Christine Blasey Ford vs Brett Kavanaugh

I believe both of them. I believe Judge Kavanaugh's categorical denial of the alleged assault on 15-year-old Christine Blasey in the summer of 1982 and I believe her vivid and convincing retelling. Both were authentic; both were persuasive, even as they contradicted one another. And yet I can easily decide whether the U.S. Senate should confirm his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. It should not.

Brett Kavanaugh is, to all appearances, an outstanding citizen, and a particularly strong supporter of women. He has championed their advancement in society, promoting their careers, hiring them as Supreme Court clerks, and couching girls' sports teams to help them develop self-confidence. Aren't those the qualities society wants as women take on leadership roles in every field and profession? Of coourse they are. Why should a single accusation by one woman of an alleged incident 36 years ago, when he was a drunken 17-year-old, derail the appointment of this solid jurist and devoted father of two girls?

Because he has a blind side. He has a tragic flaw of Shakespearean proportions that makes his presence on the highest court of the land a threat to human progress.

Evidence of the flaw first surfaced in his financial statements, in which he disclosed credit card debt of $60,000 to $200,000. Although carrying large debt with high interest rates is imprudent, it is relatively common in America, and hardly grounds for barring his appoinment to SCOTUS.

What sets off alarms, though, are the purchases. He bought season tickets to the Nationals. He attended a couple hundred regular season games. He attended all 11 play-off games. By saying "I am a huge sports fan," he misrepresents himself and misleads us. He is not a fan; he is an addict. When he has a wife and two children to support, when he sends them to private school, when he pays off an $850,000 mortgage on a $1.2 million house, when he joins an exclusive club to the tune of $92,000 and pays anual dues of $9,000, and when all the while he claims his total net worth is $91,000, his insistence on frittering away year after year his family's financial resources, he has a problem.

But the problem is more than an addiction to sports. The problem is an addiction to the testosterone rush he gets from being among men doing manly things. In his youth, he got the rush when he played; as an adult, he gets it while watching. But he needs it, and needs it so strongly that all other considerations vanish. He is blinded by his addiction.

Many get off on the adrenalin rush they experience when they're among men, when they're challenging one another, when there's a competition for dominance. This is 'male, and an aspect of being a man that women just do not experience and cannot understand. It's especially strong when men are in their teens.

Which brings us back to the assault in the summer of 1982. Kavanaugh was 17. He was with his buddy, Mark Judge. They were good friends and rivals. They were a team, a dynamic duo who, together, could do anything, get away with anything, fall down dead drunk and survive to see another day. The were, it turns out, Prince Hal and Falstaff.

On this fateful night, they were encouraged to push the bounds of what they'd done before. Without adults present, they felt free to trespass the rules they'd learned at home. They were carried away by the testosterone rush of each other's company, and seized the opportunity of being upstairs alone with a hot, un-chaperoned 15-year-old. They followed her up. They pushed her in a room. The locked the door so no one else could enter. They attacked.

Kavanaugh is a hold-over of the old world male in which might makes right, inn which privilege gets a pass, in which men can be men and women need to get used to it.

Which man would Kavanaugh be if the Senate confirms his appointment to SCOTUS?

He would be the kind of man he showed himself to be during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee: emotional, self-righteous, vindictive and extremely partisan.

Climate

There was a July in Portland, about 25 years ago, when daily mist and drizzle rotted tomatoes and mildewed squashes. We couldn’t imagine summers hot enough to grow California-size cantaloupe. But this year’s bounty of sweet, Mediterranean foods convinced even skeptics that climate warnings had been accurate. Now reports of still hotter summers elicit mature concern. If watermelons are in our future, what will happen to our forests? And our way of life?

Oregonians sought relief from the stingy sun by building roofs on decks or putting in a swimming pool. The average Joe, who muscled through the 3-4 days of 90+ weather before, retrofitted his house with a window unit. The foot-loose-and-fancy-free flew south to ski. Retirees took a cruise to islands north of Norway. “Just because it’s getting hotter, doesn’t mean I have to suffer.”

We’re in a quandary though, because the things we do to escape the heat contribute to the heat we’re trying to escape. The more we fly and drive and build, the more fossil fuel we burn. Every time we turn on the air conditioner to cool ourselves we heat the outside air just slightly, which nudges one more person to buy an air conditioner, and so on.

“But,” we ask, “what are we supposed to do? After all, none of us pollutes enough to affect the climate. It’s not as if one more car on an already congested freeway makes congestion worse. And filling the last seat on a commercial flight barely increases the plane’s pollution. Am I supposed to stay home while others are getting away and having fun?”

The climate changes because 7.3 billion people go about their lives, in factories, at backyard barbeques, in malls or on water skis. Trillions and trillions of miniscule acts add up. The result: a polluted environment, extinct species, acidified oceans and forecasts of significantly hotter summers.

We need a social structure suited to humankind’s present relationship with Earth. A hundred years ago, we numbered just 2 billion. We were small and vulnerable to Nature. Now we are a threat to Her. Overpopulation and depleted resources affect humans too, as evidenced by mass migrations, calls for tougher borders, squabbles over in-fill, congestion, etc. We’ve filled the Earth with ourselves and our stuff. Now what?

The social structure that got us here can’t carry us forward any more than Columbus’ ships could carry Lewis and Clark across North America. We’re in new circumstances that require a new vessel.

For millennia, as we multiplied and expanded, our ‘vessel’ was captained by the explorers, warriors and conquerors. Male leadership was indisputable. But now, male leaders have no lands to invade except those owned by the 99%. The leaders give themselves tax breaks and block universal health care, saying in effect, “our lives matter and yours don’t.” They take public companies private in order to keep America’s prosperity in their hands. If they’re allowed to buy parts of our National Monuments, wealth inequality worsens. On a filled-up Earth, unchecked male leadership threatens democracy and environmental well-being.

There is another option, which is to see ourselves as part of a community, as part of a global village in which all lives share one destiny.

Community has always been the province of woman. The village was always her domain. Woman needs an equal voice now, especially in politics and business. Vote for woman, for her perspective and her standards.

Septic

LO REview, Aug 2018

It’s outrageous that our city leaders, in this summer of extreme heat, in this decade of drought and conflagration, in this new millennium marked by mass human migrations and accelerated extinctions, in this era of heightened awareness that monster buildings on small pieces of land surrounded by concrete contribute to global warming - it’s outrageous that these educated, forward-thinking, conscientious leaders would propose the elimination of a time-tested, environmentally-beneficial practice that adds not one iota to any of these problems. And what’s even more exasperating - and dismaying – and let me add truly frightening – is that our so-called leaders want to punish the practitioners of this life-enhancing activity, not only by making them stop, but also by charging them tens of thousands of dollars to do so. I’m talking poop, here, folks. I’m talking septic systems. I’m talking about the 2,200 households in Lake Oswego who consistently and safely enhance their soils by organically converting food into nourishment for shade trees. I’m talking about carbon sequestration. I’m talking about less energy needed for air conditioning. I’m talking about thousands of small but meaningful acts that occur automatically and naturally. Energy-neutral acts that keep our city on a path to sustainability. And at the same time, I’m talking about the city’s aim to go after entire neighborhoods of these right-living people, to force them to join the march to irresponsibility and greed.

If the city wants our poop so badly then, damn it, they can pay us for it.