THE CRISIS OF LIVING IN A BROKEN SOCIETY

The morning is soaked through with dread. As the Supreme Court of the United States of America, a historically oppressive and contemporarily crooked body, begins to hear the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that could very well lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose, already the consequences of Mitch McConnell, the Republican Party, and the Right Wing judicial project’s machinations are coming into full light. Extremists on the court Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett seem more than prepared to carry out a sweeping decision that could have disastrous consequences.

Coverage of this moment is predictable and laced with tired arguments that simply reinforcement the entrenched philosophies that have been gone over and over and over in every major newspapers, magazine, cable show, and, I can tell you, college composition essay. Abortion is as clear cut an example of how a country can be cleaved in two by a single issue with hardly a scarce inch of common ground to be shared. This fact goes most often unsaid, but it is the defining question of this moment.

Politics is, theoretically, the means by which we live together in a society and move through time. It is the method to solve questions of debate, to decide where to allocate resources, to solve the major questions of the moment. Liberalism, as a concept, was intended to erect a wall between church and state, thereby disarming the violent, apocalyptic battles between faiths, and replacing rule from a deity to rule through law, the law becoming, in this way, a secular, impartial arbiter that maintains peace among the peoples while protecting property.

All of this, of course, is theoretical. What we have seen is the disruption of this myth. And it’s always a bad sign when that myth is disrupted. What results are cultural wars, societal estrangement, radicalization as philosophical, political, and economic camps begin to recognize they are not united by purpose or even by reality, and begin to see one another as enemies. This is how we get violence. This is how we get civil wars. And it is inevitable once the kind of corruption and bad faith practiced by the Republican Party and its backers in the elite wealth class exercise their power to overturn the myth and realize unchallenged rule.

At different moments, this is navigable. Where we are now is an exceptionally charged period where the differences are overt and the myth is paper-thin. Sometimes politics is relegated to something that happens in the background, unnoticeable save for those who are subject to its force, primarily vulnerable populations who suffer the lion’s share of oppression and discrimination. Now, with abortion, with disenfranchisement, with a boiling war over history and education, and the GOP wading into the dark abyss of authoritarianism, the problems of liberalism and an open society are vibrating and radiating for all to see, recognize, and lament.

I want to be honest. I have thoughts on how this can be changed, how it can be rectified. The means by which the corruption and oppression have been exacerbated by propaganda and conspiracy theories and out and out violence can be opposed and even overcome. There are methods by which radicalization can be tempered. Alienation and frustration counter. But there are questions that are much more vexxing, much more frightening.

In this moment, watching those who advocate for violence and oppression and mindless exploitation, I’m not sure how we continue to live in that shared society. The divide seems not just widened but made concrete, given a permanent ridge and reinforced. The manipulation of the Right by the wealthy elite feels almost terminal. In navigating day-to-day life, even while practicing mindfulness and radical empathy, I find myself stunned by gleeful cruelty and the type of aggressive individualism that has been not only promoted and commodified by the GOP but sanctified by its religious components who seek to reel back the secularism and liberties guarenteed by the liberal state. This has been harnessed, weaponized, and accelerated by operators dead-set on dismantling open society as we know it.

Liberalism is supposed to function as the force that allows us to retain our individual liberty while existing within a shared space. The law is theoretically supposed to navigate the murky terrain between my life, your life, and the lives of others. Abortion is the quintessential paradox, the irresistible contradiction that challenges the ideas, and the GOP has recognized this from the moment the Evangelical Right cast its significant weight into the political sphere. It is a cudgel that, they know, if wielded the right way, with the right patience, with the right ferocity, could begin the unraveling of liberal democracy and open society, creating a new era of patriarchal control, white supremacist revivalism, and the achievement of an aggressive minority over the vast majority.

It is such a grotesque prospect that one feels a terror to even contemplate it, a terror that begs us to look away. But we can’t look away. Not now, not ever.