Quite frankly, the motivation to write about current events has somewhat slipped my mind. Two mobs seem to be slugging it out against one another with no particular end in sight. For the Republicans, we seem to have settled on the idea that anything — and I mean, anything — that angers Democrats is a moral positive.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have chosen to meet like-with-like, doing everything possible to keep the plates of outrage spinning while Republicans are being asked to tiptoe through the minefield of triggers, be it in the press or on social media amidst the Legions of Wokeness (TM) that seem to be begging to be offended.
My God… where is Christopher Hitchens when you need him?
Of course, those two words “That’s offensive!” or “I’m offended!” do not constitute an argument. Pointing out that it is really three words with a contraction doesn’t consist of an argument either. Yet we have moved beyond the Age of Reason championed by our Founding Fathers against British despotism and have inherited something worse than the Age of Feelings (or the Age of Teh Feelz if you are a Millennial) — rather, we have surrendered reason for intuition.
It doesn’t have to be true, you see. It just has to fit the narrative.
No objective observer will look at the Democrats sitting on Senate Judiciary Committee and believe that we have individuals who care one iota about due process. They were belligerent, dishonorable, and in the final coup de grace we have the likes of Senator Dianne Fienstein (D-CA) dredging up some nameless accusation of sexual assault — an as-yet-unproven allegation with no witnesses or corroborating evidence that Feinstein had in her hands mid-summer… but only played the card after Senate Judiciary held its hearings.
Really?
No one believe that the Democrats are proceeding honestly here. Arguments that we have to “believe the accuser” are bunk — in America, we are innocent until proven guilty. Likewise, arguments that suggest that the FBI should investigate this (again) are ludicrous as well, as the FBI is not the Super Serious Police as Charles Cooke has duly noted:
The FBI is not The Super Serious Police. It’s an agency that is tasked with investing alleged violations of federal law, and even then with a limited remit. The Kavanaugh case, whatever the details, does not qualify. Feinstein knows this. Maybe most journalists do not.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) September 18, 2018
What we have here is something quite simple. The Senate Democrats, knowing that their chances to take the U.S. Senate are slim and on the defensive, have to stir up their base on something that matters. The best way to do this? Delaying tactics. If they can make 2018’s U.S. Senate races about U.S. Supreme Court justices? Then they can drag this out ad infinitum.
But perhaps more disturbing is this.
Right now, many Kavanaugh foes are eager to implement a new standard that they would never agree to live under themselves — that the accusation itself is sufficient evidence of guilt, as Jim Geraghty rightly observes in National Review:
False, or unprovable, accusations of rape and sexual assault occur. The 2014 Rolling Stone article. The 2006 accusations against the Duke Lacrosse team. Columbia University’s “Mattress Girl.” Those high-profile examples don’t mean one should instinctively refuse to believe every accusation, any more than the cases of Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski, or Mike Tyson mean one should instinctively believe every accusation.
But if the foes of Kavanaugh are determined to implement a new standard — that the accusation itself is sufficient evidence of guilt — then that new standard will be implemented for figures in both parties, whether they realize it or not.
If you believe that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Keith Ellison, Al Franken, and Bobby Scott are all falsely accused, while Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Donald Trump, Blake Fahrenthold, Roy Moore, and Eric Greitens are all guilty as sin — or vice versa! — you’re part of the problem.
More accurately, the political left in this country — not sufficiently chastened by the #MeToo movement’s implosion of Hollywood “casting couch” culture — has chosen to weaponize (and in doing so, trivialize) the accusation of rape against political enemies.
It doesn’t have to be true, you see. It just has to fit a narrative.
As a young man, I was taught that the difference between the American justice system and the Soviet justice system is that Moscow would plow through a hundred innocent people to get to one guilty man. Conversely, America would allow a hundred guilty people to walk so as to ensure that not a single innocent man was ever wrongfully convicted.
Set aside for a moment whether or not this is actually true in practice. Such concepts are the ideal we hold up for ourselves because without them, there is no justice (social or individual) to strive for — just a clattering of appetites all prefabricated to fit into our own social narratives that give us some sort of public identity.
The Kavanaugh’s of the world? Well they just have to suffer through our public temper tantrums.
Let’s rewind the tape as to when this all started, too. Back in 2006, a popular Virginia Republican was recorded calling someone ‘macaca’ at a fundraiser. Of course, no one knew (or to this day, knows) what a macaca actually is… but Democrats leapt upon it as evidence of deeply seated racism from a man who did more to help historically black colleges and universities in Virginia than his Democratic predecessors — holdovers from the Massive Resistance era — ever did.
That man was George Allen. It didn’t matter that the next three months of media slander that passed for journalism back then wasn’t true.
It doesn’t have to be true, you see. It just has to fit a narrative.
…and if Republicans cave on Kavanaugh, or lack the moral certitude to fight this back now? Forget what the Democrats did to Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas… the tactic will now have currency and power, and for those who express thoughtcrime?
You might be next.
