When word of Justice Scalia’s death reached me, I was deep in rehearsals on a play about the history of Asian immigrants in the Bay Area. As one of the cast members announced it during a break, we all stood there in stunned silence. It was an unreal moment. Time stopped dead in its tracks.
I always feel a little uncomfortable making light of the dead, but I couldn’t help but titter when I found a Facebook post with a picture of the late Supreme Court Justice with the caption “Antonin Scalia killed by Gay Marriage.” Another Facebook post by a friend of mine chimed “Ding dong the witch is dead,” confusing every last one of our international friends; but we, his American colleagues, knew exactly who he was talking about.
Appointed by President Reagan in 1986, Antonin Scalia was an arch conservative fixture, a bristly thorn in our progressive backside for 30 years. Yes. Thirty years. Tempered by the more moderate and liberal justices on the bench at the beginning of his term, Scalia was a bit of a throwback, a big departure from the liberal Warren court.
He provided florid entertainment in his rigid definition of case law, always taking the conservative side. Yet we saw in our peripheral vision, with the aging and retirements of the more moderate and liberal members of the court, that the SCOTUS was starting to list center-right even back then.
It’s like how, if you have a mole on your skin, you tend to watch — at the advice of your physician — to see how it develops. The slow evolution of the court was a mole that needed watching. In 2000, the alarm was raised when the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision handed the Presidency to George W. Bush.
The listing of the boat was no longer subtle or slow, but completely turned around. We were definitely veering right. Roughly halfway into Scalia’s tenure in the Court, he, Justice Clarence Thomas and his fellow justices stretched the law beyond its limits, subverting the will of the electorate. We know what happened next. The appointment of conservative John Roberts by President Bush completed the hold of power by conservatives in Washington. The right-wing revolution started by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s was complete.
Which brings us to today, 16 years later; a two-term Democratic President is in his last year in office. The Democratic Party — a minority now in the House and Senate — is energized by young people who have grown up in a world where the conservative movement has tried to wrest control their lives, bodies and livelihoods. We are at a tipping point, with young adults pushing to move the country left. In the meantime, Republicans are pushing to go over the cliff.
Looking at the history between 1986 (the year Antonin Scalia was appointed) to 2016 (the year he died), we’re at the apex of a pendulum’s movement. Everything’s at its most extreme. The only way we’re going is an immediate and clearly discernible reaction — a long time coming — and likely a complete departure from what was coming at us back in the 1980s. Just as how what we encountered in the 1980s was a reaction to what happened in the late 1950s and ’60s, and so on and so on.
So explains that moment of stunned silence and disbelief with the news of Scalia’s passing at rehearsal Saturday. It was a minute of time standing still for all of us old enough to remember the first shock, followed by more and more of the rising conservative movement — the Reagan Revolution — that brought us to this point in time.
Justice Antonin Scalia was the arbiter of that movement and its culture. Scalia tipped the scales his own way, always sliding towards the right, no matter how time and even his fellow conservative justices leaned in towards the middle. But that is how scales should work, be it the scales of justice or the large cosmological scales that hold our collective destinies.
I have to continue reminding myself that, as with the I Ching, every action instigates reaction. Moment to moment, movement to movement. Every obstruction meets with the water of emotions reacting against it, flowing through and around it, wearing out the block.
Looking at it in that way, Antonin Scalia — the thorn in our liberal behinds — gave us reason to be relentless in pursuit of bringing justice back in balance. We had to work hard to perfect our arguments to overcome Scalia’s judicial interpretation. He was a hard-edged rock, a justice whose constant conservative tipping of the scales gave us impetus to fight harder for gay marriage and for women’s reproductive freedom.
He was an antagonist we had to come to respect no matter how much we disagreed with him. Since SCOTUS appointments are lifetime positions, we had no choice. In his role he strengthened our resolve, giving us liberals and progressives the muscle to push back. So as much as I have disagreed with him, today I tip my hat to the adversary who made us better fighters in the end.
Thanks very much, Fe, for giving a crucial historical perspective to Scalia’s career, and what it actually meant for progressives in the States. I feel as if I understand much more now, thanks to you and Jude.
Great point about spurring us on, Fe, and an important perspective in terms of the larger picture. If we needed to understand that ANY human death diminishes us within that tick/tock of the pendulum, discovering that (admirable and iconic lefty) Ruth Bader Ginsberg has lost a ‘best friend’ should make a point about working within our differences while keeping our humanity. There ARE people who still attempt to do that, a fine art we need to resurrect and practice, me’thinks.
Thanks for your thoughtful piece on Scalia Fe, he was an enigma to all but his closest relationships. I suppose we will never know the man under his persona. As a child growing up during the World War II era a boy had to be macho to be respected. I’m guessing he must have learned quickly that to be sympathetic (a Pisces quality) could be misconstrued.
A 30 year Saturn cycle in service to one’s country is nothing to sneeze at. In 1986 transiting Jupiter in Pisces would have passed over his Saturn (13+ Pisces) and Sun (21+ Pisces). When he died transiting Saturn had just squared his natal Saturn and transiting Jupiter had just squared his natal Jupiter at 23+ Sagittarius. He lived for the law as he saw it and died at a time when astrological symbolism for law and order became challenging for him. Perhaps he didn’t go to Texas for hunting but rather to lay down and resist no more. Would make a great movie wouldn’t it?
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True, it does take the friction of gritty sand to make a pearl, but after his hunting trips with Cheney, my first reaction to his death was, “Ding, dong…”. Thanks for helping me gain perspective and consider his finer points as I hold on to my humanity.