What’s the Big Deal, Kavanaugh?

Anyone with any degree of objectivity who watched and listened to Brett Kavanaugh knows he was lying. He lied about the drinking age when he was in high school. He lied about not drinking during the week. He lied about how he could remember everything that happened to him. He lied about blackouts. He lied about being a virgin for many years after high school.

It is entirely possible that he does not believe he assaulted Christine Blasey Ford. In sexual assault cases it is often true that men have much different perspectives than women do about what happened. Kavanaugh probably thinks that whatever happened between Ford and him was no big deal. It was all a big joke. Push the freshman girl into the room, wrestle with her on the bed. Pin her down. What fun! It is also entirely possible that for Kavanaugh and for Judge, the details are very fuzzy.

So, why was Kavanaugh so visibly angry and emotional, wavering between yelling and crying? Because it suddenly hit him that even though he spent the last twenty-five years towing the line, holding back on the drinking and womanizing, playing the role of the upright citizen, coaching girls, being a decent dad, working to polish his resume, networking, he was being attacked for a few wild years in high school and college when he did what all his friends did—got wasted, got girls drunk and had sex with them. Did he force girls to come to the parties? No, they came willingly. They did shots, played the drinking games. A lot of the time no one even remembered what happened after that. What was the big deal?

He could have been out drinking with friends for the last twenty-five years. He could have gone after women or slept with the women who came on to him–don’t think they didn’t. He could have had sex with the female clerks but no, he held off and that’s what really makes him angry. He’s been a good guy, played the game, followed the rules. Unlike Clinton or Trump or Weiner, he could have taken advantage of his position, but he didn’t and now they come after him and try to take it all away?

This is where he is able to connect with all those angry white male (and some female) Trump supporters. All those poor slobs who consider themselves victims who have been robbed. They are so angry they could just burst into tears at a moment’s notice. They know exactly how Brett feels.

Republican Senators may claim that Ford’s story lacked corroboration and, in a trial, Kavanaugh would get off, but hers is not the only story. At least two other women have now come forward: Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick. That in itself provides a level of corroboration. In addition, both of these women have witnesses to support their stories. Finally, whether one believes Ford’s story or not, she is obviously not lying where Kavanaugh lied repeatedly.

What is particularly dispiriting about the Republican judiciary committee’s handling of Kavanaugh is their denial of the obvious and their attempt to lend approbation to the misogynist culture embodied by Kavanaugh. Whether Democrats withheld Ford’s letter and then leaked it to the press is beside the point. It’s a good thing they did, since Grassley and company would have discarded and suppressed it. Graham’s tantrum attacking the Democrats was gaslighting—lashing out at the other side for doing exactly what Republicans did with the Merrick Garland nomination.

Whether one believes Ford or Kavanaugh in regard to a sexual assault in high school, it is clear that Kavanaugh does not belong on the Supreme Court or in any court as a judge.