Harris:
“Judge Kavanaugh, did you watch the
testimony of Dr. Ford earlier today?”
Kavanaugh:
“No”.
Perhaps
if that had been the first question Democrats directed at Kavanaugh the line of
inquiry might have veered away from FBI investigations, and he said-she said-they said. It seems in
today’s public analysis of morality there is a sink hole of attempting to
reconstruct history and a black hole of awareness about what is happening
before our very eyes.
Kavanaugh
did not watch Ford’s testimony because he didn’t need to. He had a sense of his
life as a youth and it didn’t include attempted rape. For Kavanaugh he obviously felt his time was
better spent preparing to attack his “accusers” and play himself as the victim.
Regardless of the absolutely convincing
testimony by Ford, his strategy prevailed.
Should
Dr. Ford’s account of what happened disqualified Kavanaugh from
confirmation? I don’t think so. What
should have certainly disqualified Kavanaugh was his irrational, self-centered,
injudiciously emotional, and politically bias testimony. I think it’s safe to say we hired an
egotistical nut-case to the Supreme Court. What he turns into over the next 40
years is anybody’s guess.
I
believe that Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford were both telling the truth, as best
they could recall it. The giveaway was Ford’s testimony that Kavanaugh left the
scene laughing and bouncing off the walls.
In my opinion, the reality was that the event in question had as casual
a meaning to the 17 year old Kavanaugh as it had a traumatic meaning to the 15
year old Ford. That certainly says something about who those individuals were
at that time.
However,
does that define who we are looking at standing before us? It certainly defines
what we socially had considered less than criminal behavior in times past and
perhaps shamefully so.
Today
in Virginia, Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax’s possible rise to becoming Governor
has uncovered behavior on his part that has put his current position, and
career generally, in jeopardy. Those who
are, for either ethical or political reasons, calling for his immediate
resignation or impeachment are feeding into a new narrative that, like
Kavanaugh’s, is more divisive than healing.
Fairfax’s
response to his behavior has been as poor as his accusers have been lacking in
explanation, just as Kavanaugh’s had been. Fairfax has definitively claimed
each encounter was purely consensual when that was clearly not the case. However,
it’s entirely possible that from his perspective it was.
It
may be that his actions were
criminal. If so, there will be others coming forward who demonstrate encounters
with him that contains the threats we associate with criminal assault. If that
is the case, let him face his crimes.
I
am troubled, however, with this new recounting of history that applies current ethics to the past without the understanding of where we came
from. The French in 1789 so hated their
monarchical society that they sought to change its obvious abuses. Their moral
conviction however did not justify the Reign
of Terror that ensued or predict the reactionary result of that terror.
I thought Al Franken had the potential to being one of the great Senators of
our time. He is brilliant, a humanist, and a consummate communicator. His humor both simultaneously satirical and
self-deprecating showed him to be less egotistical than your average
politician. Yet a picture of him holding his hands above the breasts of a
sleeping woman years earlier during his life as a comedian was enough to lead
him to the political guillotine. This is not moving us forward.
We
need to recognize the importance of how our liberal values evolve, not devolve
into moral camps of opposition.
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