In my book “The Next Civil War,” I wrote about how the American political system, in collapse, eventually reaches a post-policy phase. Domestically, the U.S. reached that phase long ago. Abortion is a case in point. The conservatives who orchestrated the fall of Roe v. Wade over the course of a generation have discovered that they have changed nothing: The overturning of the law they so hated has resulted in a rise, rather than a decline, in the number of abortions in the United States. Maybe they never cared about such outcomes in the first place. Maybe they just wanted to scream “life” at people. When politics can no longer affect change in people’s lives, when it leaves behind policy, it takes on an aesthetic function. It’s just for kicks.
