Posted on 09/27/2018 6:42:11 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
On a scale of “spitting on the sidewalk” to “Starting a major war - and losing it,” exactly how significant is the charge of attempted rape?
I ask the question that way because the Democrats are treating “the seriousness of the charge” of attempted (not successful) rape as infinite.
If you go through the known facts about Brett Kavanaugh backward from the present, what you have is a cloud of witnesses and facts supporting the proposition that it has been at least 30 years since a time to which any claim at all of impropriety has been leveled at the judge. And that over that time he has systematically promoted the public interest in general and women in particular. But recently - very recently - a charge has been leveled that Brett Kavanaugh, as a high school student, behaved very differently. It is a “he said, she said” - give or take an old and incompletely comprehensive callendar/diary here, or an emotionally convincing testimony there.
So, what is the logic of the situation? On one hand, Judge Kavanaugh is apparently very highly - even perhaps uniquely - suited to the job, going by his experience, credentials, and known recent behavior. OTOH he is recently accused of a serious crime which putatively happened long, long after the expiration of the statute of limitations in many jurisdictions (from a national perspective, the statute of limitations, or lack thereof, in a particular jurisdiction does not mean that the same crime is more heinous if committed in Maryland, Michigan, or wherever). The seriousness of the allegation is one thing, and the probability that the allegation is true is another. If the two concepts were quantifiable, multiplying the probability by the seriousness would be a meaningful metric.
By that metric, the crucial question is how serious actually is attempted rape. Not just from the perspective of one woman, but from the perspective of society. For me, it is certainly, undeniably, but not absolutely serious. The probability that an uncorroborated, novel claim which contrasts with everything known about the nominee two weeks ago is true - and that it is predictive of future behavior - is, frankly, not significant enough given that we are not talking about a nuclear war but the compromise of the happiness of one person.
The only difference I would have with Kavanaugh is I would not have affirmed to my daughter to pray for that woman because she was trying gratuitously to hurt her daddy. I guess I am not a very good Christian.
When you take the step from, “He didn’t to it,” to, “If he didn’t, it doesn’t matter,” you put off a lot of decent people.
I mean, “If he did, it doesn’t matter.”
Make no mistake, Brett Kavanaugh, and his entire family for that matter were sexually abused by the demonocrats.
He fought Piranhas and he fought the cold.
There was no one with him, he was all alone, yeah.
Certainly I understand that risk, it’s just the engineer in me coming out. My point is that if in fact you do not absolutely know it is a confusion to pretend to yourself that you have to absolutely know.“Ontological certitude” in a “he said, she said,” case is a chimera. When such is the case, asserting “I have to absolutely have to know” is a fool’s errand. You don’t absolutely know, and you are not going to absolutely know. What then? You weigh the alternatives of a “type 1” error (wrongly “convicting”) or a "Type 2” (wrongly “acquitting") the “defendant.”
The Type 1 error’s consequences are the destruction of the reputation, perhaps in the worst case the suicidal end of the life, of a person who other than one day in 1982 has a marvelous record of a man whose service to the nation has been and can be expected to be signal.
The consequence of a “Type 2” error is exactly what? Do we think that suddenly someone with Kavenaugh’s record in recent decades is suddenly going to “start WWIII” with something amazingly egregious? No. If we think that, we would never ever release any felon from prison ever. Seriously? An attempted rape 36 years ago???
I honestly don’t care if it happened exactly as described by Ford. Un-chaperoned teenagers at a drunken party. What could possibly go wrong? Does Ford bear no responsibility for attending? Oh, I get it. Women have no agency and cannot be held responsible for poor choices.
That said, it happened a long, long time ago, she wasn’t actually raped, she waited decades to make it public, they were very young, he was very drunk, and he’s had exemplary service ever since—assuming we take her story at face value. Again, I just don’t care
BUMP!
there is no ‘charge’.
there is only an unsubstiantiated allegation from a woman with questionable and selective recall.
And, quite frankly, nothing has been described in testimony that is even remotely approaching ‘attempted rape,’ and to term it so is degrading and creates irreparable harm to those who truly are rape victims.
I think you’ve got Brett Kavanaugh confused with Matthew Broderick.
Whoa, cowboy. *Attempted rape* is one BFD. It can leave the victim horribly traumatized and often, physically injured.
That said, women like Ford do a terrible disservice to real victims. It’s disgusting that she is getting any attention at all. She is not credible and presents no evidence. We’re just supposed to take her word for it.
This does far more damage than any insensitive comment by a man could ever do.
Liberals keep screaming at us (they no longer speak normally) that all sexual assault victims must be believed. (Unless, of course, the perp is a democrat).
Then they offer up a fruitcake.
And, rather than shoo the crockpot away, our government gives her the largest and most visible platform we have.
When a woman like Ford, who fancies herself one of the world’s great feminists, makes false claims of sexual assault, they doom *real* victims. It takes on a “boy who cried wolf” quality.
Every time the dems dredge up another make believe victim, it chips away at the credibility of genuine sexual assault victims. It feeds into the darkest skepticism about women being calculating and untrustworthy.
This is horribly destructive. Imagine being a young girl observing all of this. “Oh, ok. I get it. If a guy pisses me off, I can get even and claim he raped me”.
Ford, and the rest of the band of unholy trollops are willing to commit unspeakable damage to the women they claim to care so much about.
Hypocrisy, thy name is democrat.
My view is that Ford was lying. And by her lying, she has cast a cloud over women’s testimony in general, which will have an impact on men jurors.
I think he said the word “boobies” in 4th grade.. string him up.
I was expecting “ Pampers or cotton” question next.
I have taken the more charitable, if patronizing, view that she has a “recovered” memory. Note, “recovered” in scare quotes, “memory” not so much. A “recovered” memory is actually a synthesized memory. Created by a process of long, intensive - and unresisted by the subject - persuasion. Gaslighting, if you will. In psychotherapy, especially - where thousands of unhappy teen girls have, in the 1990s, been willing or eager to be persuaded that their father had sexually abused them. And, “knowing” that that was “the truth,” they ruined their fathers’ lives. Unless somehow the father lucked out, and the “recovered” memory could by some miracle be disproved by objective evidence.And by her lying, she has cast a cloud over women’s testimony in general, which will have an impact on men jurors.The other way to express the concept is “method” acting taken to such extreme that the actor actually does not know that he is not the character he is portraying. But note well, an actual actor could not do that, for two roles. The first one would be too emotionally damaging. I did not say that the daughters of those ruined dads came out any happier . . .
After yesterday’s testimony your point is reinforced, in that the fairy tale about “fear of flying” as a reason for delay is exposed. If I were trying to prove that Ford was a liar, it would seem that that would be the weak point which is hard to rebut. The known fact is that the Democrats want to delay. We were told that her fear of flying required a delay. It was a lie.
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