It’s decorative palm-frond season, bitches, and that means it’s the season of taking stock, cleaning house, renewal, and repair. And for a lot of us, that means it’s time to think seriously about which relationships in our lives are lifting us up and which are dragging us down. Let’s be honest: Just because your relationship with constitutional democracy can feel cozy and safe, that doesn’t mean that it’s still serving you, right? And how can you really be sure that autocracy, theocracy, dictatorship, or rule by military junta isn’t actually a better fit for you? It’s surely better to be honest about your geopolitical wants and needs than to suffer along with the status quo, amirite?
So, here’s a little quiz that might help you figure out whether you’re ready to move on from your current toxic relationship with representative democracy, constitutional checks and balances, and the rule of law. You can take it in secret—or, better yet, take it next to your copy of the Constitution. And if turns out that law and democracy are no longer sparking joy for you, awesome: Just toss ’em and call it spring cleaning. Let’s get started.
1. When confronted with a rumored criminal indictment with no factual information about what it may contain, you:
a) Decline to learn the relevant details before offering extravagant condemnation.
b) Launch a congressional investigation into the prosecutor.
c) Summon a mob you cannot possibly contain to commit acts of violence.
d) All of the above
2. Once you, insisting you’re an “originalist,” achieve an unassailable supermajority at the U.S. Supreme Court that will entrench your desired outcomes for a generation, you:
a) Profess to adhere to your own long-stated principles of judicial minimalism, humility, states’ rights, and stare decisis, and pivot to “interpreting the Constitution … less in the direction of pure judicial restraint.”
b) Announce that originalism has “outlived its utility” for producing a “substantively conservative approach to constitutional law” and turn to a methodology supported by an appeal to a vague supposed “natural law” (whatever that is).
c) Redefine “originalism” such that it can come to mean anything you want it to.
d) All of the above
3. As it becomes increasingly self-evident that voters will continue to reject your radical policy preferences on everything from reproductive freedom to LGBTQ rights to environmental protections, you:
a) Make it ever harder for voters to express their preferences by entrenching partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, and wackadoo theories about independent state legislatures.
b) Pass a raft of laws that would make it impossible for voters to decide issues by ballot initiative or referendum and make it ever more difficult for states to protect reproductive freedom with proposed overrides for gubernatorial vetoes, supermajority requirements, and bars to injunctive relief.
c) Rediscover your lost love of sweeping unprecedented nationwide injunctions and band together as state attorneys general to demand control over the distribution of medication.
d) All of the above
4. In the wake of a violent insurrection attempting to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next, you:
a) Condemn and also condone it repeatedly, often simultaneously, always incoherently, over the course of several years.
b) Give the footage of the mob assault to a friendly propaganda artist so that he can portray it as a simple guided gift-shop tour,
c) Run.
d) All of the above
5. If you object to other people’s children being exposed to ideas to which you personally object, you:
a) Terrorize their teachers, counselors, and librarians into complying with your demands.
b) Foment confusion about what is lawful and what is not, so as to chill everyone into compliance.
c) Bar children from discussing words or ideas that personally ick you out. Also, demand someone put some dang pants on Michelangelo’s way-too-sexy David.
d) All of the above
6. Given the choice between truthfully reporting the news and parroting propaganda you know to be false, you:
a) Protect the stock price by calling for the firing of any journalist at your organization who tells the truth.
b) “Take a collection of dumb, desperate people in middle age hoping to keep on to their stupid TV jobs, you add scripts and some hairspray, and they repeat the lies for you.”
c) If the dangerous rioters and insurrectionists you unleashed get arrested, call them political prisoners and record a song.
d) All of the above
7. Which of the following people would you rather hang with if faced with an invitation to lunch with President Joe Biden?
a) Viktor Orbán
c) Ayatollah Khamenei
d) All of the above
8. You’re storming the Capitol! Are you sporting:
a) A “We’re a Republic, Not a Democracy” hat
b) A white supremacist T-shirt
c) A “Hang Mike Pence” banner
d) All of the above
Tally your score:
Mostly As: The woke mob called—they want their Ibram X. Kendi books back.
Mostly Bs: You’re ready to camp out in front of Mar-a-Lago with some lawn chairs and “DA in Disarray” posters, hoping somebody else does something more menacing.
Mostly Cs: Time to storm a federal building or two.
Mostly Ds: Congratulations! You’re Hungary!
