In the discourse among citizens, abortion is nearly an undebatable issue. It’s a hill to die on, where opposing views argue across each other about whose values are more important: bodily autonomy, or fetal life. These sides have moved further away from each other. When I was first of an age to even consider the ramifications of abortion, I commonly heard phrases like “pro-life with exceptions.” With the impending overturn of Roe v. Wade, it seems the anti-abortion crowd is taking the ball and sprinting the other way. Whatever common ground existed has rapidly evaporated.
This is indicative of the broader problem that the Republican party has used abortion as a MacGuffin to expand their power. While I’m sure there are a handful of conservative politicians who specifically believe that abortion is wrong, even they likely recognize it as a particularly useful tool to hold their positions. It slides right in alongside the other tools of conservative fear like immigration, LGTBQ+ rights, and election fraud. They take these elements of fear, and deftly1Read: dishonestly. turn them into mechanisms of power.
During the course of drafting this post, several high-profile school shootings have occurred. These tragedies once again are bringing gun control (and Republican talking points to obfuscate its need) back to the forefront. Why be so concerned with kids—they don’t have rights—when red-blooded white Americans may have their guns taken away from them? It’s another perfect example of how a small group of people is tasking themselves with manipulating, twisting, and redirecting fear to anything they can control.
Writing about this phenomenon of fear being brewed into sources of power is increasingly difficult. I have but a scattering of inadequate thoughts, with a theme I can only begin to broach by examining a series of truly horrifying, and frankly ridiculous, situations in the world. Beyond that, I’m finishing this post weeks after I began, writing to a de facto void of the internet. Yet that despair and sense of overwhelm is precisely the place certain actors are trying to get me to, and what I need to fight against.
- 1Read: dishonestly.