Justice Kavanaugh

There are a number of thinkers I’ve listened to lately who paint Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh as a potential ally in certain hot button issues that the Court is facing. I do not follow the Supreme Court closely but it sounds as though Kavanaugh might be less knee-jerk rubber stamp Republican talking points than some of his others Justices. I don’t believe anyone really knows if this is true. But I must say, as a forty year old, I’ve primarily dealt with Supreme Court Justices who were nominated and admitted to the Court without my watchful eye. I remember Justice Clarence Thomas, I remember Chief Justice Roberts. But mostly I know the Supreme Court as a group of people who have held their jobs longer than I have cared who held them.

With Justice Kavanaugh I am quite convinced that he lied about his sexual assault of Christine Blasey Ford. I believe it is plausible that he has no memory of this experience, but if Justice Kavanaugh was a heavy drinker with Squee and his other weight lifting friends to the point where there is documented black out experiences, how can he be so authoritative about this? He can’t be. Do I think Christine Blasey Ford lied for one second? No! Is that strictly because I “believe women”. No! That’s a big part of it. We should trust and believe women about sexual assault in some of the same ways we believe people who say their car was stolen. You have never in the history of carstolentimes heard somebody say “my car got stolen” and had a friend respond “are you sure? were you drinking, are you positive it was your car that got stolen”. You believe and you listen. Might you stop believing at some point? Might you start to have questions about the stolen car? Sure. But you start off believing. I started off believing Christine Blasey Ford. She told a terrible story, she had notes from a therapists from long before there would be any logical claim to someone concocting a story about Brett Kavanaugh cause they had it out for him. Do you remember that lunch break where I thought Christine Blasey Ford had told a completely compelling story to the committee and I thought that Kavanaugh was for sure going to be put on hold as a nominee. And then they came back from lunch and Kavanaugh spit into his microphone a lot, said he liked beer thirty-five times, lost his composure and got the job?

Now that spitty angry guy is a central part of the most revered deliberative body in our country? How are we taking this seriously? He’s unhinged. He had nothing compelling to say. He yelled. And now he’s part of the strategy? Now he’s part of the plan? I just can’t take him seriously. And beyond taking him seriously, I just can’t think of him as a just arbiter. He’s a creep, he’s a liar, he’s a guy who bellyached his way into a great job and wanted pats on the back for studying hard. And man, they dug up some terrible stuff about his past. I can’t do it. I can’t think of this man as a Supreme Court Justice. But here he is, very much a Supreme Court Justice. I send love out to Christine Blasey Ford. She told her truth, she was compelling, she was vulnerable, she was honest. She gained nothing. She was attacked. She was brave. I’m sorry that America let Christine Blasey Ford down and let Justice Kavanaugh in.