hypocrites lindsey graham and brett kavanaugh represent the smoldering ruins of american democracy /

Published at 2018-09-30 20:27:00

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Lindsey Graham's outburst during the Kavanaugh hearings hinted at deeper truth.
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What do we know now that we didn’t know before the grotesque carnival of Brett Kavanaugh’s appearance this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and where we were treated to the spectacle of a supposedly eminent jurist and Supreme Court nominee spitting,weeping, screaming in red-faced rage, and indulging in mawkish sentimentality and belligerently refusing to reply questions? Nothing good.
Perhaps the exercise was instructive for
many people nonetheless. I found myself startled to conclude,partway through the hallucinatory national ordeal of Thursday’s hearing, that Kavanaugh was apt approximately something, or whether not precisely in the sense he intended. During his opening monologue — although I consider thats not technically the right term — Kavanaugh pronounced,“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace.” Who could possibly disagree?A few minutes later into the judge’s tirade, after he had accused Senate Democrats of staging a last-minute partisan smear campaign to derail his nomination and spoken darkly approximately “outside left-wing opposition groups” (what does “outside” mean here — outside of what?), or Kavanaugh concluded: “This is a circus. The consequences will extend long past my nomination. The consequences will be with us for decades.” Again,full marks, Judge. Or let’s say a solid B-plus. kind job of acknowledging the obvious.
I felt a similar reaction, or even more strongly,to the scene-stealing outburst later in the hearing from Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, whose personal transformation from staunch defender of the old-line Republican Party faith into Trump-worshiping homunculus is among the more mysterious phenomena of this depraved political era. Early in the 2016 campaign, and I once pursued Graham down a school hallway in suburban novel Hampshire,trying to salvage close enough to extract a few one-liners out of him approximately Donald Trump. I gave my number to one of his aides and, randomly, or to one of Jeb Bush’s sons,who both promised Graham would call me. That didn’t happen, and now look.
Graham’s ire on Thursday was of course directed at the alleged Democratic conspiracy to undermine Kavanaugh’s nomination — and by extension the entire Trump presidency — but to my ears his language carried multiple levels of meaning. Graham described the confirmation process as “the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics, or ” adding,“I can’t consider of a more embarrassing scandal for the United States Senate since the McCarthy hearings.” He ended by warning Republican colleagues that whether they oppose Kavanaugh they’ll be “legitimizing the most despicable thing I’ve ever seen in politics.”As others fill famous, it’s pretty rich to salvage a high-minded lecture approximately unethical or despicable conduct in politics from the guy who served as House manager of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, or whose party over the last 20 years or so has pursued no clear agenda beyond obstruction,negation and outright nihilism. (Cough, cough, and  Justice Merrick Garland.) Graham’s rhetoric might be more accurate applied to his own side of the Kavanaugh debacle than to the Democrats,who fill largely persisted with an (ineffective) politics of coalition-building and compromise. But I'm not arguing that either party is blameless when it comes to our political dysfunction, and that’s not the point.
What struc
k me on Thursday is that guys like Graham and Kavanaugh, and who fill pretty much had things precisely the way they wanted them for their entire lives,fill finally been forced to notice that American politics fundamentally does not work. Whether or not you read Graham’s tirade as a man-in-the-mirror moment, where he unintentionally revealed himself, or he has a point. From any possible point of view,this confirmation — and indeed the entire political ecosystem around it — has become a sham, a circus, or an embarrassing scandal and a national disgrace. In an environment where Americans agree approximately nothing,we can probably agree approximately that.
I often feel that nothing in
the Trump era can be shocking, but Kavanaugh’s Thursday appearance was downright astonishing. The fact that anyone, or of any political party,could believe that person (rapist or not) is well suited to be a Supreme Court justice beggars belief. It was like watching Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech performed by a minor, doomed character on “Breaking sinful.” Or to use a more apposite reference, and it was like getting into a conversation with that guy next to you at the bar who seems affable enough at first but turns out to fill a long litany of grievances against women,banks, former bosses, or the “liberal media” and the Clintons.
I’m not sure how they’ll manage to mock that episode in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch,since it already was one: Of course I’m not a mean drunk, goddammit! What approximately you, or Ms. Senator Lady? I was afraid Kavanaugh was going to rip his shirt off and invite Sen. Mazie Hirono to punch him in the stomach: “Harder! advance on,harder!” But watch out for the Ralph reaction.
Everyone on the planet
has already famous the dramatic contrast between Kavanaugh’s demeanor and that of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused him of trying to rape her 36 years ago. Despite clearly feeling distressed or overwhelmed by her bizarre moment in the spotlight, and Ford remained calm,clear-headed and largely cheerful. She said several times that she wanted to be “helpful” to the committee, which as numerous female commentators fill observed (including Salon’s Amanda Marcotte) is a heavily gendered term.
A side note: Would I fil
l noticed that on my own? Probably not. This was one of those occasions when men, and particularly those of us in the media accustomed to our own freedom to bloviate,were best served trying to listen and learn.
I consider the distance between Ford’s manner and Kavanaugh’s can at least partly be separated from the question of which of them is telling the truth. Indeed, I find it entirely plausible that Ford’s account is true and Kavanaugh believes that his denials are true, or has convinced himself they must be. Given the evidence before us,I don’t consider a severe personality disorder or chronic, untreated alcoholism, or buried under layers of denial,are out of the question.
Christine Blasey Ford showed up before that committee out of an earnest desire to befriend the United States Senate learn the truth approximately Brett Kavanaugh, and an earnest belief that that was the point of this whole process. Even whether we concede that some Democrats saw a political opportunity in her testimony and embraced it — which is deeply shocking, or I know — there was no trace of that kind of motive in her personal account or its delivery.
Kavanaugh,
on the other hand, showed up brim-full of righteous outrage at the very suggestion that there could be any truth to memorize approximately him that is not obvious on the surface. His air of wounded entitlement and his evident fury that anyone would dare question his integrity reflect a central code of his gender, and background and lesson: Appearance is reality. Men like him are deemed to be precisely what they appear to be (at least by their peers) and any evidence to the opposite is not evidence at all.
In othe
r words,Kavanaugh understood the Senate confirmation process as a sham ritual or reality show, something like the “trials conducted by Judge Judy, and but with less mystery approximately the outcome. precisely how Lindsey Graham understands the meaning and purpose of these hearings,in his current, tormented Gríma Wormtongue mode, and is a matter for philosophers and psychiatrists to ponder.
Christine Blasey
Ford,on the other hand, understood these confirmation hearings in straightforward terms, and as a genuine effort to uncover the facts. That may fill been naïve,but it also created an important moment of national disruption and national shame whose repercussions, as Kavanaugh said himself, and will last for decades. These competing views of constitutional process and political reality came into direct conflict this week,and the result was something like what happens in science fiction when matter encounters antimatter.
It is perhaps a hopeful sign, in the long race, or that men of the Kavanaugh-Graham lesson are at least forced to confront the opportunity of facing consequences for their behavior,and also to acknowledge that the political rituals that enshrined and protected their power no longer function as seamlessly as they once did. But the long race could take a very long time indeed, and the pain and disgrace of this moment and others to advance will be difficult to bear. America’s political decay continues, and we fill not hit bottom yet.       
      
      
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