What Are The Stages Of Grieving The Death Of Democracy?
Bet we end up going for activist uplift by the end of this thing. We'll see.
Yes, yes, we know. The “stages of grief” is a model of limited utility because the reality of grieving is that it’s recursive and cyclical, not a neat step-by-step progression. As all of us who have experienced loss know, there’s nothing neat about grief, no schedule for getting through (not over) it.
So yeah, sorry not sorry for the cheap clickbait headline. But my point here is to talk about this last week and its many blows to American democracy, not to rake the popularized version of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s work over the (newly subsidized) coals.
Last Friday’s Supreme Court’s decision saying that federal courts can’t do much to rein in Donald Trump was what broke me, I think, although Crom knows things have been in a state of constant crumbling since November.
My “writing process” for that story went like this:
Started reading the opinion.
Got to the second page of the summary and its pretext for barring federal district court judges from issuing nationwide or “universal” injunctions against presidents. The opinion says that judges had no such power “in the court of equity in England at the time of the founding,” nor in “founding-era courts of equity in the United States.” So sorry, reining in a rogue president didn’t have a sufficient historical pedigree, and that’s basically it. Never mind that such nationwide injunctions have been used since the early 20th century, that’s not old enough, OK? English and colonial courts mean we can’t hope to stop Trump from doing blatantly illegal things? Is this real life? RRrraaaaARRGHH! Why is this happening to me? Is this going to be forever?
Muttered “Those motherfucking fucks” and posted this on Bluesky. (If you haven’t watched “The Wire,” 1) you should! and 2) Didn’t I already tell you you need to watch “The Wire”? But here’s the reference. It is not safe for work viewing.)
From there, since actual legal experts were starting to write about the decision and how completely unprecedented it was — confirming that it was every bit as terrible as it sounded — I alternated between doomscrolling Bluesky and trying to read the decision, and by golly, with some skimming, I made it through Amy Coney Barrett’s opinion, the concurrences by Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh (a lot of skimming!), and of course the written-in-fire dissents by Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. They helped remind me I wasn’t crazy: This is bad.
That list makes it sound a lot more orderly than it was. I was also doomscrolling, looking up trivia about “The Wire,” and finding things to do other than writing anything, because really? The wheels fall off here, with this clusterfuck?
I did copy and paste some really good lines from the dissents into the draft, and a couple of them made it into the final version, so that counted as “work.”
But mostly, the more I read about the fuckery and thought about how the Court handed Donald Trump exactly the thing he wanted, the more depressed I got, to the point where it seemed impossible to even summarize the case.
I mean, Trump acted like he could change the Constitution with an executive order, overturning the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship by writing on it with a Sharpie. And given the chance to just slap it down by saying no, that’s nuts, stop it, the Court went along with what Trump asked for, only taking up the question of whether judges could stop him. By throwing out nationwide injunctions, the Court let him do it, at least in the states that hadn’t challenged the executive order.
Oh yeah, there it is, that’s what happened. Even after a week, that paragraph sounds nuts. No wonder I had trouble writing about that mess! Late in the afternoon I found a cat picture to use, so I was really rolling. I rewarded myself with a nap.
I considered just writing a protracted navel-gaze about trying to absorb the realization, again, that we are in a country that’s heading toward fascism, and we’re all awake and showing up to the demonstrations (except I had a terrible cold for the last one), and there are encouraging things like all the people who also hate all this.
I hoped in vain that maybe, considering how bad this was, MSNBC might bring in Rachel Maddow to talk some of us in off the ledge, but nothing doing. George Conway told Jen Psaki he thought the Court had actually provided a cheat code in the form of Kavanaugh’s concurrence, which pointed to class action suits and said they could still be used to constrain illegal presidential actions. (I rolled my eyes, but on Wednesday, a federal judge in DC overturned Trump’s executive order gutting asylum, in a class action case. But we still don’t know whether that will hold.)
Instead, I went to bed worrying, then woke up and banged out a pretty fair discussion of the SCOTUS decision, and when I was done I mentioned to Rebecca in the ChatCave that I was thinking of writing about how I’m reacting to (waves arms) ALL OF THIS. She said she thought that would be a good idea for a July 4 weekend think-piece, and here we are.
Dear readers, for the first time since these fuckers regained power I have been thinking about Canada and googling affordable Canadian cities. Winnipeg looks nice. But updating my passport would be work, so there’s that. And I absolutely hate moving. Guess I’m staying.
It’s hard to do a think piece when the world is so fractured and yet superficially normal. Hello, I am contemplating the end of democracy, a fascist takeover and possible/probably genocide, the dismantling of the little bit of climate progress we finally made, and I’m sorry, it’s all a little MUCH. And I still need to sell Kid Zoom’s old Ford Focus because Kid now drives my Fusion hybrid now that I got my EV, and that normal boring shit makes it hard to focus on end of democracy stuff.
We are all in this boat and all we have is each other. Like Ma Joad said, we’ll keep going, because what choice do we have? But good GOD the slams keep coming, and it’s so goddamn tiring.
Take some time this Independence Day to liberate yourself from the news if you can. Recharge your own batteries and remember we really do have each other. Be excellent to each other. I think I’m going to finally watch that Molly Ivins documentary from a few years back. That should help. It sucks. We will endure, and keep fighting.
See you Monday.
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…I’m going to have to write an emergency cocktail, aren’t I. Guess we can toss something together while I fiddle with infusing coconut rum and banana Campari for a tiki Negroni.
Thanks Dok. I think we all needed this. And Hooper's Emergency Cocktail will go over well.
These two. Juxtapose these two
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I mean, Trump acted like he could change the Constitution with an executive order, overturning the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship by writing on it with a Sharpie.
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The opinion says that judges had no such power “in the court of equity in England at the time of the founding,” nor in “founding-era courts of equity in the United States.”
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So because judges didn't have the power BEFORE THE FUCKING CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN then fuck them, they can't have it after that.