They Leaked the End of the American Experiment

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.damemagazine.com/2022/05/06/they-leaked-the-end-of-the-american-experiment/

On Monday, May 2, 2022, as the news of the leaked decision to overturn Roe v. Wade lit up my timeline, I knew that I had already lived this night. I had already seen this proclamation and these consequences, had already grieved and had already lost. All that I could do then was find the sea of misery and bathe in it, so that I would not be alone. Like I had been the first time, on the day when this night became a fact.

It is hard to perceive when the present becomes fact because we, as Americans, are taught that history is a series of events in linear order. A happened; B happened; C happened: like plotting points on a curve. History is a rigid thing in this country, unalive, inanimate, solid—a brick wall or a stone foundation. And so, people are always surprised and aghast when history breathes and the world shifts between what is and what was and what could be. We are trained to forget that we are born as ancestors.

So though I did not know the day, the hour, the manner, the words, I had already lived through the end of Roe, the dissolution of bodily autonomy, the final ascension of the high court and the subordination of politics to its will. Because I was where we had already been.

And I was not alone.

There were many of us—augurs—in 2016 who warned of what would happen if Donald Trump took power. We screamed into the wind about the importance of voting, the cold danger of apathy, the sheer cruelty that would be unleashed, the searing reality that “too late” is too soon. We were as sirens—wailing into the dark, trapped by our self-identification. A siren is either an earsplitting alarm for an emergency or a duplicitous woman luring you to demise. The more we attempted the former, the more we were seen as the latter. We pleaded and begged and cajoled, and every new desperation was weaponized against us as evidence of our false nature.

*snip*

[CrispyQ]

1. That is a helluva graphic in that tweet. -nt

[Wounded Bear]

2. K & R...a worthy read and a righteous rant...nt

[MineralMan]

3. Yes, This Is a Clarion Call.

It could have been prevented, but was not. Now, we have to correct our own error. I hope people will rise to the occasion.

If we do not turn out in record numbers and regain a significant majority in both houses of Congress and in at least some state legislatures in 2022, we are in great peril.

I will continue to call for a record-breaking GOTV effort. I can do no more nor less.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. I've been "ready" for this inevitability since Webster in 1990.

Yes, Trump made it happen. But would any of the other Republicans running for President in 2016 been any less toxic? Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio? Rick Santorum? John Kasich? Mike Huckabee? Bobby Jindall? Lindsey Graham? Jeb Bush? Any and all of them would have teamed up with McConnell to push as many Federalist candidates onto the USSC.

We have no choice but to fight, really fight, not only for the right to abortion, but for the constitutional republic that has been the American Experiment until now.

[TheRealNorth]

5. +1

Most Republicans would have done the same. But the Republican base loves it when Trump sticks it to Democrats AND spits in our faces.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. With all our free speech, imagine being done in by the Deep Court

Somebody did, or didn't, like it

[Harker]

7. I've long thought that "It Was a Good Idea" would've been a better

motto than "E pluribus unum."

[Evolve Dammit]

8. GOP "base" must be giddy