How wealth and privilege work
A widely shared post by Emily Denny from September 27:
I believe Brett Kavanaugh. I believe that he truly doesn’t remember sexually assaulting someone. I believe that he’s forgotten all the hurt he has caused women. I believe that he didn’t understand the gravity of his actions as a 17-year-old. I believe that the night he forever altered Dr. Ford’s life is just another blip in the foggy haze of his teenage years.
I believe his upbringing and his privilege poisoned his ability to understand right and wrong. I believe he didn’t write “sexually assault someone” in his calendar. I believe he doesn’t think he did it.
I believe he’s frightened and upset. I believe his tears and whimpers. I believe that he truly thinks that this has ruined his life. I believe that he thinks that potentially not getting a job and having some people say mean things about him on the internet has “ruined his life”. I believe he thinks this is the worst case scenario.
And if this isn’t a blistering account of the status of wealth and privilege in this country, I don’t know what is.
I believe you, Dr. Ford.
I differ with her on one item. I’m not sure I do believe that he doesn’t think he did it. If he does, and if the many accounts of what a belligerent drunk he was are true, he has no intellectual right to think that. He’s a judge ffs, not an overworked high school teacher who works 20 hours a week at Starbucks on top of teaching and has no time to learn about alcohol and memory – he’s a judge and an abusive alcoholic, so he damn well should be informed about alcohol and memory and how both connect to abuse. He should be fully aware that getting blackout drunk can wipe your memory, and that that means it’s very likely that he’s forgotten big patches of time. He should be well aware that he fits the description. He should be well aware that what Ford describes sounds hideously plausible. He should be well aware that when he gets drunk he can be dangerous to others. He should be well aware of a lot of things that he furiously denies.
That all by itself is reason enough not to put him on the Supreme Court. He seems to let his self-interest and ego override obvious likelihoods and patterns, which isn’t good in a judge. He seems to be ignorant of his own cognitive weaknesses, which also isn’t good in a judge.
RE: [believing] that he doesn’t think he did it… I don’t think that’s how Emily Denny meant it quite that way. I.E. it’s not necessarily that Kavanaugh was blackout drunk on that particular occasion (when he assaulted Ford) and has therefore lost the specific recollection of having assaulted her due to the effects of alcohol on memory. That may or may not be the case relating to the specific incident featuring Dr Ford, but sort of beside the point.
I think that what Denny is getting at is that what he did to Ford was just one (not particularly memorable) instance of this kind of behavior on Kavanaugh’s part, and that the behavior itself was so habitual that he simply can’t recall THAT time, THAT party, THAT attempt to rape a girl (especially since it was not completed and thus a relative disappointment from his perspective). I think that’s what she means: that it was so routine for him to do that and more, that it was common and normal for him to have no inherent interest in the effects of his behavior on his targets and, furthermore, because he experienced no repercussions of any sort for this behavior for many years, he didn’t even get much of an incling that there even WAS anything to care about in the experience of his victims.
So yeah, he is incredulous and furious and sincere about it, because from his perspective, it’s like he borrowed a friend’s car back in high school for a joyride (without asking), like he did all the time, without anyone getting worked up about it, and now, suddenly, these asshole Dems are trying to charge him with Grand Theft Auto out of the blue, just as he’s about to score the job of his life.
And honestly, that’s how everybody else (male, privileged, conservative) is reacting to this, so it’s not exactly a stretch.
Personally, I’m incredulous in a similar way, just from the other side (if that makes any sense) — and not just at Dr. Ford’s allegations getting any traction, but at the entire #metoo movement getting anywhere, or being taken seriously at all. Because the sort of thing that Kavanaugh is being accused of IS, actually, treated as expected and acceptable behavior, because sexual harassment, assault, and rape IS so routine, so expected — an entire tradition, with a rich arsenal of euphemisms, and rhetorical devices, and rehearsed power plays and a smorgasborg of ways to make the victim shut up and go away so that the whole business can be swept under the rug and we can all get on with what’s really important.
There’s always time to absorb disinformation. And there’s no shortage. The Xtian right dismisses alcoholism as Sin, Libertarians cannot accept the notion that Free Will can be so blatantly overturned as it is in alcoholics. Both parties have extensive media platforms from which to promote their creeds.
On the ‘other’ side, heavy-drinking subcultures (journalists?) rationalize away the question of alcohol every day online. Salon and Jezebel, are saturated with alcohol advertising, and their editorial content seems to reflect that.