Undead Powers

Though modern people see vampires, ghouls, ghosts, zombies, and other such beings as mere characters in horror fiction or fantasy games, to our ancestors they were very real indeed.  The belief that the dead could return to harm the living was nearly universal prior to the Age of Reason, and in many parts of the world it persisted until the recent past or even the present day.  Evil people, or those believed to have practiced sorcery, were generally buried with a stake through the heart, or decapitated, or turned face-down, or buried at crossroads, or otherwise subjected to whatever measures were believed to prevent their returning from the grave.  And just to be on the safe side, measures were usually taken to ensure that the earthly forms of even the kindest, gentlest souls stayed put: it’s why funeral corteges traditionally took a circuitous route to the cemetery (to confuse the dead in case they tried to come home), and why such places have fences of wrought iron (a metal believed to be inimical to the dead) to keep their denizens safely contained.

Though they lacked the knowledge modern science has made available to us, our ancestors were no fools; they were not entirely wrong in their belief that things thought dead which are not properly laid to rest can return to haunt the living:

…lawyers seeking to move abortion medication off the market focused less on the existential question of when life begins — and more on the procedural question of when a law dies.  The lawsuit focuses on the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug.  But lawyers for [forced-birth proponents are asking]…U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — to resurrect a long-dormant law that would upend abortion access in the United States.  The Comstock Act of 1873 banned the mailing of anything related to contraception or abortion.  The contraception clauses were removed in 1971, and the law was entirely unenforced during the five-decade reign of Roe v. Wade…[but] now, with Roe off the table, anti-abortion groups want Kacsmaryk to [declare] that Comstock is good law and can be applied broadly, not just to…abortions…It’s unclear whether [the openly anti-abortion] Kacsmaryk…will take steps to revive this “zombie law”.  If he did, his ruling would apply only to the parties — the FDA and a manufacturer of mifepristone that has joined the suit — but it would open the floodgates for future litigation.  “Comstock is part of this sort of stealth strategy to ban abortion nationwide,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University. “If it’s illegal nationally to mail … anything that is related to abortion, that would make it very difficult to operate an abortion clinic or to be an abortion provider”…

And this isn’t the only such case; authoritarian “conservatives” apparently want to go from their traditional concept of the US as the Land Where Nothing Ever Changes, to one where it’s the Land Where No Governmental Construct Ever Dies:

When Gov. Ron DeSantis first proposed reviving the long-dormant Florida State Guard, he wanted 200 volunteers and a modest $5 million budget.  Then it grew to 400 members and $10 million.  Now it’s 1,500 members and a nearly $100 million budget — with police powers, helicopters, boats and, under one [politician]’s request, cellphone-hacking technology.  The proposed budget for the Florida State Guard…offers the most detailed realization of DeSantis’ vision for th[is]…WWII-era force brought back last year to s[trengthen DeSantis’ police] state…[especially troubling is the allocation of] $750,000 to contract with the Israeli company Cellebrite to…help the State Guard target [sex workers] and drug [users]…including on farms.  Cellebrite is often hired by [cop shops] because of its ability to break into iPhones…

I’m not the only person who has proposed that all laws should automatically sunset after ten years unless specific action is taken to renew them, but I think it’s unlikely that will ever happen; the Overlords would never allow possibly-useful undead laws and agencies to be disposed of by peasants with stakes and torches.