The first thing made crystal clear by the hearing is that two weeks of male anguish is greater than 36 years of female suffering. Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee, one after another, to empathize with Brett Kavanaugh, “unable to imagine what he’s been through.” Occasionally, one might give lip service to the strain Christine Blasey Ford has been under during the last two weeks. None wondered how she’d suffered over the last more than third of a century? The day after listening to Ford tell her heartbreaking tale, the committee voted along Party lines, to send Kavanaugh’s nomination on to the full Senate for a vote on his confirmation as if they had heard nothing.
Next, we learned that when a man displays inappropriate anger in a public setting, it’s viewed as righteous and a sign of his sincerity. Kavanaugh displayed the complete opposite of proper judicial temperament. He blamed a conspiracy of people upset with him at his role in the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the results of the 2016 election which gave us Donald Trump. Had a woman in her opening statement and testimony, displayed great anger, broken down in tears, evaded the questions of United States Senators and demanded they answer his own, there would be no more consideration of her confirmation. But Brett Kavanaugh is a man.
Finally, we learned that even an individual protester has power. On his way to a Senate hearing, Senator Jeff Flake was confronted by protesters in an elevator who forced him to address the women that weren’t being heard. They told their own stories of rape and abuse which they’d never told because they felt they would not be believed. Worse yet, much like Christine Blasey Ford, they might be believed but the people that mattered wouldn’t care.
As a result of those protesters and other factors, Senator Flake requested a delay for a week to allow for a limited FBI Investigation of the complaints against Kavanaugh which the President has now signed off on. There is no guarantee what if anything this investigation will uncover. It was quite clear that Republican Senators on the committee didn’t want an investigation, Brett Kavanaugh didn’t want an investigation and neither did Donald Trump.
To be continued…
ENIGMA IN BLACK 