Tag Archives: Kavanaugh

Political Rants

White rage.

I hear Tucker Carlson is worried about an ensuing race war. Sounds like a problem for old Tucker. I guess he should keep the musket loaded and ready back at the homestead. Tucker has heard all these people on television complaining about white male privilege and now he’s feeling a little picked on. Like Lindsay Graham, he feels squelched. White men just can’t get a word in edgewise, what with all of these stories of abuse and marginalization.

This obsession of Tucker’s did not start with the Kavanaugh nomination, but the Supreme Court justice wannabe certainly stoked the flames with his shrill rebuttal of accusations of sexually violent behavior back in his high school and college days. In fact, the judge was white aggrievement personified on that occasion, which played very well with white republican / conservative men both on the Senate Judiciary Committee and off. Now he’s well on his way to being a white dude folk hero, even if a miracle happens and he doesn’t end up on the high Court for life.

Judicial temperment ca. 2018I’ll be honest – I don’t shock easy, but Kavanaugh’s testimony last Thursday was freaking shocking. I have never seen a grown person, let alone a federal judge, act in such a juvenile manner. Much has been made of his incivility and hyperpartisanship, but I have heard relatively little with regard to the childishness of his performance. The man was so humiliatingly sophomoric and petulant, I very nearly felt sorry for him. If you haven’t seen this performance, I urge you to take the time to do so. The Majority Report has posted the entire thing on their YouTube channel. It is flabbergastingly ridiculous.

Before this testimony, I had thought there was a fairly strong possibility that Kavanaugh had grown out of whatever rowdy drunk phase he had gone through. I thought Dr. Ford’s allegations were credible and convincing, but I thought maybe, just maybe, this fellow had learned to be a more controlled, less loutish person. After that speech and subsequent questioning last Thursday, I am convinced that he is exactly the same person as Dr. Ford was describing – a little older, perhaps, but not fundamentally changed. His childishness is, in and of itself, reason enough to keep him off the court. There are many others, but that one is as plain as the nose on his face.

My guess is that he will be made associate justice over the next week. Not sure what is next in this sorry saga, but I have a bad feeling about this.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Eleven angry men.

When you think about the Kavanaugh nomination, you really need to step back and see the full picture. Sure, stopping the nomination is crucial, and it’s perhaps fortunate that he planted the seeds of his own self-destruction decades ago, long before his tenure as a hyperpolitical operative in the Republican Party. (Honestly, the guy is like the Zelig of American conservatism, working on the Star investigation, researching Vince Foster, participating in the “Brooks Brothers Riot” during the Florida recount, and on from there.) But if his nomination fails, they will attempt to fill the slot quite quickly with a much more boring, just as reactionary judge capable of serving multiple decades on the Supreme Court. So … why not just withdraw this troubled judge?

Well, HE seems nice.My guess is that they’re clinging to this one because Kavanaugh has proven to be such a reliable operative, and because he has a freakishly expansive view of executive power and privilege. (He apparently developed that during his stints in the W. Bush administration.) It’s hard to be certain of their reasoning, but their overarching motivations are quite clear. They want this seat and they want it now. The GOP has been working on this project for decades, taking an already conservative  court steadily to the right since Nixon’s days in power. A solid reactionary majority is the right’s insurance policy; it’s their trump card, no pun intended.

Consider the Republican party’s position. They remain, in essence, the party of white men. As this becomes less and less a nation of white men, it is an imperative for them to stave off the inevitable erosion of their voter base. The Senate is not so much of a problem, as a distinctly regional party can dominate that body given that party’s geographic distribution (e.g. Wyoming’s Senate delegation is  equal to California’s, even though the latter state is 70 times the size of the former in terms of population). The hyper-partisan GOP gerrymandering of the House in 2010 has made that body a lot more like the Senate in terms of representation, but that is a short-term solution for them. And the Presidency? They have lost the popular vote in six out of the last seven elections, so they mostly rely on narrow electoral college victories.

The Supreme Court, on the other hand, is the ultimate arbiter of public policy. With a solid reactionary majority, the GOP will be able to defeat progressive policies long after the party can no longer dominate electoral politics. So there’s much at stake in the coming days for those eleven angry white men on the Judiciary Committee …. much more than the problematic optics of the Kavanaugh hearing.

Elections matter, people. We need to take the Court seriously.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Second chances.

I come from the land of second chances, so the current Kavanaugh saga has a distinctly familiar ring to it. Mind you, I have not benefited from the level of privilege that Judge K has enjoyed his whole life through, but close enough. I grew up in what was described once as a “rock-ribbed Republican” town in upstate New York, virtually all white residents, lots of professionals and rich folk as well as middle class, borderline working class. It’s the kind of place where you have to fuck up pretty badly before it affects you in any serious way. Underage drinking, drug use, and other low-level criminality were widespread. Arrests were not unheard of, but rare, and the impact of these brushes with the law were almost never life-changing.

Right down the street, in the heart of the city, people of color face a far different reality. Their opportunities for advancement are severely constrained, and when something goes wrong, it’s either life-changing or life-ending. I think about kids like Hector McClain, who at 16 was sent to prison for four years because he failed to stop two other teens from beating a Utica, NY police officer. Here’s an excerpt of a press report about his trial:

As he was sentenced today, McClain acknowledged what he did was wrong. But McClain went on to defend his actions by saying he feared that his friends were going to be hurt by the officer.

“I only did it to make sure they were OK,” McClain said. “If you care about somebody, you’re going to do whatever it takes to keep them safe.” McClain added, “Nobody sees it the way I see it, know what I’m saying?”

Judge Dwyer said he understood McClain’s perspective to an extent, but still pointed out the flaw in McClain’s thinking. “This wasn’t just somebody on the street — this was a police officer,” Dwyer said.

McClain replied, “I’m not saying my actions were right. I know they were wrong. I’m not a dummy … But I’m still going to protect them no matter what.” Then Dwyer interjected, “You could have protected them better by stopping the incident.”

As the sentencing ended, McClain said, “I’ll just change my life around as soon as I get out.”

“You have to learn from your mistakes … so we don’t have to go through this ever again,” Dwyer said.  (Utica Observer-Dispatch, April 1, 2008)

Four years in prison, for a sixteen-year-old African-American kid. No mulligans for him. Meanwhile, on the other side of the track, white teens like me (a generation removed) commit felonies (albeit vacuous ones) in the shelter of their tony homes, where police patrols are tasked with keeping kids like McClain out, not hauling kids like me and Kavanaugh in. Our mistakes tend not to follow us like a malevolent cloud for the rest of our lives. When you couple that with the generations of advantages our families enjoyed – access to remunerative professions, mortgage assistance denied to black families, ingress into neighborhoods from which people of color were barred, and decades of building wealth – you begin to understand apartheid American-style.

Don’t feel sorry for Kavanaugh. Even if he’s held somewhat accountable and denied a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court, he’ll be just fine.

luv u,

jp