Scalia

TL;DR Your reaction was bad, and you ought to feel badly about it, or at least consider what it meant.

As I'm sure we all remember, back in mid-February we lost an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by the name of Antonin Scalia. For the sake of clarity, he was indeed a Justice of the Supreme Court, and he is indeed still dead (I checked to be sure). I've had this knocking around in the empty caverns of my mind for a while now, but I thought I'd let the furor settle down before I shouted into the vacuum.

Now, Scalia wasn't a popular justice, and for once in my life I actually agree with the overwhelming opinion of my age bracket. There are very few people I politically disagree with more strongly than Justice Scalia; he was a strict Constitutional originalist and a statutory textualist, which I am not. He was staunchly conservative, which I am not, and he was pretty down on affirmative action, which I have a less strictly defined opinion about. (I was going to say "a less black-and-white opinion," and then I realized that had a meaning I didn't want it to.) The fact that Justice Scalia was a devout Roman Catholic and I am a Berkeley Protestant is an irony of which I am aware, but not one that factored greatly into my opinion of him, for the record.

Furthermore, Justice Scalia was simply an unpleasant person, in my opinion. His written dissents are generally opposed to my own views on almost every issue, and they're all about fifteen or so pages too long and impassioned. I don't recall the specific cases because my brain is made of gelatin, but I remember my outrage when Justice Scalia issued statements pertaining to... well, anything, really. Be it women's rights, LGBT rights, detainee rights, or religion, I as a privileged Millennial liberal would find Scalia's dissents and statements uniformly distasteful.

All that established in detail, the obvious question is: how did I feel when I heard that Scalia had died?

For once in my life, I actually remember the situation very clearly. It was a Monday when I heard, and I was home between class and my afternoon lab, in pursuit of lunch, and I flipped through the Facebook to discover: "huh, Scalia's dead. I wonder who the next justice will be; we haven't had to replace him since Reagan." Not exactly an overwhelming response either way, I know, but I'm a pretty cold bastard on Mondays and when I'm hungry, and suffice it to say I was not significantly perturbed by Scalia's demise, as awful as that sounds.

I paid attention for the next few days, however, and something arose from the spark of Scalia's death that did perturb me. As news of Scalia's death spread, more and more people on social media (that invulnerable bastion of truth and wisdom) shared their responses to and opinions on the matter.

To put it succinctly, the wave of expression in response to Scalia's death, specifically from young liberal people like myself, was entirely unacceptable. I hesitate to use the word "barbarism" because I got censured by several anthropologists about it recently, but know that it comes to mind when I read your posts about the matter, young Millennials.

My lab section that afternoon was three hours long, and after that fairly short span of time, I returned home to discover an absolute tidal wave of jubilation breaking over social media. "Scalia is dead! Feminism triumphs!" was one thread of sentiment, and another was "Freedom triumphs!" Within hours of the news, I remember an Onion article satirizing the dead justice, written about a scenario in which American women were allowed to rule about whether the man's last wishes were carried out, because ruling about what people can do with their bodies, har har har.

I'm absolutely the last person to eulogize Scalia, but this is bullshit, and there's simply no other word for it. Whatever you thought about him, Scalia was a high ranker in our judicial system, and an immensely educated and experienced person. Was he an obviously sour individual who wrote dissents using terms like "argle-bargle" and "jiggery-pokery?" Absolutely, but independently of any of his virtues or failings, Scalia was indeed a person, and this sort of rejoicing over the death of a person is wrong.

First of all, simply speaking, the guy is dead, and death is an unfortunate side effect of life. Scalia, like many people, left behind a bereaved wife and nine (nine!) children, who I am certain do not share your jubilant sentiments about his passage from this world. Put yourself in this situation: if you blew a blood vessel in your brain and died suddenly, tonight, would you want the neighbors holding a gala the next day because they'll finally be able to encroach on your parking space without consequence? Or, for me, if everyone's aggressive boyfriend (see previous posts) just suddenly burst into flames, would you see me out blowing a vuvuzela at their funeral while their family grieved? No, I think we'd all agree that either of these is at best a tacky, and at worst an inhumanly cruel thing to do.

Secondly, we as liberals are constantly criticizing more right-wing officials (and people in general) for this sort of merciless nonsense. What's your opinion of the Westboro Baptists who picket soldiers' funerals and shout at the grieving family that the fallen veteran is going to hell, young Millennials? What do you think about the cold indifference we claim conservatives have to the plight of Syrian refugees fleeing the brutality of civil war and discord? Does that ruthless "us against them" attitude seem at all familiar, now that you think about it?

Thirdly, Scalia himself wasn't even the appropriate target for your vitriol, speaking really frankly. The comments he made that elicited all our fury were dissents written on cases he lost, where our more liberal/progressive/Berkeley viewpoints prevailed. Scalia may have been a sore loser, but a sour winner he was not, for the most part. The anger you feel at beliefs like Scalia's, if it belongs anywhere, belongs in letters to your representatives in Congress, or to your Senators, or to any of the other cogs in the great American machine that creates and propagates the problems we have as a society, or in discussion boards and at rallies where we try to change those beliefs for the advancement and betterment of our culture and country, not chorused with manic glee when we hear of the death of a largely unimportant player before his body has even cooled off.

Finally, I'll leave you with this. This sort of gloating at the death of a political opponent, aside from being morally unconscionable, misdirected, and generally repulsive, is a terribly Donald Trump thing to do.

As always, pass this on to people you think might enjoy it or benefit from it, or send me death threats as you think best. I hope you enjoyed the read, even though it's sorta lengthy, and I promise they won't all be this angry. :P