[Trigger warning for...basically everything related to the leaked supreme court decision. At least in the last section. This will be a rough one.]

So, it’s high summer now and our apartment is getting so hot that it’s hard to think in the afternoons. Edgar was planning a book roundup – still is – but is too busy with work, mutual aid projects, and appointments to get it done right now, so you’re going to be getting my thoughts in response to the recent supreme court leak. I won’t spend too long talking on the immediate situation, because I feel more qualified to talk around it.

First and foremost, I’m going to say that reading these words is minimal engagement, and if you want to do something useful, you should find a local abortion fund and donate. That’s going to be the first step. Steps beyond that aren’t things I’m going to tell you about now, but we should all take the first step. (I’m down to under $100 in my checking account right now, so I’m going to wait for my last paycheck of the semester to drop tomorrow before doing my part there.)

What I want to talk about here is an analysis of what this particular event means.

To start this off, we need to talk about professional wrestling.

Look, I never really watched professional wrestling, so my choices for image to use here were essentially Macho Man Randy Savage, Hulk Hogan, and Mankind. I made the right choice, I think. However, I will say that I’m not the first person to bring professional wrestling into analysis — see the entry in Roland Barthes’s *Mythologies*. [Image uploaded to wikimedia commons by John McKeon and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license.]

I’ve never really been a professional wrestling fan – I can respect the athleticism and the commitment to the bit, but I didn’t encounter it at the right age. One thing that always confused me was the concept of kayfabe. This is the strange cultural practice that people inside professional wrestling have developed where they don’t break character even when not performing, an attempt to make the simulated, camp-masculine hyper-reality of the arena more real. I’ve heard some speculation that it’s a carnie term (which would make sense,) or a conman term (which wouldn’t be mutually exclusive) but neither of these things is really material. Despite the title, this piece isn’t about a history of kayfabe.

I could get really theoretical here, talking about the Big Other, about postmodern simulacra, and so on, but none of that’s really useful.

Kayfabe is a seamless or attempted-seamless presentation of a character in an effort to maintain audience engagement. Some people may be unaware of the lie, many people are, but they decide to go along with it. It’s about seeing where the performance goes.

No, I’m bringing up kayfabe because you can’t understand America’s formal politics without it. You have a kayfabe system that is presented to you, and you have the real system that exists underneath that layer.

Consider: no one who is a committed constitutional originalist would allow the supreme court to decide things related to constitutionality – the power of Judicial Review is not in Article III, section 1 of the constitution, which simply reads:

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. (link)

The supreme court barely had a job before this jerk decided to get clever.

Though section 2 (just below that text in the link) does outline some further stipulations. At no point is judicial review mentioned – that was invented by Chief Justice John Marshall out of whole cloth in Marbury v. Madison (1803). Which means that the power being employed to overturn Roe. As was written in the leaked opinion:

In interpreting what is meant by the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to “liberty,” we must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what that Amendment protects with our own ardent views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy. That is why the Court has long been “reluctant” to recognize rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution. (link)

The decision largely states that there is no constitutionally-protected “right to privacy”, and this implicitly overturns Roe v. Wade, as well as making vulnerable Lawrence V. Texas, which made sodomy – non-procreative sex – legal; Loving v. Virginia, which made interracial marriage legal; Meyer v. Nebraska, which protected foreign-language education; Griswold v. Concecticut, which allowed married couples to have unrestricted access to contraception; and Doe v. Bolton, which removed residency and medical approval requirements from abortion. Those are only a sampling of the “right to privacy” cases I could find. Notably, this was on wikipedia right next to “economic due process,” ensured by the same amendment, and on which minimum wage laws rest.

What does this have to do with kayfabe?

Simple: conservatives love to claim that they want to get government out of people’s business – but apparently, this doesn’t include what language they speak, who they love, and how they go about it. I find this baffling, because – frankly – those are almost the only parts of being a person I actually care about.

Or, as a friend of mine once put it “government so small it fits right inside your uterus.”

They take the “small government” line because “we want to hurt people that don’t look and act like us” isn’t a persuasive slogan.

What about the other side? The Democrats are far worse at messaging, because they tend to be specific and that tends to be boring. But we know for a fact that they have promised to codify Roe v. Wade into law but haven’t. We know that they promised minimum wage hikes and infrastructure spending and a robust social safety net and none of these have actually materialized.

We don’t have a “good” party and a “bad” party – we have a face and a heel, and neither of these parties can be seen as anything like beneficial for the populace. At most, the Democrats hit “pause” on some of the Republican policies. Some, but not all: they have heels within their own party that run cover for their do-nothing colleagues.

I have a running joke I tell where I can’t differentiate between Mitt Romney and John Kerry. This stems from the fact that they’re basically the same person.

They are playing roles. You can’t look at the discourse, you have to look at what they do – and this is made more difficult by the fact that many members of congress don’t actually read the bills that they pass into law. What you need to understand is that they are mere spectacle. They have power, but by custom they do not exercise it.

With this turn on the supreme court, kayfabe has begun to crack. The democrats are using this as a fundraising opportunity, but it rings hollow because they have failed to substantively protect the right to abortion for almost fifty years. They have simply refrained from attacking it.

To this end, I would argue that voting isn’t necessarily at all useful. Sure, take an hour out of your day every couple of Novembers and cast a ballot, but if that’s the limit of your involvement, you’re simply a rube.

Ignore the Politics of Spectacle, refuse to engage with kayfabe. Focus on real action. In short: what you need to do is organize.

Joe Hill was supposedly cremated and his ashes were stolen by the FBI. Even in death he was threatening.

In the wake of the 2016 election, a number of liberals coopted Joe Hill’s supposed final words “Don’t mourn, organize” (actually from one of his final telegrams sent to Bill Haywood, followed up by another one that read "Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don't want to be found dead in Utah.") but this is actually what needs to be done.

Let’s strip away the marxist language and lay things bare for a moment. You have the people in power and the people out of power. The people in power tend to be the smaller portion of the population, and they tend to set things up how they like.

The people out of power tend to be the larger segment of the population, and tend to have things much worse than those in power. However, power is measured in the obedience – or at least compliance – of this subaltern population. If they cease to comply, then the people in power get very nervous. They attempt to use tools to amplify their ability to inflict misery and ensure compliance.

It is only by organizing and working together that the people out of power – the subaltern population – can resist these tools.

Consider the mode of resistance typified by the Jane Collective. Abortion access was limited, so they broke the law to provide it, and did so in a responsible and safe way. Consider also the history of resistance from the working class. None of these were achieved alone. None of these worked without solidarity.

So, my suggestion to you is that you should join an organization that fits your ideals, and if you can’t find one you should try to build one. It’s a slow process but it’s one that can be achieved.

The first step is that you should talk to people – not in the way you may be used to, mind you. You have to spend most of the conversation listening and asking questions. Talk to the person next to you, and ask them about their frustrations and pains. Find out what they are angry about and want to change, but don’t know how.

Spend a long time discussing it, and then ask “what would your life be like if you didn’t have that problem?”

It’s a simple, basic approach, but it turns thing from the past – with its layers of blame and recrimination – and from now – with its discomforts and difficulties – to the future. The future is where the new emerges. Where possibilities are found.

By asking this question, you are inviting them to be your co-conspirator, and if you play your cards right, you’ll have one. Every union, every affinity group, starts this way. They all begin as conspiracies, and eventually emerge into the light to make their bid to change the world.

This first step is “consciousness raising.” It’s activating people and inviting them into the fight. You should be sure to follow this up with an inoculation: make it clear that the fight will be long and messy, but worth it. If you don’t do this, then the person you talk to may blanche at the first sign of difficulty.

Once you have done that, you can begin to plan. You can begin to organize, but you need to have a group. One person alone cannot do it.

This next section is going to be hard. I write it largely for people in my rough demographic, because for most other people I don’t think that it’s really necessary.

If this is the case, feel free to get off the ride right now and go on with your day. If not, feel free to come along for this last leg of the journey.

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So, think of all of the people – many women, yes, but also trans men and nonbinary people, they cannot be left out of the conversation, not to mention that trans women, who cannot become pregnant, are still victimized by the same social apparatuses – who have suffered because they didn’t have access to reproductive health care. Think about the victims of assault and incest who are forced to carry a pregnancy to term because if they terminate it, they will suffer a harsher penalty than their abuser.

Think about the mother-to-be who finds out that the pregnancy she is carrying is non-viable. Or, worse, that bringing it to term could kill her. Think about having your death sentence growing inside you. Think about your body having a certain expiration date. Think of the horror of a state-mandated pregnancy.

Think about how this is a crime against humanity according to the International Criminal Court.

Think about how trans people are denied the right to be who they are. Denied life-saving healthcare because some people find it “icky” or whatever. Think about wanting – and being able to – change something about your life and not being able to because someone uninvolved in the process tells you that you can’t.

Think about this: how would your life be different if you had the final say over your own body?

Don’t mourn, organize.

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Kayfabe Electoralism