Backstabber Elegy

-- By MeherGeorge

(Revision completed May 24, 2025)

Columbia’s Endoparasite

I wrote my first essay less than 100 days into President Trump’s second term. Since, I’ve had a front row seat, the kind no one really wants, to the steep democratic backsliding led by the “Big Orange” and his cronies. Columbia University's blitz on civil liberties meant printing my outline the night before my Constitutional Law exam while the NYPD brutalized nineteen-year-olds in a different library. Claire Shipman called on the NYPD to prevent final exam interruption, because surely children in a reading room are more disruptive than drones, helicopters, and a specialized police force making mass arrests and sending students out in stretchers. The Trump endoparasite has manipulated the university’s nervous system to secure its survival, and we’re left to undo the neurological complications caused by its invasion.

Some endoparasites eventually kill their hosts, but others don't. It's not hard to believe Columbia University is destined to be something greater. It’s destined to be more than a zombified host organism harboring the Antichrist responsible for America’s descent into fascism. After all, it is “just” (yes, I mean that in the reductive sense) an institution, and we determine what it is. We decide whether it complies with its stated mission. We choose whether to destroy the library and with it – who we used to be. Perhaps there is a perverse hope for Columbia University, because, at the very least, it is exactly what we and others have done to it. It reflects the failures and weaknesses of its own. It's honest. Can the same be said about us?

The Semester I Became J.D. Vance

I wrote my first essay less than 100 days into President Trump’s second term. Since, I’ve been shepherded through many more firm mixers. I’ve performed the callback rituals and recited my why enough times to wonder how I became a liar. I keep my answers short. My legal metamorphosis is underway; attorneys know too much and always find it beneficial to say less than what they could. I am, after all, a lawyer. I am never far from evil. Maybe my first client is myself, and frankly I know far too much about her.

I wrote in my first essay that I don’t intend to venture into backstabber elegy land. I recounted the shock I felt when J.D. Vance become the proud Vice President to a vapid trust fund child, the disapproval of Mr. and Mrs. Backstabber Elegy’s opportunism, and the general betrayal I felt by the “legal elite”. That all remains true, but the problem was the why. Subconsciously, I needed to distinguish myself. I could never be like J.D. Vance! He sets a comically low benchmark for moral purity. That’s not me. Cowardly and small. I am not that! Am I not that?

This semester, “I” became J.D. Vance in that one of my disparate selves dominated. I recited my half-truths, “mixed” at my mixers, and while I pitched myself to firm employers, I really was pitching me to myself. Yes, you need this to get anywhere important. I ventured into backstabber elegy land. In fact, I’m quite good at it. I’m good enough at it that I require some self-disciplining machinery strapped onto me. I don’t mean the organized religion sort but rather something that holds me hostage every five years until I answer, without looking down, whether I am proud of my work. Is it work I can recognize let alone claim as my own?

There is no such thing as a unitary undivided personality. Professor Moglen told us this teaching offers a more capacious way of understanding human beings, so what happens when you carry the teaching in one hand and hold a mirror up to yourself in the other? Does the public interest law student turned big law associate turned federal prosecutor turned big law partner turned attorney general undergo a highly diluted micro “splitting” to protect him or herself? Perhaps the fractionation of states starts early. You’re told to join the Federalist Society for their stellar outline bank and clerkship options even if you disagree with their ideals; the omitted part is that they’ll call your bluff if you’re not a “believable” member. Really though, what does it say about a group if it must be a hoax when a woman of color joins?

Finding my Voice

I wrote my first essay less than 100 days into President Trump’s second term. Since, I’ve restarted the American Civil Liberties Union club on campus with my friend Claire. Engaging two authors of the Balkanization blog on “A Title VI Demand Letter That Itself Violates Title VI (and the Constitution)” with one fourth of Columbia’s student body inside a university classroom felt like a step forward. Opening dialogue with Columbia faculty felt like another step. Choices like those come from a disparate self I’m fond of. I expend a great deal of energy denying the multiplicity of my personalities by putting that one center stage. That’s me. Courageous and a force to be reckoned with. It would not be right to only acknowledge my "J.D. Vance" without also acknowledging my "Eben Moglen". Perhaps I didn’t have the lesson quite right back in February, less than 100 days into President Trump’s second term. Part of the answer might very well be to think about lawyering in relation to others, but the other part is to see my multiple selves for who they are. It is only then that I can reckon with them.

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