Once again, privilege and political gamesmanship won, and the rest of us lost.
Hm. I thought “what won” was the rational notion of presumption of innocence unless shown otherwise, which is a deeply ingrained part of not just America’s legal system, but social interaction.
Thanks for setting me straight. :-)
The pillars of supremacy still stand tall. Many rejected Dr. Balsey Ford’s testimony out of hand, with senator and layman alike confusing the standard between what our law requires to take away someone’s physical liberty and what might disqualify them for a seat on the highest court in the country.
Logical fallacy alert; conflation of two separate but related matters into a single notion. Nobody rejected Dr. Ford’s testimony out of hand. The question, as you rightly point out, is if an uncorroborated allegation is sufficient to disqualify an otherwise highly qualified candidate for the SCOTUS. America split on this matter; those with anti-Kavanaugh bias PRIOR to the allegations came down on the “disqualify him” side, those who were pro-Kavanaugh or pro-nominee in general came down on the other.
That’s not “supremacy”; it’s fairness. Personally, I believe we got the correct outcome, even if it’s not an overwhelmingly popular one.
This, tied together with the ongoing fantasy of political conspiracy, seems to leave us exactly where we were nearly 30 years ago during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation — we still don’t believe women.
Wrong. We believe women. We just require them to be able to prove their allegations, because there is a non-zero chance that they could be incorrect or lying.
That’s the nature of supremacy, you get to make on-the-spot edits, no consistency required.
Hmmm. Putting aside this nonsense “supremacy” argument for a moment, it’s the nature of the social movements as well. Look how the Anita Ford momentum started by electing more women to Congress than ever before (1992), whist simultaneously electing a rapist President. :-)
Lindsey Graham, like others in the Senate and the public, believes Dr. Ford was part of some sort of conspiracy to destroy Kavanaugh.
There is no doubt there was a conspiracy to destroy Kavanaugh. No shortage of evidence for that, all you have to do is read the timeline, noting the following:
- Feinstein did not follow proper procedure in the handling of the letter after receipt. Why?
- The letter was leaked without the permission of Dr. Ford. Only Democrats had the letter. Somebody ignored her wishes. Why?
- Dr. Ford’s lawyers were Democrat party regulars who clearly were looking out for the party when they did not inform her of Grassley’s offer to come to CA to take testimony.
The larger question is if Dr. Ford was part of this, or was being fucked over by the Democrats. I think the latter is far more probable than the first, in that she seemed like an honest, credible lady.
This administration is no different — the President himself appears to believe that Kavanaugh’s protestors are actors paid by billionaire George Soros (is the economy really that bad?). Power can easily lend credibility to the even the most absurd (and hypocritical) opinions.
Hmmm. Not so absurd, actually. Obviously, no protestor is going to get a check from George Soros; he needs plausible deniability, so people such as yourself can try to absolve him of the blame for funding mobs.
That said, the question is if Soros-funded organizations are funding protests in general, and the answer to that is “yes”.
So, that (logically) leads us to “what about the Kavanaugh protests”? Well, the WaPo, whilst giving this claim three Pinocchios, wrote this:
There is some, indirect money from Soros associated with the groups that confronted senators in elevators, but it is wrong to claim the protesters were paid by Soros or directed by him. Grassley and Trump each earn Three Pinocchios.
The only thing that that tells you is that the WaPo factcheckers do not understand the concept of fungibility of money. In this case, the fungibility concept states clearly that if an organization that pays protestors is in any way funded by Mr. Soros, then it is not incorrect to state that Mr. Soros is (at least in part) paying those protestors.
Is Dr. Ford running for office? Is she a competing Supreme Court nominee? Do we have some sort of cash prize available for bringing down a nominee? Is Anita Hill approaching Kardashian fame? To my knowledge, the answers to all of these questions are “no.”
That’s all correct. The question is how germane all that is to the confirmation of the nominee, considering that this is an event which (a) was a misdemeanor at the time, (b) occurred while a minor, for which (c ) there appears to be no repetitive adult pattern behavior.
Why would she risk her personal and familial safety for the sake of a political “smear” campaign where she stands to gain nothing (or in the case of death threats, lose everything)?
The most logical answer to that is that she had no intent of every doing so. She was forced into the situation by the political gamesmanship of Feinstein, who (with her partisan colleagues) truly believed that this was a spectacle that would get the nominee defeated and would help the Dems in the midterm elections.
Both calculations appear to be incorrect, considering that (according to RCP) a net House 12 seats have shifted into “leans/likely GOP” from tossup in the last 10 days, and the Senate projections have shifted from the Democrats picking up 1 net seat to the GOP picking up 2.
But it also reveals a crack in supremacy — the best anyone could come up with to ignore her testimony was a conspiracy. And conspiracies make for poor mortar.
And that argument is weak tea, as it assume as fact what is not in evidence: that she was a knowing participant in some conspiracy. See above. That some sort of conspiracy was afoot is illogical to deny.
Shook him to incoherency, to denial, and eventually to outrage.
Understandably. I would have applauded if he had started throwing coffee.
he and his cohort were afraid that privilege alone would not be enough to sustain him. That day, Dr. Ford stared defiantly into the eyes of supremacy, and supremacy flinched.
I applaud you on your poetic sense. It’s a puerile analysis, but sounds great on paper.
Kavanaugh, for all of his bluster and indignation, was doing his absolute best to walk away from past behavior and doing a lousy job at re-categorizing it. But listening to his responses, it became more and more apparent that maybe, amidst all of the happenings of his privileged youth, he just doesn’t remember.
Bingo. In the letter written by Dr. Ford, what she described was consistent with a sexual assault. It was also consistent with a couple of drunk high school kids playing “let’s scare the shit out of the freshman”. It is entirely possible that (a) it was Kavanaugh, and (b) she got scared to death, but (c ) he and Judge were just horsing around, leading to a situation 37 years later where (e) she remembers everything, but for him it was not memorable, due to time, alcohol, and it not being a serious encounter to him.
She chipped away at the privilege of forgetting.
It’s not a privilege; its psychological.
