There are a lot of theories of just what the fuck it is we do now. A lot of them are on twitter, which of course means we should automatically suspect that they are poorly thought out, to be polite about it. Some theories are paywalled in non-twitter places, which doesn't automatically make them better, but this is America. The more you pay for something, it follows that it's probably better. Anyone who has ever tried to spread the cheapest peanut butter across the cheapest bread will confirm this.
The weird thing is that we really aren't in "now" as yet, since all we have so far is a leaked draft of a Supreme Court ruling in a case related to abortion that hasn't been promulgated or settled yet, but there's no reason to assume that between now-now and the going-to-be-now that there will be any kind of material change. It's a culmination of a vicious plan by sanctimonious better-knowers fretting in public about the waning dominance of phallus, the center-support holding up the Great Big Tent of Civilization since at least the Egyptians were building dick-statues to themselves. And yet nobody really in 8,000 years has seemed interested in the idea that a penis tent is maybe not the best, most durable metaphorical structure to try to house a society in the first place. But it doesn't matter how many winds blow it over or how many times it catches fire and nearly kills everyone inside, we build it again with a fragile and wearying shaft in the middle, ultimately unequal to the task, and await the next suffocation event.
So we're in the lulling refractory, for a few months anyway until the ruling becomes a Ruling. Just enough time for the shock to harden to despair and then... what? Something else I suppose, as despair is inherently unwelcoming and won't hold us for long. The next logical step is rage-rage-rage. The most proactive among us are skipping straight there immediately, which feels efficient if nothing else.
I only got through the first few pages of the text of the draft ruling itself, and I can confirm it is infuriating and stupid, ahistorical and blatantly ideological. It was a draft of a thing a specific group of Americans have been clearing their throats, waiting for the opportunity to say for basically my entire life, without much regard really to the question(s) before them, like a coworker who is looking for any opportunity to slip in more information about their trip to an ayahuasca retreat in Peru.
The Roe ruling came down the year before I was born, so technically I could have been legally aborted in the U.S. I suppose "pro-life" people might try to pin me down and say "See? Aren't you glad your mother chose to carry you to term? What if you had been aborted?" and, of course, I'm happy to be alive rather than the alternative, even if part of that life is spent in this hypothetical conversation with a "pro-life" person. There are only so many times you can remind them that you're also glad you weren't murdered in a mass-shooting incident when you were in middle school, but you don't see them running out to do anything about that.
To the original question, I don't know what to do now. Keep voting, I guess, but when has that felt less useful? Democrats currently control both houses of Congress and the presidency, but that's afforded us what exactly? Democratic leadership remains blinded to anything but high-effort/low-reward tactical posturing. The divisions are so entrenched, nothing ever moves. Two branches of government nullify themselves and each other and all of a sudden the judiciary is out there plugging up the created vacuum, like six GI Joe figures in a Hoover, but instead of guns, they're armed with misogyny and gloating.
My first action tonight will be to go out with my boys to go see the new Doctor Strange, which sounds as effective as anything at the moment. But that's the despair part talking. I assume I'll get to the rage, probably while I'm waiting to figure out if there's a post-credits scene.
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