Peace and justice files

At the very last minute

By SKIP MENDLER
Posted 6/28/22

I am writing this column, my friends, at the very last minute.

I’m right up against deadline—it’s late on Friday, June 24, 2022, about 11 in the evening, moving quickly towards …

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Peace and justice files

At the very last minute

Posted

I am writing this column, my friends, at the very last minute.

I’m right up against deadline—it’s late on Friday, June 24, 2022, about 11 in the evening, moving quickly towards midnight. Many things have been going on in my personal life these last few weeks, enough to keep me more than busy, and other things like recent goings-on in the great wide world have had to be pushed aside. I suspect the same has been true for many of you.

That kinda ended today, I’m afraid.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case, effectively undoing the guarantees of Roe v. Wade, has electrified and/or enraged everyone I know. I fear it has also severed, once and for all, one of the few remaining threads that have been holding this so-called “nation” together.

Just as the planets are lining up in an unusual conjunction this evening, we see multiple challenges all rising at once, challenges to our entire conception of how our world functions. These issues interconnect and reinforce each other, from Ukraine to Uvalde, rising temperatures to rising prices. We see breakdowns not only in supply chains, but in the very process of communication itself. We no longer seem to be speaking the same language, or even inhabiting the same world.

The January 6 hearings have been slowly but steadily making the case that our government was run for four years by a psychotic megalomaniac, and apparently he’s not finished with us yet.

It may indeed be the last minute—but the last minute for what?

In this mind-boggling combination of threats and crises, some see the looming end of our democracy, our prosperity, and our security—indeed, of our country itself. They see a dystopian future ahead, repressive and authoritarian, run by fascists and autocrats for the benefit of billionaires. They see a return to a racist, misogynistic and xenophobic past. They fear that the social progress we have made in so many areas since World War II (woefully insufficient though it has been) might be completely undone.

I don’t agree.

I think that what we are seeing is in fact the last throes of a social order that has outlived its usefulness, one based on outmoded notions of dominance and superiority. This old hierarchical order will try everything in its power to remain in place, but it will ultimately prove to be too rigid.

There’s no doubt that we are in for an extremely unstable, perhaps even violent, period between now and say, 2030. It may well turn out that some of our present political, economic and social arrangements cannot adapt. Fine: we can create new ones. (I’ve already started: see skipmendler.wordpress.com/newpreamble.)

This is the last minute—but it’s the last minute for fear and inaction. It’s the last minute for cowing before  intimidation. It’s the last minute for accepting anything less than everything we want.

It’s 11:59 p.m. Let’s begin.

deadline, Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, January 6, violence, fear, structure

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