In Ohio, this Tuesday, voters in a special election will decide on a scammy state constitutional amendment. “Are you sick of constitutional amendments? Vote yes on Issue 1 and you won’t have to put up with them anymore!” Issue 1 makes the process of amending our state constitution significantly harder. Since 1851, proposed amendments to our constitution needed a simple majority to pass. Issue 1 would up the required majority to 60%. If you take supporters’ word for it, shadowy interest groups from outside the state have set their eyes on Ohio and our big, beautiful constitution. “They” seek to shred it so as to turn us into another Democratic shithole like Chicago or California. We need a special instance of living constitutionalism to protect the original intent of the constitution (or something).
The downward-mobility of my 20s has left me feeling pretty, uh, proletarianized. I’m trying to meet rent and make sure nothing sends me to the hospital — most “politics” doesn’t touch on those material concerns. Inflation has hurt us all; the social contract’s expiring; yet we seem stuck on culture wars and scapegoats. But this vote would imperil one perk I and my girlfriend are, with tempered optimism, eyeing. Recreational weed is coming (again) before Ohio voters in 2024. My cutie will get her “I Voted” sticker for the first time (she was too late in registering for this election). Issue 1 undercuts the exact mechanisms giving legalization a decent shot next year. The weed folks failed to get enough signatures for the first deadline to bring the proposition before voters. They were given a short “do-over” period to attain the missing signatures, which they did. Issue 1 does away with the “do-over” period. And, it’s conceivable that legalization could achieve a simple majority (even in Ohio), there ain’t no way in hell it’s getting a 60% of voters next year. (We’re a swing state, making us sweet and fuckable to national pols; but the downside is a certain directionlessness when it comes to self-governance. I’m not starry-eyed on legal weed’s potential effects on America’s soul or nervous system. But it helps me drink less, which in turn allows me more energy to provide for my family. So I’m hoping the amendment passes (driving to legal-weed Michigan once a month sucks).
For supporters of Issue 1, though, weed isn’t at the forefront. Roe v. Wade was repealed ostensibly because the legal reasoning was faulty; furthermore it wasn’t an issue that should be decided by the judicial system. Abortion, according to the judges, should be left to the states and legislators to decide. But Issue 1 is specifically designed to hamper that self-representation. State senators know that extremist anti-abortion positions are not popular with voters at-large. In my experience, the “average” non-ideological heartland voter is against third-trimester abortion but also against total bans pushed by the religious right. Enshrining abortion rights would probably pass with a 50% threshold, but not at 60%. To the undecided, Issue 1 supporters will talk up resistance to outside “fads” infecting state politics. But amongst insiders, the amendment’s explicit purpose is to quash abortion rights and keep our kids from getting trans’ed. Anti-abortionists don’t want to let voters decide the matter. They’re instead counting on handing power from the federal judiciary to state legislators who can be counted on to do the right’s thing. Ironically, this bill does not need a 60% majority to pass. I would kind of respect the pro-lifers if they wrote into the amendment that it needed to pass based off the same standard it would implement. Majority rule, though, seems sufficient when you’re out to shrink the power of…majority rule. I corresponded with another First writer 10 years ago when Obergefell was decided. I’m shamed slightly when I remember saying that the Supreme Court didn’t seem like a great long-term way for such a substantial change to happen: “It’s going to create a backlash; it should be left up to voters.” Time has mostly proven 19-year-old Nathan wrong. Furthermore, when your enemies are attacking that very democratic process I wanted to uphold, what’s left but to win by any means necessary?
Polls are inconclusive as to whether voters will accept this collective self-abnegation. One big poll showed a righteous 60% opposition. But another (probably closer to the truth) showed a close 52% majority support. Local Facebook and Nextdoor groups (certainly not liberal strongholds in Ohio) reveal almost universal opposition, but I don’t think that’s to be trusted. I don’t want to shit-talk the average Ohio voter. But the amendment is so vague and full of Civics 101 platitudes that I think many (who aren’t anti-abortion extremists) will fall for it, fancying themselves armchair constitutional experts (a great hobby for aging white dudes). It’s shameful how the anti-abortionists have gotten nearly ALL their victories of the past 30 years in this underhanded manner. Issue 1 is essentially counting on political deadlock to keep giving Republicans what they want. And they’re right — “nothing ever changing” does tend to favor fascists more than liberals.
Set aside your commitments on abortion for just a moment. If you believed that “actual” babies were being killed, you’d probably want it stopped (at a minimum). Why then does the modern anti-abortion movement have to act under a cloak of supreme ratfuckery? Scratch most pro-abortion arguments, and at the bottom you’ll find a eugenicist argument (“They’re not really human beings”; “They would be a burden to those around them”; “Their life would be miserable anyway”.) Progressive technocrats have not abandoned their eugenicist commitments from the early 1900’s. Now they just do it through austerity, nudge psychology, and occasionally under the abortionist’s lab coat. Anti-eugenics is a strong Christian position which anti-abortionists should be able to loudly proclaim. (I think the weak, ugly, and useless should survive.) However, we don’t have an anti-eugenics party in America. Democrats politely curb undesirables through woke gentrification; Republicans utilize the invisible hand of the market to do the work for them (and often capital’s enforcers like the police). Abortionists will (I guess) somewhat kindly put you out of your misery before it starts. Anti-abortionists want the chance to make a buck from you before the economy does the killing. The now-cliche meme about anti-abortionists is that they’re pro-life before birth: you’re on your fucking on after that. “Pro-lifers” are not successful when they loudly proclaim their intentions because they do not deserve the “pro-life” label. Granting human rights to the extreme least among us — fetuses — is a radical and potentially exciting extension of the liberal project. Doing so honestly though, also requires an extreme avowal of the rights and dignity of the actually-living. It entails a rejection of capitalism’s eugenicist survival-of-the-fittest logic. Anti-abortionists will sometimes, with a shit-eating grin, mention that, while composing only 13 percent of the population, black pregnancies represent 37% of all abortions. But the concern rings hollow when it’s the same people trying to ban Black history or cut social service spending. The pro-life position is so radical that it would entail a complete transvaluation of our actually extant values. The modern anti-abortion movement does no such thing; their words are hollow. To avoid being mocked off the public stage, they must accomplish their goals in shadows and through subterfuge.
Neither party has a strong pro-worker, anti-corporatist line. On the state level, Republicans directly hand power over to local business tycoons. Whereas local Democrats try to make cities and states appear progressive enough to attract “woke” global companies like Amazon, through a process of “SoDoSoPa”-fication (see South Park S19E3; hey, when they’re right, they’re right…) Our sexual politics may flow downstream – either direct identification with the strong businessman; or prettying yourself up enough to get consensually fucked. Issue 1 would further solidify this ruinous dialectic. Even the anti-abortionists, with their supposed moral high ground, cannot openly assert an alternative. Our collective dearth of imagination means that (short-term) deadlock might be the best we can hope for. Meanwhile, both sides harbor fantasies of a soon-to-come total and final victory (guillotines on the left, helicopter rides for the right). Regardless of your “side”, I hope we can all agree anti-democratic measures like Issue 1 are not the answer. Leaning into the impasse makes apocalyptic visions the only future we can imagine. Which, in moments of weakness, sometimes seems the case. But when the age of barbarism, illiberalism, and minority rule is fully here — it will already be too late. Duty compels us to find a way out, or at least pretend it can be done. Making our already-corrupted government less responsive is the exact opposite of what our situation calls for.
Before reading the polls, I thought Issue 1 was partisan hackery so obvious that no one could swallow. I nearly spit out my Monster Rehab when my parents told me they were going out canvasing for it last week. “You don’t understand what they want to come in and do to our Constitution…” etc. But then moments later, upon being pressed, they effortlessly switched to the register of “late-term abortions”, trans kids, and accompanying moral panics. I’m almost jealous of the inability to feel cognitive dissonance. I too hunger after the great sleep of the mind & soul — nagging uncertainties would fall away, and in turn become their own forms of enchantment. But such denialism also leaves you fully in thrall to forces outside your control — unable to imagine anything different when the pleasure turns to pain. I don’t respect or even listen much to a “pro-life” movement that doesn’t take seriously its own values. Are fetuses human beings that deserve a chance at life, at the expense of the mother’s will? And furthermore, at the expense of democracy and any pretense of controlling our future? The first question is above my paygrade. To the second, though, we all should voice a resounding “no”. Maybe one day, the NGO’s will run out of minority causes to advance and we’ll reconsider out conceptions about what deserves life. After we’ve gotten a woman Dr. Who, a Black Dr. Who, a trans Dr. Who, an incel Dr. Who, and a down-syndrome Dr. Who — maybe our moral imagination will expand to allow an unborn fetus Dr. Who. But a true pro-life movement would ensure that there’s a world that’s actually worth living in first. The unborn would seem to have less of a claim on our energies than the already-here. Sorry, little buddies, get to the back of the line. You’re going to have to wait your turn like the rest of us.