How do you deal with a
100% sure thing when it happened more than 30 years ago? Mind you, the 100%
surety is on both sides of the divide.
As far as Dr Christine
Blasey Ford (from Stanford) is concerned, she is sure about the following
narrative.
It happened one summer of
1982, after a day of diving at a country club.
On a spur of the moment,
she attended a gathering at a nearby house. She is sure Kavanaugh and his
friend Mark Judge were drinking, intoxicated at that time.
She is sure Kavanaugh
pushed her into a bedroom and both of them locked the door behind them.
She is also sure that one
of them turned on the music to drown out the sound in the bedroom and Kavanaugh
got on top of her and started “grinding into (her).”
After that, she is sure
that Kavanaugh covered her mouth when she started to yell and he struggled to
take off her clothes as she was wearing a swimsuit underneath.
Then, Mark Judge hopped
into the bed and “they all tumbled off the bed.”
It was at this time that
she escaped by locking herself in the bathroom.
She recalled this: “I
waited until I heard Brett and Mark leave the bedroom laughing and loudly walk
down the narrow stairway. I waited and when I did not hear them come back up
the stairs, I left the bathroom, went down the same stairwell through the
living room and left the house.”
Dr Ford concluded by
saying: “I remember being on the street and feeling an enormous sense of relief
that I escaped that house and that Brett and Mark were not coming outside after
me.”
All of that, she said she
was 100% sure.
Now, it’s Kavanaugh‘s
turn. What then is he so sure about?
Well, as a Supreme Court
nominee pending senate’s approval, he is sure that he was not at the party as
described by Dr Ford. He even had a calendar (of that summer of 82!) just to
prove he wasn’t there.
In fact, he is so sure
about it that he “angrily, tearfully and unequivocally denied sexually
assaulting Dr Christine Blasey Ford when they were teenagers.”
He even threw his chastity
into the ring saying, “he had no sexual intercourse until well after high
school.”
He then added: “This whole
two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fuelled with
apparent pent-up anger about President (Donald) Trump and the 2016 election,
fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf
of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside, left-wing
opposition groups. This is a circus. You may defeat me in the final vote, but
you’ll never get me to quit. Never.”
Wow, that’s a lot of
conspiratorial yarn to spin or political axe to grind targeted at a Supreme
Court nominee and it paints a picture of how insidious and even juvenile a
place of high politics can be.
Indeed, Trump is a
lightning rod for, well, lightning to strike not once or twice, but almost
anytime when there is some political ”baby showers” nearby.
So, where do the senate
stand now? Both sides are 100% sure. Did it happen or not?
I know you can’t prove a
negative, but what if it is a positive that is beyond proof?
Or, what if truth is not
the holy grail here, but something more is at stake because everyone drinks
from the same poison chalice in a political showdown to the detriment of the
electorate writ large?
Alas, unless it is
captured on video, and the identity of parties verified to a high standard of
proof on an event that happened more than 30 years ago, none of us will ever be
the wiser.
I also know there is no
smoke without fire, but what if this is a case of mistaken smoke from a fire
elsewhere (not coming from Kavanaugh’s pit)?
Mind you, the fate of a
man’s career and reputation (and possibly his life) is now hanging in the
balance on the testimony of his accuser, who is hard pressed to prove what she
alleges because it was some event in the distant past she’d chosen (with great reluctance
and agony) to let dead dogs lie just as long as her attacker’s prominence in
society doesn’t reach a level where she feels strongly (out of duty) that she
has to kick the dogs back to life again.
You see, Dr Ford had 30
years or more to make the complaint, make it public, pursue her attacker, but
she kept it to herself, hoping that each day would become easier to move
forward, and the pain would be further buried.
But alas, to her, it seems
almost bearable in the long shadow of silence and quietude until Kavanaugh‘s
career culminated to the top judicial post of the land.
This is when her levee of
tolerance broke. This is when she came out of the buried heap of pain
concerning a memory of that horrid day that never left her. This is when she
felt viscerally that her attacker cannot and ought not to get away with what he
did.
And this is also the part
where Dr Ford‘s accusation had bedeviled or split the senate panel in their bid
to approve Judge Brett Kavanaugh as the next Supreme Court Justice to replace
the outgoing Justice Anthony Kennedy.
This position for the top
judicial post is no small matter because in the event of a split at the highest
judicial level on issues concerning abortion or euthanasia for example, someone
like Kavanaugh (with his conservative leanings) might just tilt the scale to
the delight of the republicans, the evangelicals and the other traditional
sections of the country.
Such importance attached
to the role as the deciding voter in a split bench seems to be the tipping
point for Dr Ford to come forward after more than 30 years of hidden
woundedness.
But then, what if it is
true - because Dr Ford’s recent testimony before the judiciary committee was
reported to be authentic, believable and highly persuasive? She came off as
sincere and devoid of any discernible motive - in fact, there was no reason for
her to come forward (at all) at such a heavy social and emotional toll on
herself and family.
So, based on her
testimony, what if Kavanaugh had a past he would rather not remember so that
the same would not threaten a future he would rather not let go?
And what if in his
mindless youth he did things he regretted but not to the extent as Dr Ford had
described it? Don’t we all have skeletons in our high school or teenage’s
closets?
But of course, if blow by
blow, what Dr Ford accuses is true or close to the truth, then this is no
teenage angst, truancy or prank. It is criminal, period.
The truth is, we will
never know. And when asked why he seems resistant to invite an FBI
investigation, Kavanaugh said, “You know that’s a phoney question because the
FBI doesn’t reach conclusions.” That only thickens the plot further for the
republican side.
So, in the words of the
series ”X-Files”, the truth is out there, and it is still out there, whether
Kavanaugh is eventually selected or not to represent truth, justice and freedom
at the highest court of the land.
But let me leave you with
one thought from Kavanaugh, which has nothing to do with his judicial
appointment but has everything to do with the divided nation and divided
leadership that is the United States of America and the world.
Kavanaugh said he intends
“no ill will to Dr Ford and her family.” It reports that “he choked back tears
while saying that his 10-year-old daughter, in saying her evening prayers
recently, told his wife Ashley that “we should pray for the woman.””
Now, while I can’t say
much about Kavanaugh’s purported magnanimity since he is personally embroiled
in the whole senate drama which Senator Lindsey calls it an “ethical sham”, but
on his daughter’s prayer, her heart is definitely in the right place.
It is a heart that the
world ought to pay attention to. Her message ought to give the world reason to
pause, stand back and think real hard amidst their busy running around to
outbid, outdo and outrace one another.
At such time, what is
lacking is the courage to do the right thing, to stand up to be counted. We
need this more than ever in a post-truth world where power, wealth and fame are
often conveniently associated with truth, integrity and humility.
Everywhere we go we see
how they are being played out. When two powerful, rich and famous men come
together for purported peace and denuclearisation in a summit in Singapore
recently, and all of a sudden, one deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and the other
whose sordid past consists of murder and oppression is exalted as the emblem of
peace.
In a world where priests
are supposed to be the shepherds of hearts, they turned into sexual predators
of innocent children. In a world where democracy and equality are supposed to
assure us of a better future, what we get is concentrated wealth in a handful
with scraps for the rest. And in a world where many look to religion for refuge
from the world, what we get is a glittering haven that differs little from the
world.
I can imagine the current
state of things through the eyes of a little girl like Kavanaugh’s 10-year-old
daughter. It must have been a very confusing and conflicted one. It must have
been a world where we are no doubt young once, but we can be immature our whole
life.
So pray we must, not just
for the world out there, for the people we have hurt, but also for ourselves,
for the change in ourselves that we are so eager to see in others. Because
anything short of that is nothing more than a kind of insidious hypocrisy that
doesn’t escape the eye of our children. Cheerz.
