THEY GOT THEIRS -- DON'T WORRY ABOUT YOURS.

Today’s Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie was inspired by some bullshit, of a sort you may have also been seeing, where some very serious commentators explain that the overturn of Roe v Wade and the end of a presumed Constitutional right to self-determination/control of one’s own body is nbd actually and you libtards are just being dramatic. 

This line of BS is most evident among rightwingers who, no shock, are frightened by the strong negative reaction to the draft ruling and worry that it will affect the midterms. Ham-faced pundit Erick Erickson, for example, has been swearing up and down, in such fragments of his newsletter that I can read without giving him the encouragement of payment, that no one cares about this silly old abortion thing (“abortion does nothing to help an economy that is stalling and on the verge of a recession”) -- but he keeps repeating it, more like a mantra than analysis; his recent titles have been “Abortion Meltdown,” “Hysteria Rules the Day,” and (I’m not making this up) “Roe v Wade Ending Really Won't Change Anything. That's Reality, Not Downplaying Dobbs.”  

Erickson is as close to someone just posting the talking points (under the thinnest palimpsest of the shittiest prose) as you can get, so clearly the idea is that the result conservatives have spent decades screaming and salivating for is a matter of no real importance to them (though they usually manage to sneak in somewhere that they are of course happy for the “pre-borns”) and that opposing the upending of this heretofore Constitutionally-protected right is some sort of pique or mania.

This talking point went meta today with the Washington Times headline, “Not there yet: Pro-lifers subdued despite promise of biggest victory in movement’s history.” Reporter Valerie Richardson features anecdotes that suggest the anti-abortion movement is subdued because they have not finished God's work -- for example, in some states and for the moment women will not be forced to bear their rapists’ children. But the obvious intended effect is to back up the Republicans’ “the real outrage is the leak” misdirection -- to make it look as if what is actually happening is not happening.  

But my real inspirators, referenced in the graphic, are Orin Kerr and Megan McArdle, whose glibertarian hand-waving is as annoying as it is expected. The only difference is it usually takes a while for their bullshit to be proven bullshit; in this case, the very horrors they tell us not to worry about -- abortion criminalized in blue states via a national ban, re-criminalization of gay marriage and other rights -- are already being advanced by prominent conservatives who, despite the propaganda to the contrary, are not subdued but emboldened to further immiserate the people they despise. (Which is most of us, BTW.)