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.
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