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"The Constitution is Suspended"
It's been almost two months since my last post. In some ways that's not so very long - but still long enough for the USA to turn from a functioning democracy into a Fascist-adjacent authoritarian state.
These lines have been going through my head on repeat since January:
Though justice against fate complain,
And plead the ancient rights in vain;
But those do hold or break
As men are strong or weak.
Marvell knew what he was talking about. Checks and balances can be toppled if there's no one to provide a counterweight. If a judge countermands an executive order in middle of the forest, but no one acts as if they heard it, did it really happen?
I do feel that this will be a temporary phenomenon, because Trump, Musk and Co. will fall on the sword of their own hubris and incompetence, and because forces of resistance will inevitably grow, if far too slowly. At the current rate of change, though, I think that those counselling "hanging on till the midterms" sound awfully naive. What midterms? We can't hold midterms in a National Emergency! (There is no National Emergency, you may object - but then, there is no war with Venezuala, and Trump still successfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act.) Laws, customs and institutions don't exist except in so far as people agree to act as if they do; to behave as if they had real force in their own right is magical thinking. Or, in the language of J.L. Austin, it's to ignore the contexts that give statements their performative power, or rob them of it.
A well known example is the sentence, "The constitution is suspended", the performative power of which is very different depending on whether it appears in a government proclamation or merely as the title of a blog post. For the moment it's the latter. In another two months, who knows?
These lines have been going through my head on repeat since January:
Though justice against fate complain,
And plead the ancient rights in vain;
But those do hold or break
As men are strong or weak.
Marvell knew what he was talking about. Checks and balances can be toppled if there's no one to provide a counterweight. If a judge countermands an executive order in middle of the forest, but no one acts as if they heard it, did it really happen?
I do feel that this will be a temporary phenomenon, because Trump, Musk and Co. will fall on the sword of their own hubris and incompetence, and because forces of resistance will inevitably grow, if far too slowly. At the current rate of change, though, I think that those counselling "hanging on till the midterms" sound awfully naive. What midterms? We can't hold midterms in a National Emergency! (There is no National Emergency, you may object - but then, there is no war with Venezuala, and Trump still successfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act.) Laws, customs and institutions don't exist except in so far as people agree to act as if they do; to behave as if they had real force in their own right is magical thinking. Or, in the language of J.L. Austin, it's to ignore the contexts that give statements their performative power, or rob them of it.
A well known example is the sentence, "The constitution is suspended", the performative power of which is very different depending on whether it appears in a government proclamation or merely as the title of a blog post. For the moment it's the latter. In another two months, who knows?