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I can’t believe I just read something by Andrew Sullivan that didn’t leave me screaming. The man was absolutely trying to be honest and analytical. Quite impressed.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/kavanaugh-ford-hearings-everyone-lost-andrew-sullivan.html

Everyone Lost at the Ford-Kavanaugh Hearings

Yesterday was a spectacle I hope we do not have to experience again. We watched two human beings, Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, exposed in the rawest possible fashion to the entire world, over the gravest of accusations, with no definitive evidence apart from personal testimony to draw on, 36 years after an alleged crime took place. It was a grotesque political drama, in which everyone lost.

Both Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh have been traumatized and ill-served by the process. At the all-day Senate hearing, there was no real sifting of evidence about her allegation that he sexually assaulted her, because nothing but memories were on the table. (We still don’t even know when or where the alleged attack happened.) Other witnesses were not called to testify, which they obviously should have been, if only to say (as they all have) that they had no memory of the event. So we were left to judge the credibility of two individuals, who both said they were 100 percent certain.
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As the afternoon went on, I found my mood swinging back to Kavanaugh’s defense. At first, I was shocked by what seemed to me to be his shouting and belligerence. But then he drew me in. Of course he was angry. Wouldn’t you be if you were innocent or had no idea where this allegation suddenly came from? He wasn’t being accused of sexual harassment, or sexual abuse as an adult in a way he could have refuted or challenged. His long-lost teenage years as a hard-drinking jock were now under the microscope. Even his yearbook was being dissected. Stupid cruelties and brags from teenage boys were now being used to define his character, dismiss his record as a judge, his sterling references, his respected scholarship, his devoted family, his relationship with women in every capacity. He had to fend off new accusations, ever more grave and ever more vague.

And there were times, it seems to me, that he simply couldn’t win. If he hadn’t hired and mentored many women, it would be proof he was a misogynist and rapist. But the fact that he did hire and mentor many of them was also proof he was a misogynist and a rapist, who only picked the pretty ones. If he hadn’t shown anger, he would have been obviously inhuman. When he did express rage … well, that was a disqualifying temperament for a judge. It didn’t help that the Democrats made no pretense of having an open mind, or that any glimpse at mainstream media — let alone media Twitter — revealed that it had already picked a side. This was, for the major papers, especially the New York Times, a righteous battle against another white straight male, and the smug, snarky virtue-signaling on Twitter was in overdrive. Even Kavanaugh’s choking-up was mocked — just another contemptible “bro-crier.”
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At lunchtime, I thought he should withdraw. Ford was unforgettable, dispositive. But then the afternoon had me drifting back toward the Republicans. I doubt I am alone in this, just as I doubt my liberal friends understand how deeply they’ve alienated so many with their reflexive prejudices. By dinnertime, I felt like I’d vote for him, if I were a senator — because I found the Democrats so nauseatingly priggish. Then I remembered I was against the Kavanaugh nomination for other reasons entirely: especially because of his deference to presidential power when we face a president who would dearly like to blow a giant hole in the rule of law. And since I couldn’t in good faith choose between Ford and Kavanaugh about something that happened 36 years ago, I simply decided to put this accusation in a box. I’ll make a judgment on what I can know, not on what I cannot possibly judge.
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