In a wide-eyed TikTok video, an Australian woman has helped put to words what many Americans are feeling right now after a week of disastrous Supreme Court decisions that decimated the rights of hundreds of millions of people.
In the viral video, TikTok user Lili Currie questions why the U.S. courts still make decisions that affect the 300 million people living there (and often have ramifications for the rest of the world) based on a document written by slave-owning men 250 years ago.
Currie, a comedian, puts on a fake “stupid Australian” persona and pretends to try and flatter America so that we won’t get upset when she points out that this system is absurd and terrible.
“Hey, um, please don’t take this the wrong way,” she says. “I do have a question. I’m just still learning a lot about the United States because I’m really stupid and not from the country, but something that I’ve noticed, and I’m just like ‘what’ about is that every decision ever made in this country legally, specifically about human rights and whatnot, is made on the basis of this document from the 1700s.”
The video was initially posted back in May, but considering the fact that every expected Supreme Court decision that has come down ahead of the court’s summer break has gone the way conservatives wanted, it’s no surprise it’s getting so much attention now. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the decision that gutted Native American sovereignty, and allowing racist gerrymandering heavily in favor of Republican candidates, Currie’s ultimate point hits hard.
“That’s amazing, I love tradition, I think that’s so cool,” Currie assures us. “But it’s just the document was written when women and people of color weren’t considered human beings and such.”
“And I was just wondering: Do you think that that’s still helpful for now? Making every decision about our lives collectively now?”
No, no we don’t think that. At least, not all of us.
The recent slate of SCOTUS decisions have many wondering whether a set of rules laid out by people who never wanted women to vote, owned slaves, and didn’t even know what the climate was is insufficient for a vastly different modern world. The insistence that abortion rights can’t be protected by the constitution because they’re not “deeply rooted in American history,” even while factually incorrect, is a good example of why many on the political left are questioning our reliance on the Constitution.
Multiple commenters assured Currie that we Americans are also asking this question, but in a tone of desperation.
“THIS IS WHAT AT LEAST HALF OF US ARE SAYING,” yelled one TikTok user.
Others pointed out another very old document that one of our two major political parties is using to make their decisions, even if a large and growing group of U.S. residents don’t believe much of anything it says at all.
“For a second I thought you were going to pull out a Bible until you said the year,” wrote another commenter.