carry license for a firearm has been overturned. Coaches for public schools can now legally pray on the field.
On deck for the SCOTUS calendar are thirty more cases up for review including one that could effectively eliminate federal agencies from regulating corporate interests when it comes to the environment and one that could affect a new president's ability to undo policies set by previous administrations.
At the same moment, we're holding public hearings designed to prosecute and make the case to imprison a twice-impeached president. The loony Texas GOP has secession in their platform.
These are all the warning bells of a new era of states’ rights and a roll back from federal control in the United States ,and the Left side of the issues continues to blare the outrage that this is all the fault of Donald Trump. No, gang. America finds itself not in a world transformed by Donald Trump but one in which generations of Republicans have been open about their brutal aim and have waged a slow but incredibly effective chess game to decentralize the country.
The response to so much of this push to return the power of the states reminds me of a moment of theatrical drama back in the nineties in Chicago.
✶
We were performing a celebrated two-person anarchist improv show entitled My Grandma's a Big Fat Whore in Jersey and we were performing in a late night slot at the Bailiwick Theater on Belmont. The stage set up was perfect for our show—a black box, bare stage, fifty seats or so.
One week, I received a call from the theater. Another prime-time show was moving into the venue and would be changing the set up. I was assured it wouldn't be vastly different. I was assured that it would simply flip the stage. I thought nothing of it.
When we arrived to get set up for the show, we were stunned at the change. Not only had the stage been flipped, there was a statue of the Virgin Mary bolted to the center stage and two tons of sand covering the entire space. My actors lost their shit. They were furious. They insisted that I, as both director and producer, do something about it. There was two tons of sand on the stage—what was I going to do?
I knew that being angry about it was going to accomplish exactly fuck-all. I looked at the possibilities. I suggested they perform in their bare feet and use the sand and statue in every scene. I, in other words, recognized my inability to change what had happened and sought workarounds until I could arrange for something else the following week.
This did not calm the actors down. In fact, my pragmatism only made them angrier.
I went outside for a smoke and thought about how I could ameliorate the problem. The actors seemed to need me to be furious so they could release some of theirs. They needed a show from me of outrage and horror. The needed me to reflect their fury so that they could relax and do a show.
So I went with that.
I came in, freshly motivated. I pretended to get on the phone and scream at the production manager of the venue. I barked as loud as I could, knowing my actors could hear me. I came backstage and threw a chair. And the actors calmed down. They started to explain to me all the things I had earlier explained to them. The script, as it was, had been flipped just like the stage.
The show went very well.
✶
When people are confronted with things that outrage them, pragmatic thought further enrages them.
Thus the performative and completely non-pragmatic outrage from Democratic leaders who easily saw the overturn of Roe v. Wade coming but did nothing in response but perform what we needed to see but nothing to be done. AOC yelling about the filibuster. Warren calling for the court to be stacked. Biden telling us that "Roe is on the ballot."
Sound and fury signifying nothing. The country is changing dramatically on both sides of the partisan aisle and, instead of getting better, it's getting uglier and more divided. Will a blue wave in response to the court's decision make a difference? Not a chance. As opposed to the united part of our title as Texas is, California is no more in lockstep with a united country concept. We are, undoubtedly, a house divided.
Will this result in a civil war? Maybe a cold one. More like an uncivil war, where lines are drawn even more starkly than before, states asserting their power as they did in earlier generations, the federal governing bodies having less and less ability to pass laws that cover the country. The United States will become known more as the American States and China, already obliterating the global economy, will be crowned the last and only world power.
Sounds familiar to someone living during 1968, 1973, 1976, 1982. I imagine it sounds familiar to those who were living in 1860 and 1865. I'd hazard a guess that the uneasy, uncivil union that comprises what we call the United States has pretty much always been like this. FDR tried to stack the court for incredibly similar reasons.
Abraham Lincoln once wrote, “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause.”
However, Lincoln cautioned, dictate to a man’s judgment, command his action, or mark him to be despised, “and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart. And even though your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and though you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision, you shall be no more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw.”
It seems that we need to relearn this over and over. When you perceive those whom you live with as the enemy, they will see you as the enemy. Once those lines are drawn, it is very unlikely that armistice will be invoked because when you pit two enemies at odds with one another, someone has to win. Winning in these cases obliterates compromise. Thus, an uncivil war.
This has always been the way of things American. It has always been the way of things democratic.
What has also always been the way is that whenever the governing bodies prohibit something Americans want or need, Americans find a way to get it anyway. This is why Reconstruction after the Civil War failed. It is why Prohibition failed. It is why the War on Drugs has failed.
It is why the ban on abortion will fail.
