I believe Christine Blasey Ford. I do not believe Brett Kavanaugh.
I think the real point has been lost here. There is nothing about one's behavior in high school, and even college, that de facto determines a person's character at Judge Kavanaugh's age. One could have been a perfectly awful person then and be a good person now. I certainly am a much more reliable, trustworthy, dependable, honest and genuine person now than I was in high school.
So, the problem for me honestly isn't that he committed a sexual assault that went unreported when he was in high school. It is that he is lying about it now. It is that he shows zero remorse for being involved in this, zero empathy for Dr. Ford now, 35 years later. People who don't know her cried during her testimony. Judge Kavanaugh didn't even watch it.
Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh are six years younger than I. They were class of 1984, I was 1978. I went to a co-ed private Catholic high school. We had a Jesuit prep school like Georgetown Prep across town; there were also girl's schools like Holton Arms which served as social gender counterparts in it's general vicinity. That's generally where the rich kids went. My school was not from the nice part of town, though we had our share of doctor's and judge's kids in our midst. My point is I know a little bit about what Dr. Ford's and Judge Kavanaugh's high school life was like.
Everything that has been described in this sordid confirmation hearing fits with what I was told was going on around me in high school. There was certainly plenty of black-out drinking, sexual escapades, and stories of abusive behavior between the genders that were gossiped about. I witnessed little of it, except perhaps the binge drinking, but none of the recent reports of drugged sex, consensual serial multi-partner intercourse, forced groping, or exposed genitalia are strange to me. I heard about all that stuff going on in my parochial school community in the late 1970's.
Please note that I don't say that I know frank sexual misconduct was going on. I don't, but it is something people talked about from time to time. My actual particular social circle misbehaved most consistently by drunk driving. I wasn't that popular with the girls, but I did talk a good game from time to time. You might have thought my social life belonged in Penthouse Forum if you believed my stories, particularly when I was into my second bottle of Boone's Farm or Southern Comfort.
Had a person in Judge Kavanaugh's position instead admitted to unseemly behavior as a youth, offered a contrite parable of mature wisdom in present-day recognition of the wrongs, made amends for specific wrongs when possible, and evoked a genuine sense of remorse for having to live with the regret for bad behavior, I would consider the matter closed.
Beyond that, I might consider such a person an unusually well-qualified nominee, regardless of his policy biases. It behooves us all to desire judges who have genuinely done genuinely wrong things and now recognize them as such. This is the kind of person one wants to pass judgment on other wrong-doers.
But, that's not what we have.
I don't know enough to find the facts here, but my opinion of Brett Kavanaugh is quite low. I don't want him on any bench not because of anything that happened at a party in high school, but because of the man he *isn't* today.
He isn't a man who can see beyond his own hurt feelings. He isn't a man who can put his concern for his reputation aside so that an investigation can proceed to help a traumatized classmate come to terms with whatever happened to her in high school. He isn't a man who has grown beyond his high-school-age emotional over-investment in his image, his name, and his reputation.
Georgetown Prep Pride.
If you want to help people like Dr. Ford, vote.
That's it. You can turn off the cable TV, put down the NY Times. You know that the outrage, however righteous, is not really changing anything. One branch of our government has unfit leadership, another branch has corrupt leadership. Voting can fix that.
Vote.
