Moore v. Harper
Political Laughter, Spiritual Laughter
We know what this Supreme Court is capable of.
U.S. democracy such as it is is on the ballot and on the docket.
What to watch and worry about: Moore v. Harper,1 a case - to be heard this term, beginning in October, for decision next summer - which certainly can entrench partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression into permanent disbalances, and lead to the establishment of one party rule in multiple red states. Many commentators go further and suggest a ruling in favor of the petitioner can give the legal rationale and framework for Big Lie election deniers, so that lawsuits similar to those that were thrown out of court 63 times following the 2020 election could be taken seriously in 2024.
The courts cannot be counted on to be the saving branch of government as they were when Trump lost so factually, unmistakably, in what his own Department of Homeland Security verified as the most secure election in American history.
Furthermore, the November 8th midterm elections confront us with MAGA Republican politicians who, despite all evidence, agitate on the idea that the 2020 election is illegitimate; these people can be expected to attempt to control or disrupt the outcome in 2024. According to recent analyses from FiveThirtyEight, in the House roughly 118 election deniers and eight election doubters have a 95% or greater chance of winning, along with other deniers who are running competitive campaigns; in the Senate three election deniers are likely to join seven senators not up for reelection who on January 6th, 2021 objected to the certification of the 2020 election, with a few others also competitive; in races for governor, at least two election deniers and three election doubters are predicted to win; also in the states, seven deniers are running for secretary of state. A secretary of state, as election administration overseer, could refuse to certify an election and a governor could submit his or her own slate of electors by executive order and then MAGA representatives and senators could decide to count those electors’ votes. (Please see FiveThirtyEight, Election Deniers on the Ballot This Fall). A drastic ruling by SCOTUS in favor of the “Independent State Legislature Doctrine” as sophistically promulgated by the petitioners in Moore v. Harper would give a pretext of legality for such maneuvers.
It’s all lining up.
Power grab, one party rule, judicial coup, overturned election results.
It’s utterly nuts, that this could be our reality - crazy, mad, “Buggo!,” to quote the Batman: The Killing Joke comic book, and to consider as well “what any sane man would do in appalling circumstances -” Just that this is an approaching possibility, a threat, just that there is no assurance of integrity in the institution of the Supreme Court thanks to its extreme partisan justices…
You could go mad laughing…
Or, die laughing.
Remember #7 and #6 in my Top Ten list of real people who succumbed to lethal mirth: King Nanda Bayin’s and Sir Thomas Urquhart’s deaths-by-laughter were particularly politics-inflected.
For each of these two vignettes, I tried to understand the trigger, get into the psychology of what set them off, strike home to the nature of their laughter to end all laughs: irony, indeed, held sway, to a fateful extent - not merely fatal, but fateful, and fate-informed, their laughter contained in it revelation and release, an understanding of their own failures, somehow an embrace of destiny, powerlessness accepted and roared at with robustious leonine smack.
No wonder we feel powerless, now, in the face of such anti-democratic persistence. Facts seem to have no effect and we’re sucked into a whirlpool of lies. Interpersonally, I used to say, if you can’t change something, you can always complain about it. That was a joke. Better yet, and to the joke - to the killing joke, of course - if you can’t change something, you can always laugh about it. In the laughter, affirmation. In the laughter, overcoming. When there’s nothing left to do, nothing else to do, when you have nothing left: there’s release, and thus newfound freedom. Laughter unto tears is release. Truly, a kind of liberation. Laughter unto death is a transcendent laugh.
The threat is real. Yet, it isn’t over - far from it. Action can be taken. There is more to do, there is more that can be done. In last-gasp laughter of release, we access the openness of the unknown, of the present, of the future. There are many means to access this oppenness. Openness of the Creative Path
The political process remains a channel for hope and effort. As the midterms approach, systems are still intact: tested, threatened, but intact - for now. Vote like your rights (what’s left of them) and the strength of our institutions depend upon it: they do.
Always, there’s a call to go deeper. To reach further into one’s determination and sense of purpose. Political wins are available, near term - and overall for a vision of what kind of society we will or will not accept. Transformation is the rule. No matter the circumstances, in confrontation with our own overwhelm, not only artists and writers, creative thinkers, but each of us - for effective action-taking - can treat ourselves as creative repurposers of our lives.
As Martin Atkins, a drummer who worked with Killing Joke the band (also with PIL and NIN), opens most of his tweets these days: “Get the fuck out of bed!” Yeah, democracy won’t save itself.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pick up the slapstick and, with all due merriment, clack upside the faces and asses of those graceless MAGA clowns who’ve already lost all dignity, their polka-dotted pants dropping to the floor as they show themselves unworthy of their high positions as legislators and judges. Intrinsically, they’ll forever be cloddish, laughable, and - wrong.
Spiritual Operation/Performance Exercise
Performance, when in honest devotion to source expression, is spiritual, ritualistic.
The following can be done as an operation or as an exercise; in either case, the thrust of found emotion entwines earnestness with performativity. Like a prayer, you can practice it in solitude; like a rehearsal, you do not need an audience, and yet, observant with and towards the fullness of the space surrounding you - of the energies of the present - of presence - the performance/operation (ritual) counts in and of and for itself.
I’ve experimented with this quite a bit in working on The Killing Joke - alone and in chorus, in the writing and in formal presentations or casual get-togethers, for readings, performances, and seminars connected with the work.
There is a way you can laugh that sounds like crying and there is a way you can cry that sounds like laughing. Try it out loud. Really start or fake a laugh, and then make it sound like crying. It’ll take some getting over inhibition. Laugh, and find it in your throat and belly and voice - your open mouth, your smiling cheeks - the sound of crying. Then flip this, flip-flop, somersault: really start or fake a cry, and then make it sound like laughing. Cry, and find it, from your squeezed eyes, scrunched up face - in your throat and voice and belly - the sound of laughing.
For each side, be sure it is what it is: the laugh is really a laugh, even as it sounds like crying; the cry is really a cry, even as it sound like laughing. Give each rendering at least a full minute to expand into its actual feeling-action. Alone, aloud - you might scare yourself. But that’s okay.
Finally, here’s another way into laughing and crying, laughing and dying. This, from a passage in my manuscript of The Killing Joke.
mystic, another poetry another culture another age
Rumi’s “die laughing” channels a different significance
the real Sufis laugh at death, in death – wake up laughing from death. Rumi in general says, “No one can tell if I’m weeping or laughing…” laugh and cry, laugh and die, finding that voice, your own laugh-cry, unique how you croak
laugh until you croak, croak until you laugh Neon Zee who dat
in the Rumi poem titled, translated: “Dying, Laughing”
the lover gives up merely outward acts of love for the beloved until he falls back onto the ground and gives it all up
and dies,
dies laughing
- out of love, this laughter “his freedom,/and his gift to the eternal”:
“He opened like a rose.”
Yours, in laughing/crying gratitude for openness
Magus
Moore v. Harper, Explained, Brennan Center for Justice - for one explainer on the case. There are many.
Laughing at them pisses them off, and it makes me less anxious. It's a win-win!