Jean François Janinet: M. de Lafayette Arrests a Man for the Unlawful Hanging of a Thief (24 May 1790)
Book Title: Gravures Historiques des principaux événements depuis l'ouverture des Etats
[Historical Engravings of the main events since the opening of the States]
(1789?)

"Keep our Constitution out of the bedroom and the … board room out of our legislature … "

The Baby Boom Generation might have been the most scofflaw in history so far. We tended to obey the laws we agreed with and ignored those we didn't. Much of the difficulty might be reasonably assigned to a series of absolutely ridiculous laws, which, in my humbled opinion, attempted to legislate a particular morality, one not even a plurality of the polity ever really agreed to obey. We are much more pious publically than privately. We try to keep our immoralities off the front page of the papers. We figure it's nobody's business if we choose to smoke marijuana in the privacy of our home, even if, to enjoy that illegal liberty, we have to financially support the ever-burgeoning drug smuggling and distribution industry and all the greater sins that entails. We didn't imagine ourselves criminals but principled dissenters, the post-modern equivalent of Minute Men protesting against The Stamp Act. A whole array of such infractions riddled our modern society. Ever more, it seemed, as the more conservative came to dominate domestic politics. It should have been no surprise that Women's Rights were the most frequently, profoundly, and unjustly affected.

Eventually, one didn't need to smoke weed or develop an inflated sense of the personal rights bestowed by the Second Amendment to feel as though they righteously protested against a seemingly ever-more intrusive government. The notion of consent of the governed seemed to have been exchanged for the insistence of the most monied, and of, by, and for the people seemed ever more unlikely fiction. We were probably destined to eventually elect a madman as president, one incapable of discriminating between justice and whim. Conservatives, playing off the old reliable Jim Crow legislation, recognized that whatever Congress passed as law would be enforceable regardless, so they gleefully began disassembling our carefully constructed rights and freedoms. They targeted voting freedoms first, figuring that those who could control who voted might more easily get their candidates elected, regardless of their positions' popularity—no better way to get your way than to legally muffle the voice of the people.

Our current incumbent might have been perfect for the position, for he had been bold when committing his infractions against the system. He seemed both disinterested in justice and untouchable by consequences. He took privilege to new heights. He championed the most curious positions, creating a coalition of the disgusted, sometimes even for cause. The disappointment in the system was essentially a fictional creation forcefully expounded by a media machine more motivated by spectacle than accuracy. News became indistinguishable from entertainment, and entertainment more successfully attracted attention. Elections became popularity contests rather than more reasoned assessments. It was probably unavoidable that we'd eventually find ourselves electing somebody like our incumbent, who would create an administration utterly uninterested in laws or justice. A federal judge coined the perfect phrase for the resulting shenanigans: WhollyUnlawful, for that's what they are. That's also what we've almost become.

The jury's still deliberating, and the jury might have been bought. Our government has never not relied upon the voluntary engagement of its humblest citizens. No law has ever stood against a concerted public interest, though many have fallen through disinterest and distraction. Our incumbent managed to make enough of a hash of his responsibilities in just six weeks that the polity seems awakened. The streets are finally filled with loud and sarcastic protesters carrying genuinely inspiring signs. My favorite one from last weekend's marches: "Clean Up In Aisle 47!" The vaunted Project 2025 neglected to consider what historically happens when our native sarcasm awakens. We usually want to avoid finding our private opinions displayed on front pages. Still, we occasionally, historically, scream the headlines in ways so that nobody finds an ounce of ambiguity in them. Old divisions heal under the American sarcasm salve. There's no known defense against this. It's also self-reinforcing in the way that any formerly unspeakable becomes only shoutable afterward. We are and should be ashamed of ourselves! What were we thinking when we weren't even thinking at all?

Such messes collapse almost as a matter of passing. This one peaked in world record time. Let the record show that we went from complete snooze to the nightly news in five short months. A clear majority of those alive this morning who voted for this clown in November would never consider voting him into office again after knowing what his first six weeks would wreak. He's achieved lame-duck status in world record time. There will be no recovery. We who dabbled in lawlessness in our youth and believed ourselves to have been fully justified carry a more mature recognition after looking at the prospect of losing our Habeas Corpus privileges. We might enjoy our rights while accepting our consequent obligations going forward. Our laws cannot be so open-ended that we cannot find an edge to lawlessness. Likewise, the distinction between morality and legality demands that we maintain a center. Keep our Constitution out of the bedroom and the fucking board room out of our legislature, and we'll find ways to successfully coexist together. May we never attempt evangelical democracy again. The better solution for the illegal weed problem was legalizing that former sin. Amen, again!

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #CHope