Judge Kavanaugh hearings: #Metoo is left's riposte to MAGA

I said this week on this blog that Donald Trump would change America as much as Reagan did, unless the left found an effective response to him and I did not think either socialism or identity politics would be effective. 

I was forgetting something I had already worked out: Feminism and #metoo will be the Democrats' response to Trumpism. 

A response that might succeed.

I wish I had time to follow the hearings of the U.S. Senate Judicial Committee. Everyone says they demean America. I thought the speeches I saw, by Messrs. Graham, Cruz and especially the charmingly courtly Southerner Kennedy (until 2005 he was a Democrat), were very good. 

What a fascinating and intelligent drama - ending with Senator Flake at the last moment, after being confronted in a lift by two young women, asking for a one week delay for a FBI investigation. What did Jung say about surnames being apt?

A lot of the background to this is that the Republican senators are white men, mostly
rather old. Rather as senators mostly were until recently. This scandal is driven by identity politics, the identity politics which drove voters into the unlikely arms of Donald Trump. 

The Democrat Senators on the committee are a reminder of how the world would be had Hillary won.

The Democrat politicians, who did not let Miss Ford know she could have testified anonymously and in private, are villains, but did the teenage Brett Kavanaugh molest a young woman?

It is horribly difficult to decide what to think about this whole awful business. 

Once I would have unthinkingly presumed a judge, even an American judge, would not lie, but we have now seen numerous bishops, archbishops and cardinals lying their heads off. Many Catholics publicly question the Pope's word.

The fact that four people made allegations about the young Kavanaugh seemed to make his guilt seem likely but on investigation only one allegation had substance. 

Judge Kavanaugh says he was a virgin for many years after leaving high school and that is the sort of high-minded, bookish, conservative chap he seems. But being a high-minded conservative type inflames his enemies. Even his saying that he was a virgin rouses them to fury. Virginity supports the patriarchy, you see.


These words below from the Wall St Journal editorial are the best thing I have read on the case so far and convinced me that he is telling the truth. I do not for one moment, however, think Miss Ford is lying. Unlike Anita Hill all those years ago she seems clearly sincere and has suffered greatly. I presume what she said happened to her did happen to her. I think somehow she is accusing the wrong man. 

"Ms. Ford certainly was a sympathetic witness—by her own admission “terrified” at the start and appearing to be emotionally fragile. Her description of the assault and its impact on her was wrenching. She clearly believes what she says happened to her. Her allegation should have been vetted privately, in confidence, as she said she would have preferred. Instead ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein held it for six weeks and it was leaked—perhaps to cause precisely such a hearing circus.

"Yet there is still no confirming evidence beyond her own testimony, and some of what she says has been contradicted. The female friend Ms. Ford says was at the home the night of the assault says she wasn’t there. The number of people she says were there has varied from four to five and perhaps more, but every potential witness she has cited by name says he or she doesn’t recall the party.
"....As for Judge Kavanaugh, his self-defense was as powerful and emotional as the moment demanded. If he was angry at times, imagine how you would feel if you were so accused and were innocent as he says he is. To deny the allegations as he did—invoking his children and parents and so many others who know him—and be lying would mean that he is a sociopath. If he were found to be lying, he would be impeached and probably prosecuted. Nothing in his long record in public life betrays the kind of behavior he is accused of against women."

This story from a left wing site, Buzzfeed, says that two other men say they are guilty of the assault for which Miss Ford blames the judge.

The one week delay on the Senate floor is right and might remove the cloud over Judge Kavanaugh's head. It might also show up how the Democrats exploited poor Miss Ford's emotional fragility to win a political coup. 

In any case the FBI are the ones who should look at this, seeing that the solution that we would go for in Britain, of asking a judge to examine the evidence, is not really appropriate. I suppose the FBI is to be trusted but it is good though that they are not allowed to ask for more time to investigate.

Something else that made me see what is at stake in these hearings is this by Rod Dreher.

I can’t stand Trump. I didn’t vote for him and for the moment don’t plan to in 2020. But where else to turn? What we have learned in the last two weeks is that the left will crush anyone who does not support The Agenda. Our elite institutions will crush The Agenda’s opponents (take it from me – I work in a university, where I have to maintain a careful silence about virtually everything). Do we really think this will stop with Kavanaugh? Do we really think they won’t come for all of us? I have a son – what am I supposed to tell him? “Be romantic and treat women well… but also get a notarized consent contract for every interaction you have.” What kind of world is the left pushing us into? We all act shocked at China’s new “social credit” surveillance system, but does anyone doubt it’s coming our way? Does the left not see that the endpoint of this road is total surveillance and records of all interactions?