Never give up

I have to admit it -- when I saw the news about Anthony Kennedy's retirement, my first thought was, "Oh crap, all the political blogs are going to be unreadable for a week because of all the we're DOOMED! DOOMED! DOOMED! stuff."  The left's tendency to treat every setback as the end of the world has long infuriated me (do read that, it's not half bad, if I do say so myself), even if I too once yielded to it (the only recent post I actually regret writing).  The world has ended at least a dozen times since I started this blog.

This time, though, I've been pleasantly surprised.  Yes, there has been some of the usual doom-and-gloom and a few profanity-laced rants demanding that Democratic leaders do things they do not, in fact, have the power to do.  But there have been some sober responses as well.

Electoral-Vote, a prolific political-analysis blog which deserves to be better known than it is, posts a lengthy discussion of why (a) replacing Kennedy with a wingnut won't make as much difference as people think, and (b) the Supreme Court may not, in fact, be "lost for a generation".  Mock Paper Scissors points out that if we fight hard and win big in the 2018 and 2020 elections, a lot can be done to correct the damage (so don't panic).  Crooks and Liars gives options for channeling energy into resistance right now.  Henry Rollins* admonishes us -- with regard to Trumpism generally, not just the Supreme Court -- not to do the enemy's work for them.  LGBTQ Nation reminds us that just a few decades ago people had to fight under far more dangerous and discouraging conditions, and still won -- and that we will inevitably win because we are the majority now.

That last point is important to remember.  The fundies, prudes, bigots, crackpots, xenophobes, and assorted knuckle-dragging Deliverance mutants who make up the enemy are a minority of the US population, and their percentage of it shrinks year by year.  Even if they "win" -- by gerrymandering the shit out of everything, passing ever-more-blatant vote-suppression laws, weaponizing the Supreme Court to gut the Bill of Rights, suspending elections, whatever your nightmare is -- all they'll have done is entrench an explicit system of minority rule over an infuriated and self-aware majority which will outnumber them more and more as time passes.  That didn't work out so well in South Africa.  Even a lot of them won't want that scenario, if they're made to realize that's where they're heading.  And our side has the brains.  Our side produces the technology and mass culture that are the sources of America's power, hard and soft.  They need us.  We don't need them.

Even in the short term, their victories are likely to be Pyrrhic.  Take the threat to Roe v. Wade, for example.  There are a lot of voters, especially younger ones, who support abortion rights but don't feel much pressure to vote on that basis or take an interest in state-level races, because deep down they don't really believe those rights could be taken away.  If Roe v. Wade is reversed, or even looks likely to be reversed, the threat will become very real, in the form of the decision-making power on the issue being returned to state governments.  And then the Republicans will face the mother of all electoral backlashes as voters mobilize to protect rights they suddenly realize can be taken away.

I'm not saying this is a good thing.  I abhor the Susan Sarandon "let everything become horrible so the backlash will make it better" stance.  This really would be horrible.  People would suffer terribly; people would die.  I'd rather see Roe preserved.  But if the Republicans finally get their wish on the issue, they'll be opening a Pandora's box which will blow up in their faces.

Don't despair.  Be energized to fight back.  And remember that the Sun will rise tomorrow.

[*Actually Will Stenberg, according to comments at the linked post.]