Abridge Too Far

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

(First Amendment to the United States Constitution)

This week, a federal judge here in Alaska ruled that Governor Dunleavy violated my free speech rights under the state and federal constitutions, and also breached Alaska employment law, when he fired me for my personal blog and social media posts criticizing President Trump. 

The story was reported on extensively in local media and picked up nationally and internationally. The 39-page order from district court judge John Sedwick can be found here, for those inclined to dive into the weeds of First Amendment employment law.

Otherwise, the basic gist is this: 

From 2006 to 2018, I was a good lawyer and valued longtime employee of the Alaska Attorney General's Office. I had no problems at work---other than the fact that I was unwilling to stop complaining about Trump on the internet. 

I started this parenting and lifestyle blog in 2014, but in 2015, I began to recognize the existential threat Trump posed—and still poses—to democracy, and felt compelled to keep calling it out. I understood the risks to my personal and professional life that this involved, but knowing I was within my legal rights, I naively assumed that the government would honor them. (Ironic, I know). 

Regardless, I felt congenitally incapable of shutting up, and was unable to stop myself from identifying daily the havoc Trump was wreaking. As the main income-earner in my four-person family and the only one with health insurance, it was a big gamble.

Fast forward to December 3, 2018, when Trumpian acolyte Mike Dunleavy took office as Alaska's 12th governor, and fired me within 20 minutes of being sworn in. 

My termination came on the heels of a forced resignation letter that Dunleavy's Chief of Staff, a Karl Rove-type operator named Tuckerman Babcock, had demanded from me and hundreds of other non-unionized state employees. This was an unprecedented, norm-shattering flex by an incoming administration. I immediately contacted the ACLU, which filed a lawsuit on my behalf the next month. The ACLU also brought a companion case for two state psychiatrists who refused to submit their resignations at all.

This past Thursday, Judge Sedwick, who was appointed by George Bush, issued a long order in my case making a few important findings under complicated U.S. Supreme Court precedent governing public employees' free speech rights. (The order came three months after a ruling in the psychiatrists' case from the same judge that the resignation demands were an unlawful "patronage scheme" or loyalty pledge and therefore inherently unconstitutional).

Because I was not in a union, I lacked automatic constitutional protections in my job. So the question became whether I could be fired for political (associational and free speech) reasons. The answer would be yes, if I were a "policymaker" as that term is defined in this line of cases. But I was not a policymaker, so the question next became whether the government could prove that my personal speech caused legitimate and sufficient “workplace disruption” to refute the presumption that Dunleavy and Babcock fired me because they disagreed with my views. 

They couldn't show that. And because they couldn't, the judge concluded I had been unconstitutionally fired. And because the state had fired me unconstitutionally, it acted in bad faith, giving rise to money damages under my claim for a breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing in Alaska employment law. So the state violated state law as well. 

Judge Sedwick recognized that had the state gone about my termination differently, they could reasonably have taken "adverse employment action" against me for my blogging. But given the evidence in the case, this is a bit like saying to a burglar that had he not broken into a house and stolen things, he wouldn't have been arrested for burglary. 

The other interesting legal angle here, in both cases, was the judge's analysis of the qualified immunity doctrine. 

Qualified immunity is what protects government employees from personal liability in their work. In practice it functions more like absolute immunity, because it's very hard to lose. You have to do something really bad and pretty much knowingly bonkers. 

In the psychiatrists' case, Judge Sedwick found that the resignation scheme was bad enough to strip Dunleavy and Babcock of qualified immunity and make them personally liable for their conduct. Not so in my case, which didn't surprise me. As I said, it's very rare for a defendant to lose qualified immunity, and the government has an interest in a robust qualified immunity doctrine; otherwise no one would ever risk working for the government.

Judge Sedwick's order in my case resolved (at least at the trial court level) what's called the "merits" phase of the lawsuit, and the next phase is damages. The constitutional violations entitle me to injunctive and declaratory (non-monetary relief), and the state law claims entitle me to monetary damages. I'm really not sure where that phase will go--that's very much to be decided, as is the state's appetite for an appeal.

In any event, I've now had some time to process the psychological and emotional toll of this "victory." 

I put victory in scare quotes because I'm not sitting here rejoicing. I’m not running around the bases after a walk-off grand slam or dining out on the press coverage. Ok, fine, I am dining out on the press coverage.

But I'm not happy. Far from it. It took three years and ten days to make one single point about free speech. It took three years and ten days to get a federal judge to say yes, this was illegal, and yes, it was unconstitutional.

As a government lawyer myself, I’ve always known that democracy is fragile, justice is glacial, and the constitution is not a self-executing document. In other words, it means nothing if it's not enforced. The problem is, it's hard and expensive to enforce, and there isn't much incentive to do so. 

Being a litigant is time-consuming, brutal, and humiliating. By the time the average citizen catches up with governmental misconduct, the bad actors have collected its spoils, are long gone, and have paid off the victim with public money. What do they care? Nothing but media shaming and excoriation and the occasional financial penalty seems to make even a dent.

But my hope is that this case sends a few messages beyond "Trump-bashing lawyer mostly wins free speech suit," as a reporter at Bloomberg Business News so wryly and accurately put it. And while it's funny that my characterization of Trump as a "fascist cantaloupe" and "Edward Cheeto-Hands" is now forever enshrined in the federal jurisprudential canon, it's not the most important thing.

I hope this case makes future administrations think twice before demanding that everyone pledge loyalty to them or relinquish their jobs or even careers.

I hope it gives non-unionized state employees in Alaska some measure of protection in their jobs, and some assurances that they do not all unequivocally check their constitutional rights at the door just because they work for the state. 

I hope it encourages good citizens to start and continue careers in government. Most of all, I hope it encourages people to continue to speak up and push back against totalitarianism, autocracy, and erosion of the rule of law, because as every scholar of authoritarianism knows, your voice is the only weapon you have in that battle.

I was in a rare and unique position to do something grandiose to prove a point. I was a practicing government lawyer and knew my rights. I had a blog with a good following and was self-destructive enough to use it to make what I thought were important observations about a very dangerous situation. And the people in power were reckless and arrogant enough to approach my firing in the perfect way to subject them to maximum liability. 

In other words, the whole thing was teed up for a great free speech case.

But it came at a huge personal cost. I lost friends and colleagues. I lost what little faith I'd had in systems and structures of employment, democracy, and personal loyalty. My mental health was (and remains) shaky. I absorbed lots of online vitriol, most of which I tried—often unsuccessfully—to ignore. For three years, ten days, and counting, I’ve felt afraid, ashamed, and very much alone. 

People have been thanking me for fighting the good fight and for sticking my neck out and standing up to bullies. I didn't do it because I wanted to. I did it because I could, and because I had to. I'd do it again in a minute.

45 Things I’ve Learned by 45

I’m turning 45 this year and here are 45 things I’ve learned.

1. Time is your most precious asset and only you can control how you choose to spend it.
2. What other people think of you is none of your business.
3. There is real power in simply ignoring and disengaging from negativity.
4. Adult friendships should build you up and enhance your life, not drain you of energy. 
5. There are more great relationships out there than there is time for.
6. Timing is everything.
7. No job is worth enduring abuse or a loss of principles.
8. You can justify anything, including abuse, using mental gymnastics.
9. We tell ourselves lies to avoid difficult changes.
10. Your career is not your identity. 
11. Your kids are not your identity.
12. You can’t change who your kids are-all you can do is help them grow up to be the best possible versions of themselves. 
13. Reading a book is always a great escape.
14. Fresh air and exercise are great for mental health, but so is Prozac.
15. It’s ok to be anxious and depressed. 
16. There is no such thing as “normal.”
17. Other peoples’ reactions and responses to you are not your problem.
18. You can’t rescue someone from themselves. 
19. You can’t go back and fix someone else’s trauma.
20. You can’t go back and fix your own trauma, but you can learn and change from it.
21. Moments of quiet solitude are crucial.
22. The need for external validation is a bottomless pit to be avoided at all costs. 
23. Cutting other people down diminishes you.
24. Tiny, localized acts of random kindness can make the biggest difference. 
25. Lower your expectations of other people and you might be pleasantly surprised. 
26. “What if” thinking is a huge barrier to change.
27. You don’t owe anyone an immediate response to anything.
28. A work emergency is very rarely an actual emergency, unless you’re working in a literal  emergency room.
29. Human history has always been violent, scary, and unpredictable— it isn’t just now.
30. Art and music are always worthwhile.
31. A comfortable mattress will automatically and instantly improve 1/3 of your life.
32. The first rule of burning down the patriarchy is to never use other women for kindling. 
33. Always stand up to bullies.
34. When someone describes a lived experience to you, believe them.
35. Self care is not selfish.
36. Empathy is a good quality to cultivate. 
37. You can’t solve anyone else’s character deficits.
38. People are driven by unseen and highly individualized forces that not even they understand.
39. Your first impression of a situation isn’t always right: Always question your assumptions. 
40. Travel is a great reset for new perspective.
41. A screenshot is forever. 
42. Get off your phone when you’re talking to someone in person.
43. Never run after a bus, a romance, or a job because there will always be another. 
44. No one person can be all things to you: family, partners, and friends can only fill certain and specific roles in your life at certain times.
45. Change is the scariest thing in the world but that’s where the best growth happens.

And I Turned Out Fine

This is not an original idea. (I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those). But I read it somewhere in the abyss of the internet and wish I could credit the author. The gist is this: if you were treated badly as a young person but “turned out fine” and on that logic justify treating other people like shit, you did not in fact “turn out fine.”

I guess this is called “lateral violence,” which is some 2021 term for professional hazing I suppose—the experience of being a young professional woman who is abused or mistreated by other women at work. 

I am 44 years old. This mostly happened in my 20s with early jobs, before I went to law school, but it happened in more subtle and long-lasting ways after that as well. 

My shift supervisor at my first food service job screamed and yelled at us constantly for every infraction and didn’t back down until we yelled back. 

My first boss in the New York City publishing industry made me cry that deep, shame-drenched cry in the bathroom every week—the one where you can’t catch your breath. 

The dean of my law school humiliated me by screaming at me in front of hundreds of students and faculty for trying to promote a pro bono graduation requirement at my law school. My first clinical law professor was a terrifying presence who excoriated us for our every tiny mistake. (Also shame cry on those).

A young mother who supervised me during an internship had an enormous temper tantrum at all the interns during trial preparation. 

My first real promotion as a lawyer had to be wrested from female management by pointing out that a man with the same level of experience as me was coming to the office—in my literal former position—at a full salary range higher than I had after five years. My favorite mentor whom I trusted and loved so much later abetted my illegal firing and shit-talked me in a deposition. 

All women. Is it their fault as individuals? Not really. They were just playing their part in a formidable system intentionally designed to cannibalize women.

This is not to say that I have not had some positive women mentorship experiences over the course of my work life, which started at age 17 and continues to this day. I certainly have, but they’re the exceptions that prove the rule. 

Now I mostly work alone. I don’t have any one person, much less layers of people standing sentinel over my professional progress, and that’s fine with me. But I do miss mentoring young women at work because it gave me the chance to rectify misery that I had experienced and that had hurt me so deeply. 

I think about my mother. 

Her childhood fucking sucked. She was an orphan by 11. She grew up in foster care. She went to medical school when there were only nine other women in her class of over 100. She has supervised residents ever since and always told me the same thing: 

Just because your life was hard doesn’t mean you should want other peoples’ lives to be hard. That makes zero sense. There is no value in that. It doesn’t fix what happened to you. It doesn’t change the past. It’s spiteful, vengeful, and petty. It doesn’t make the world better. In fact, it makes it worse. And when women do it to each other, the only people who benefit are the men around them. My mother is my lodestar for female mentorship.

Recently one of my former mentees got a big new job. She wasn’t the first and most certainly won’t be the last to get a bigger, more prestigious job than I could ever hope to have or want, and I couldn’t be happier for them. This time I almost cried when I found out, because I was thrilled for her and also because I knew I had an impact on her career and helped give her an extra boost of confidence now and then. I don’t think there’s anything particularly admirable or especially noble about that. It should be the default course of conduct and the norm. Women should support and uplift each other or else we will never make any progress at work or anywhere else.

We should normalize that. I haven’t always done it successfully, but I always try. If we can just do that—one tiny interaction at a time—we really will turn out fine. 

Practice Tips for New Lawyers

13 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT LEARN IN LAW SCHOOL

 

Whether you represent government clients or private clients, there are certain strategies to practicing law that you might not learn in law school. Understanding these and keeping them in the back of your mind will improve your practice anywhere. These are 13 things you might not learn in law school.

 

1.​Research creatively.

 

The foundation of any good attorney work product is thorough legal research. But good legal research involves more than just typing a bunch of search terms into Westlaw or Lexis, printing off cases and journal articles, and Blue Booking them to perfection. Yes, you need to do all of that. You need to look at every relevant case, and every case cited in those cases. But in doing that, you need to think carefully about the facts of each of those cases and how those facts differ in meaningful ways from the case you’re working on, including—and this is important—the procedural posture and context those cases were decided in. And often, you need to go beyond the case law. You might need to research legislative history by studying prior versions of legislation and legislative hearings. You might need to go into old files in your office that may have records you need. You might need to look at similar cases involving the same litigants that may not be reported on Westlaw or Lexis, or that only exist in a trial-level court file somewhere. You might need to delve into the commentary on the court rules or study the local rules of the court you’re in. You might need to go online to many other sources aside from Westlaw or Lexis. That’s researching creatively.

2.​Write like an advocate.

 

When you brief the court, you need to write like an advocate. Writing like an advocate does not mean ignoring the weaknesses or bad facts in your case. This is important-you can never get away from bad facts. They are what they are. But advocacy means underplaying or distinguishing those bad facts and weaknesses in favor of your case’s strengths. An advocacy brief is not a bench memo to a judge, a research memo to a senior attorney, or an advice memo to a client. It should not be neutral in tone or expose/attempt to reconcile every hole and problem in your case. Advocacy writing showcases the strengths of your case, and why you should win. Every time you write a paragraph in a brief to the court, whether it’s a minor motion or an appellate brief, read it back to yourself and ask yourself two questions: (1) “how doesthis paragraph advance my client’s interests?”; and (2) “will this paragraph give the judge a reason to rule my way?” If you can answer “yes” to those two questions, you are writing like an advocate.

 

3.​Think strategically.

 

Thinking strategically means taking the long view of your case. Being strategic doesn’t mean playing games or being conniving. It means taking a close look at the chessboard. Think about how each thing you do on a case may or may not yield a certain outcome down the line. If you are a visual learner, draw a decision tree of options and ways things could play out. Think about your theory of the case: what is the case about in one sentence? What does it all boil down to? What are you trying to accomplish or convince the judge of, other than that you should simply win? Even if you do win, what will be the final outcome for your client? A Pyrrhic victory is not always a good thing. Think broadly and strategically about your case—not just how to write the perfect sentence or achieve small victories along the way. Sometimes a small concession will yield a bigger victory down the line. Thinking strategically about your case in a broad sense will help you determine the smaller procedural steps you need to take to get to the best result.

 

4.​Know your enemy & know your audience.

 

Do opposition research. Opposing counsel is not your friend. The judge is not your friend. Read and find out everything you can about your opposing counsel and your judge, including what they have written and how they have behaved in other cases, so you know who you are dealing with and what you can expect. Talk to other people who have dealt with opposing counsel or who have appeared before the judge in your case. In a similar vein, the people you work with--your clients, colleagues,and superiors can be your friends—but they are your clients, colleagues, and superiors first. When you’re writing to these audiences, obviously you are not writing an advocacy piece the way you are when you write to the court, but you are always writing clearly, concisely, and professionally in service of your clients’ interests, and that brings me to the next point:

 

5.​Project confidence—not bravado.

 

There is a difference between confidence and bravado, and senior attorneys and clients can tell the difference. Confidence comes from having done your homework and preparation and being as sure as you can be of the answer.  If the answer isn’t clear, and it often isn’t, you can still be confident in even that conclusion. Bravado comes from being insecure and afraid and investing too much of your own ego in your practice. In addition to being transparent, indulging in bravado will cloud your judgment and prevent you from getting to the right answers to a legal problem. When delivering an answer to a legal problem to a client or senior attorney, or when arguing before the court, always project confidence, which means acting capable. But don’t pretend you know things you don’t know.  Don’t be afraid of simply saying some version of: “I don’t know the answer to that at the moment, but I am confident I can find it out, and I will get back to you ASAP.” Clients, senior attorneys, and judges will appreciate confident candor and a right answer later a lot more than they will appreciate bravado and a wrong answer now.

 

6.​Find a mentor, or ten.

 

There are people you will encounter in your career whom you admire and want to emulate, and who are good role models and mentors. I can rattle off about ten different people who have been mentors for me. Identify these people early on and cultivate relationships with them, if they are willing to reciprocate. Bounce ideas off of them. Run drafts of documents past them. Seek their professional advice whenever you can.

 

7.​Observe constantly—including yourself!

 

The reality is there are terrible lawyers and there are great lawyers, and there’s everything in between. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses as a lawyer. Observe as many lawyers as you can and get a sense of their style. Think about what they do that you want to emulate. What do they do that you want to avoid? Read as many motions and briefs as you can. Attend as many hearings, oral arguments, client meetings, moot courts, depositions, and trials as you can, so you can figure out mistakes you never want to make and things you always want to do. And you want to be observing yourself as well. For example, onething I always like to do is order the CD of oral argument from the court after I have an oral argument. Oral argument is probably one of the things I’m the least comfortable with, so I like to go back and listen to myself and the judge to improve my oral advocacy and see what worked and what didn’t.

 

8.​Ask questions.

 

Often a client or senior attorney will rattle off a list of demands and questions at a mile a minute. You will sit there scribbling away, and go back to your desk and realize you only wrote down three legible words of what they said. Don’t be afraid to go back and ask for clarification—multiple times if necessary. You will feel stupid doing this, but you shouldn’t. What’s stupid is to embark on a huge project not knowing what was asked of you. Make sure you have a good understanding of what is being asked of you and realize you may not gain that understanding during your first conversation on the topic. 

 

9.​Own your mistakes.

 

Everyone makes mistakes in practice. For example, you might send confidential discovery or an email to someone who shouldn’t have received it or you might forget a court deadline or a discovery deadline. If you make a mistake, admit it quickly and seek help fixing it if necessary. Don’t paper over mistakes or pretend they didn’t happen because you’re embarrassed or you think you’ll be able to hide it. Most of the time, you shouldn’t be embarrassed and you can’t hide it. Pretending otherwise only makes things worse. Practicing law isn’t brain surgery, and unless you’re a capital defender, no one is going to die because you made a mistake. (Even then, a mistake you make probably won’t kill your client). There are very few mistakes in this profession that can’t be fixed or remedied in some way or other. The best thing to do when you realize you’ve made a mistake is to acknowledge it quickly to the client, court, or senior attorney and take whatever steps you need to take to fix it.

 

10.​Cross-examine your client.

 

A big mistake many new lawyers make is to accept their clients’ version of reality at face value. Avoid this at all costs. Accepting your client’s narrative harms your case and it harms your client’s interests, because the things they omit and leave out can ambush you later. What you don’t find out now, your opposing counsel will find out later. You have to get a little bit adversarial with your clients sometimes. You have to “cross-examine” them and question their conduct and what they’ve done in a given situation. They will get defensive, but don’t let that stop you from getting to the real facts, not their editorialized version of the facts.

 

11.​Create a paper trail.

 

If you are in court, or anticipate you will be, always be thinking about the record in your case. E-mail and letters can be your friends. Memorialize conversations with opposing counsel in e-mail or a letter, even when doing so is not required by the civil rules. If appropriate, memorialize privileged conversations with clients and senior attorneys (and mark them privileged and confidential, of course) so everyone is clear on what advice was given and what course of action was decided upon. If an issue of professional ethics arises in a case, consult with bar counsel or ethics counsel and do a memo to your file that you did that, describing the ethical issue and the advice you received on how to resolve it.

 

12.​Don’t reinvent the wheel.

 

If you’re a new lawyer working on a problem, chances are you’re not the first person to confront that problem. Noone gives a new lawyer an issue of first impression and expects them to crack it straight out of the box. In addition to all the traditional research methods, there are short cuts you can take that will not depreciate your work product. Every office has templates of motions, letters, etc. that have been used in various situations. Save yourself time and your clients’ money by availing yourself of existing resources to get the job done more efficiently.

 

13.​A draft is not a draft.

 

Anytime you give a client, senior attorney, or anyone in your office a draft to look at, it really shouldn’t be a “draft.” It should be the most polished, final work product you can produce. No one wants to read stream-of-consciousness ramblings or see typos or grammatical mistakes in a draft.

It is (Always) the End of the World as We Know It, and We Do Not Feel Fine (With Apologies to R.E.M.)

Yesterday, I was on a three-person text thread with another Jewish nihilist friend of mine and one Gentile (this sounds like the start of a walk-into-a-bar joke, but it's not), and somehow--shockingly-- us two Jews veered off into the end of the world: when it's coming, how it's coming, and all the things people have been fearing since we evolved the ability for abstract thought. 

This conversation came on the heels of being placed in Twitter jail for 12 hours for insulting an egregious cyber-bully (SAD! VERY UNFAIR!), and a pile-on of progressives in my timeline sending snarky Gifs, because I called out anti-Semitism and anti-scientific thinking on the left, thereby failing to achieve the standards of perfection demanded by subscribers to what I have described repeatedly as my own unmitigated bullshit.

Honestly, it made me want to burn all of my social media to the ground. This is something I fantasize about routinely, and am considering doing after my case against the governor is completely over. On the one hand, I don't want to lose a good tool for activism (specifically pushing back against authoritarianism) at a time when that particular type of activism is needed. On the other, the tool itself is at least part of why we need such pushback more than ever. But I tend toward all-or-nothing thinking and impulsivity about certain things, and am bad at boundaries and willpower. Therefore, I rarely see many options between "torch it all" and "can't stop/won't stop"), and am an eternal pessimist to boot. 

Which is why it surprised me that I came out on the sunny side of this text dialogue. I'm re-printing it here, lightly edited for clarity. Obviously, I make no representations as to the accuracy of anything I say here. Once again: the bullshit disclaimer couldn't be louder or more clear.

ME: Everyone who writes about autocracy says the same thing: you have to push back--it's the only answer.

FRIEND: It feels too late--people are just not waking up to the gravity of the situation. 

ME: Well, it's been way worse before. The 1800's were absolutely atrocious from beginning to end. Like the entire century was a complete mess on every level. So I think we're lacking some perspective. Each of us only gets one century at most.

FRIEND: People are screaming, "the house is on fire," and like half the population is literally shouting back, "that's not fire, it's ice," and another forty percent are like "oh getting a little warm but, oh well! Situation normal all fucked up!" This is not normal! I don't know. I know people say it's been worse and there was a Civil War, but there are some new and different forces at work.

ME: There are always new and different forces though. They are all sort of variations on a theme. Climate change is definitely a problem of new scope, obviously.

FRIEND: I know this is bleak and unhelpful, but I don't believe our democracy will survive.

ME: But in terms of democracy, governments, racism, misogyny, etc., it's really just the same old same old, and in fact has been way worse in the past. Like governments and administrations in the 19th century--some of them were absolutely atrocious. Granted, we might become like Turkey or Hungary for awhile in terms of democracy.

FRIEND: We've lost majority rule.

ME: Yeah, but even white supremacist minority rule doesn't last forever: look at South African Apartheid. I'm a little more optimistic because of my obsessive reading about history over the past two years. It's been really great for perspective.

FRIEND: Which has led to an extremist Supreme Court and no checks and balances. But worse is the internet--social media is like a drug that has sickened too big a portion of the population with intractable beliefs.

ME: The Supreme Court has been a nightmare before. Two words: Roger Taney. It's true that social media presents a new challenge for misinformation and propaganda. But eventually that's going to be reigned in, I think. 

FRIEND: I know. I don't buy it. Neither does Ezra Klein, who argues much more articulately and with much better historical grounding that we have not seen this kind of threat before, and that the current problems represent an existential threat to democracy.

ME: I'm not convinced of that at all. Mass psychosis doesn't last forever. Everyone who has ever lived thinks they're the first generation to deal with huge, seemingly intractable problems. It's narcissism to believe otherwise.

FRIEND: I hope you're right, but this situation is uniquely bad.

ME: And Ezra Klein is an admitted and self-described neurotic, as am I.

FRIEND: True Jew crew! I don't think I'm neurotic, but I'm far more pessimistic than you, apparently.

ME: Every situation has been uniquely bad! That's my point!

FRIEND, to GENTILE: Sorry! Look what you started!

ME: Everything seems uniquely cataclysmic because it is at the time. I'm not saying it's not going to be bad. It might be really bad until we die, and we might not live to see it get better. But that doesn't mean it won't get better. I'm just saying that each of us only has 100 years at most to see any one snapshot in time.

FRIEND: Well empires do die, and I believe we're seeing the demise of the American empire. Also, species die.

ME: Well, yes. I mean look at the British Empire. But it's not like Great Britain is completely in the toilet or anything. It's just not running or invading the world anymore, which is actually a really good thing. And yes, eventually humans will go extinct, but that's a long ways off under almost any scenario.

FRIEND: I think about extinction a lot. Some were fast and some were slow.

ME: There will likely be a massive contraction of the population due to climate change and disease, but complete extinction is many thousands of years away.

FRIEND: The first animals breathed out oxygen and breathed in CO2 and they poisoned themselves.

ME: Hang on, I'm going to ask my friend who is a paleontologist and primatologist about this. [ME, STARTS NEW TEXT THREAD WITH PALEONTOLOGIST/PRIMATOLOGIST FRIEND WHO IS CURRENTLY IN THE GALAPAGOS WITHOUT CELL SERVICE BUT HAS PROMISED TO SETTLE THIS DEBATE ONCE AND FOR ALL, AND FOR ALL MANKIND, WHEN SHE RETURNS].

FRIEND: Well, OK. I don't agree but I'm done arguing [NARRATOR: THEY WERE NOT DONE ARGUING]. No one knows, it's hubris to claim otherwise.

ME: Some of us have more informed opinions than others, however.

FRIEND: I have a shelf of these books. I used to be slightly obsessed. Granted my reading is almost 30 years old, but that's telling in itself. One of the big takeaways of my reading is that each generation of primatologists upended the previous generation's theories.

ME: But isn't that always what happens in science?

FRIEND: Yes, but I came to be cynical about it all. It's all so tainted with unconscious bias. That's why I left science.

ME: Wait. Don't be like those people who get mad at scientists for saying one thing about COVID-19 in February 2020 and another thing this month. There are obviously good studies and bad studies. Science is not sacrosanct or static. Or devoid of bias at all, obviously.

FRIEND: Exactly. I'm with you. What the fuck do I know? I just got my ass handed to me in Settlers of Catan after getting ambushed by a strategy I never saw coming.

ME: God, I hate that fucking game. My point is, making sweeping apocalyptic conclusions has been happening since the beginning of civilization, and not without reason, but it's always been a variation on the same themes.

FRIEND: One of these days those sweeping apocalyptic predictions will be right!

ME: Well, everyone is right under that logic.

FRIEND: It works until it doesn't.

ME: Right, but on a macro scale, societies morph and evolve. Each individual dying is inevitable so we will always be right about that at least.

FRIEND: Well some die in their twenties of stupidity rather than of cancer in their nineties.

ME: Societies die too, of course, but they also reform in different ways. And again, all we get (for now) is that 100-year window. I've read that we might be the last generation to die of natural causes, and they're going to solve aging and make people able to live until 200 or something, which honestly sounds horrendous.

FRIEND: Awful. Our bodies fall apart before our engine dies because we are not really meant to live past 40.

ME: Yes, that's why every day past 40 is like borrowed time, and that's how we have to look at it. We're already supposed to be dead, so every day past 40 that we're alive is just bonus time. This is the combination positive nihilism that I'm looking for as my life's lodestar!

FRIEND: Not bad.

ME: It's also why we're bored and miserable. Like the natural human lifespan of 40 is not enough time to get super miserable or super bored, but after that, when we're supposed to be dead, it's all just a lot of work. However, it's also lucky in that we get a little bit or even a lot of extra time.

GENTILE, WHO HAS THUS FAR BEEN SILENT: Oh my God. This is the best thing to wake up to  [SENDS SCHOLARLY ARTICLE INDICATING THAT THE AVERAGE LIFE SPAN OF EMPIRES IS 250 YEARS].

ME: I think we are both validated now!

EXEUNT.

We the Greek Alphabet Formally Denounce our Association with COVID

To WHO it May Concern,

And by WHO, we literally mean WHO—the World Health Organization—which has crossed yet another line by naming yet another variant of the deadly COVID-19 virus after one of our 24 esteemed members.

Before COVID, the general population didn’t give us much thought, despite the fact that we’ve existed since the 9th century BC. That’s 900 years before Jesus H. Christ himself was born in his manger, BTW, for those keeping track.

We didn’t mind so much when American sorority sisters and fraternity brothers hoisted their red Solo cups full of Natty Light and belted us out in a drunken sing song —“alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta theta iota kappa lambda mu nu xi omicron pi rho sigma tau upsilon phi chi si omeeeeeeeega!” 

That was fine. At least these dumb drunk children were trying to get to know us—the REAL us.

We were also fine with pi/pie day, being a stand-in for first and last (alpha and omega), and even a gamma ray, albeit deadly. We were OK with beta testing and Delta airlines (come to think of it that might be a different Delta). Certainly it was an honor when capital sigma was used to indicate sums in mathematics and when we all jointly inspired the Etruscan, Latin, and Glagolitic alphabets in the 900s.

Really everything was more or less chill until WHO — again the health organization, not the band —started naming mutated versions of a deadly pandemic virus after us. That’s where we have to draw the line. In May 2021, the WHO announced that “the variants of SARS-CoV-2 would be named using letters of the Greek alphabet to avoid stigma and simplify communications for non-scientific audiences.”

Well. 

Needless to say, we did not and do not grant permission for our likeness to be used in such a manner. Avoid stigma? What about the stigma to delta—who was unfairly stigmatized for yanking the rug out from under “hot vax summer” and sending everyone’s crotch fruit back to Zoom school? Or the stigma to omicron, whose very name now strikes fear in hearts across the globe, and who is already being blamed for shitting up Christmas and causing even more breakthrough infections than delta? 

We were willing to accept being named after hurricanes, which at least are kind of badass. But not this. We will not co-sign being used as a scapegoat to “simplify communications” for any audience, scientific or otherwise. 

Among other things—and in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last two years or just making sourdough—no amount of simplification is enough to convince dumbassess to get the fucking vaccine before the virus makes enough versions of itself for all 24 of us to have our own eponymous variant.

We enjoy a storied history as the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. We conquered all 22 letters of Phoenician. We introduced three new consonant letters to accommodate aspirated plosive sounds and consonant clusters. We have graced the lips and literature of the GOAT philosophers and scientists like Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato to name a few. Why the very stars of the firmament bear our names, for fuck’s sake!

In closing, we are more than just a shorthand for the apocalypse. Please educate yourself and do better.

Sincerely,

The Greek Alphabet