Good morning. Hello. How are you? #638
Because Roe falling in the future is different than Roe falling in the present.
Good morning. Hello. How are… yeah, I know. Not great, Bob. This is some complete BS right here. Cecile Richards said last night “Yeah, I knew this was coming but knowing academically and feeling it when it happens are two different things. I am numb.” And that sure rings true. I was watching this hilarious, cathartic teardown of Star Trek Picard (just fire all the showrunners of all Nu Trek already just do it) and their critique was making me feel understood, like I wasn’t crazy. And Janet texted Emma and Emma told me the news and I knee-jerk replied: “whatever, we knew this was coming” and I got kind of aggro about it because yeah this is absolutely something I knew was going to happen this year, so I was all like “nothing new has happened here this was inevitable.” But of course that’s not true is it. Also I just wanted to keep feeling that feeling of comity and understanding, that sense of belonging and comfort that I was just feeling, watching to nerdy dudes rant about Trek. To feel understood again. To feel part of the majority again. But the news was the news, and that feeling was gone, and I was bitter about it, and I’m human, and so I snapped.
Then the shock and misery set in and I did not feel “whatever” anymore.
Because Roe falling in the future is different than Roe falling in the present.1
Before I get too far into this self-absorbed rant, I should just state the obvious. The things that need to be said. It feels numbing to write them, they should be obvious, but they aren’t, I’ve learned that much. SO: This is not okay. This is not now a states-rights issue. The outcome here is not “you just have to travel to another state to get an abortion no biggie.” That outcome would be bad enough because plenty of people cannot afford that travel, but that is not the endgame here. This is a waypoint. Immediately this is going to go to the Federal level. If we’re lucky, we can codify Roe, and make abortion legal in the US and go back to where we were, fighting increasingly-restrictive laws in a fundamentalist court. And that is be best outcome. The first hot second Republicans control both houses and the presidency, they will ban abortion in the entire US. And while I haven’t read the decision yet because I am maintaining a shred of hope it gets changed (it won’t), the legal logic in this decision is an assault on the entire right to privacy. It is an assault on gay marriage laws, anti-sodomy laws, it is an assault on miscegenation laws. This is explicit. It says it! Right in the ruling! This is only the beginning. Do not try and rationalize this away. They are saying this out loud and we should listen to them. It should also go without saying that banning abortion does not ban abortions, you’d think a bunch of guns-rights activists know this, or maybe they’re counting on it, but in any case, people, real people, are going to die because of this law. People are going to die. Let’s not pretend otherwise. You do not want to be one of those people in the “I did not speak up because they weren’t coming for me” situations, realizing in a year or two that your silence here is why they went for gay, racial equality, gender equality.
I’m already getting where-were-you-when vibes about this, the sinking feeling of the world changing irrevocaby for the worse, like 9/11 and Trump getting elected. Of course a ton of people will tell me that I’m being hyperbolic. But these people fall into two camps: people who pay far, far less attention to these things than I have for the last decade, or people who want Roe to fall. And that is the generous interpretation. But yeah. This is how we’re going to feel when there’s no more Antarctica or Greenland oe a million people in Florida heat wave / hurricane / power outage. This fury that all of this was completely foreseeable. This fury that something that is manifestly, definitively popular in the US goes away. This fury that the miniority rules the majority, and that they do it with the consent of a large chunk of apathetic majoritarians.
Writing every day is a nightmare. It’s a nightmare especially on a day like today. I didn’t want to write today at all. I came to Substack and I got a 404 error and I felt such relief. Great. I don’t have to do this. But then I hit refresh and the page worked, dammit. The thing about writing a work like GMHHAY every day is that GMHHAY is not, intentionally, an act of convincing, an act of propaganda. I don’t generally consider what my audience thinks. I mean, I am dimly aware that my constant ranting about Republicans is silently tolerated by some percentage of the audience who are Republican, subscribe, and just sort of politely gloss over my political rants so they can read about Jane or gardening. And that is fine. They don’t argue in the comments, when we see each other, we pretend it isn’t happening, there are almost certainly a bunch of people who subscribe who I have no idea are secretly pro-life.
I think the reason this all works is because, like I said, GMHHAY is not an act of convincing. It is a journal. It is what I’m thinking each day, not an endeavor to get you to change your mind. This idea stuck with me last night: I don’t really try to convince in my writing, certainly not about politics. In GMHHAY specifically, this is happening on two levels simultaneously: GMHHAY as a whole doesnt’ try to convince, but also, with politics, I’m generally too far gone. Or I think they are. Or both. I (not-so) secretly think my political adversaries are irredeemable, so I don’t bother. I know people who are out there — and they are right and I am wrong — who think it’s still worthwhile to try and convince pro-life Republicans, or, worse, pro-life Democrats like Joe Fucking Manchin to change their minds. But I can’t do it. I don’t have the patience, and if I let myself get stuck on that thought, it will toxify me and my relationships. So as a (more or less cowardly) act of self-preservation, I do not argue politics.
All of this is to say, then, why should a rich white dude like me, living in a state where nothing is going to change by this be writing about it at all?2 Well, because I write every day, and I have to. I’m cowardly but I have my limits, and on days like today, I will hate myself if I don’t say my piece.
There is, furthermore, another aspect to writing every day that is a nightmare. Life is repetition. I mean, there’s the repetition in our actions, especially during a pandemic, that brings forth a creative wellspring and arguably the heart of GMHHAY: what can I find to write about that is new and interesting when we are all trapped living the same day over and over? And I’m good at that, and it’s fun, and I think you guys enjoy it and it takes us to interesting places like matching granite egg crackers or compost or faux manual transmissions in EV vehicles.
But the reality of writing every day is that you are, mostly, editing out the thoughts you have on repeat every day. I wrote about the Kavanaugh and Barrett nominations extensively, their potential ramifications on Roe. But you can only write about these things so much. Who would read GMHHAY every day if it was just a non-stop list of the things that pissed me off, repeating the same ones over and over, sometimes adding a new one or adding a new thought but in essence just an endless list of anger. I mean yes that sounds awesome to some of us, I am sure, but, you know, I’m not Luke O’Neil I don’t just get pissed at the oppression of the masses, I get pissed at a lot of petty shit, and a lot of shit that, trust me, you do not want to hear about. 3
But you are still thinking them. All the time. It is absolutely insane the level of antipathy and sense of injustive I have about their nominations. It never leaves me. This is not healthy. But today it feels very, justified.
So here it is. The day has finally come. I’ve been obsessing about it for years, and close every-day readers of this will know this, but of course many of you will have skimmed and ignored or not picked up how important this has been to me.
One thing I’ve come to learn about myself as I get older is that my sense of justice and my sense of anger on behalf of people who are being wronged can be all-consuming, if I don’t try and control it. Seriously it goes to very dark places and fantasies of retribution very quicly if I don’t try and stable myself, it is not good.
You can’t do that. You have to live. You have to be healthy. You have to hope in the face of no hope. You have to act. I, myself, am doing my best, but I could do more. But I am scared. I do not romanticize a life of political struggle. I do not want it. I remember in college I was on a march for the Iraq war (the first one), and there was a dude in the front of the march, probably the organizer, so good for him, and he was actually dressed in all black, also good for him, and smoking, you know, early 90’s, good for him, but he was wearing an actual beret. Like… this was the life he wanted. He desperately wanted it. And good for him. It is probably the ideal way to resolve this dilemma: just give in and be a full-time activist. BUT, a) this dude was trying to lead us down the ramp right onto the sunken Mass Pike I-90, with cars going, like, 80 miles an hour in a trench, and there were only maybe a hundred of us and that was a very, very bad idea, and so we ignored him, but more to the point, b) I do not want to be that guy. There is nothing romantic to me about wearing a beret and being a full-time political activist. There’s nothing romantic to me about being a full-time politicial activist without a beret, either. I recognize the world needs full-time political activists. I know it’s good. But I don’t want to be one. I have shit to do.
I’d bet that I share this with a lot of middle-of-the-road man-Karens out there. I just want to live my life. I would be happier if the world was fair and good around me, but in the end, I want to live. I want to reach my potential (caveat here that my potential intentionally involves rejecting my potential but that is a complex topic for another time) and I want to be left in peace. But this stuff makes me feel like I can’t, and I resent that. I think that is a very, very common trait in America.
It makes me hate myself. I suspect this is where I differ from a lot of man-Karens out there. They can rationalize it, ignore it, but this deep sense that I just want to live my life and not throw myself to the political wolves… it makes me hate myself. It makes me hate myself that I can thrive in a world with so much injustice. When I choose self-preservation, when I choose mental health and domestic tranquility over the political fight, I feel so much shame. I will feel so much shame in forty weeks when America has no Roe, people are dying from abortions again, and I am joking about Nu Trek or Canadian Geese. Will I mention it here? Probably not. But it will be happening.
The abolute knowledge that even were I to throw my entire life against the political wheel it would not move, measured against the absolute fact that if more people threw their entire life against the political wheel, it would finally turn. The shame that brings. The shame that I just want to write a big check and be done with it.
I think it makes a lot of people deeply uncomfortable to talk about this stuff. It makes so many of my friends deeply uncomfortable to talk about this stuff. It was fascinating watching news of this ruling roll across the internet last night and watch it impact the various online groups I’m a member of. Some of them just went about their business, not a single mention. And in other groups, a few of us — a very, very small few — talked about it but the vast majority did not. I think it makes a lot of people deeply uncomfortable to talk about divisive topics unprompted, when it is no skin off of their back. And I think this is how tyranny wins in America. It plays upon our sense of comity and politeness and it pretends that awkward polite silence is assent for their assault on the rights of others.
Are they wrong?
And of course it hasn’t fallen yet, Roe is still the law of the land for however many days. But it is falling, it will fall, it is dead. I am simultaneously indulging in fantasies of last-minute fixes, trying to think of ways this horrible event might not happen, because life is weird and always, always, stranger things have happened. Susan Collins could feel an ouce of shame and caucus with the Democrats (and Murkowski, who only has to feel 50% shame, having voted against Kavanaugh but for Amy Covid Bash) for a one-time fillibuster suspension to codify Roe etc., etc. But none of it will happen. Or I guess we just have to act and assume that none of it will happen because even when things should happen, like any single person in Washington should have noticed that Kavanaugh perjored himself in his confirmation hearing, it doesn’t happen. But anyway, not fallen yet, shred of hope, hope is worth having, but prepare for it letting you down. Live quantumly.
I mean, southern state with two Republican senators and a Republican super-majority in the legislature, I am surprised. Had to look it up. Because I am priveleged and this is “not my problem.” I should have already known.
I was thinking about this with Spotify yesterday. I was adding my playlist to yesterday’s edition of GMHHAY and I was thinking “ha these people probably think I’ve forgotten or given up on my Spotify crusade. I am still using them. But of course, I haven’t, I still think about it every day, and I’m still working on it. It’s funny how you can write every day and people don’t know that you still care about a thing you still care about.
i only just learned about this upon checking my email this morning. it's shocking if not surprising.
i don't call people who are against abortion "pro-life." they say it's about the babies—but fuck them and their conditional concern, which lasts only to the moment of birth and definitely doesn't include the person with the actual motherfucking uterus.
anyway, i'm with you in all of these feelings. it's really hard—especially when we've actually marched and demonstrated a little bit and seen NO DISCERNIBLE CHANGES. did we just not try hard enough? i don't know—but now the kids have to take up the mantle, and not just on fucking tik tok.
Ha, I had totally the same experience in an anti-Iraq War march in San Francisco. It was a bunch of people who were *super* into this stuff and it was like their Woodstock. I sat there and watched speech after speech about toxic waste at Hunter’s Point, Native American lands, and a million other issues. It was pretty clear to me: “This is why these people are so easily caricatured and dismissed. We’re all here for one reason: to protest the Iraq War. Instead they've turned it into a protest carnival.”