Justice For All

Short of a highly unlikely ballsy Parliamentary maneuver by Senator Chuck (Amy’s dumber cousin) Schumer, Brett Kavanaugh will be hired to a lifetime position as a Supreme Court Justice. Rumors of the end of America as we know it precede this event at a tsunami pace. These rumors are all generated from the Pundit Class, a list of about 75 people who sit around on cable news shows and pontificate about what it all means. Most of them sit at keyboards and write for well-known publications as well, often getting paid highly for their opinions. I’m giving my point of view for free, here and on other outlets. The World Wide Web has brought a soapbox to everyone with a few minutes and an opinion. The soapbox is democracy in the raw, and the Pundit Class along with Establishment and Establishment wanna-be politicians all despise raw democracy. My problem with the Pundit Class is not that they get paid, it’s the consistency with which they are wrong, and are not called out for it.

Kavanaugh being placed on the court, in spite of his clear lack of honesty and his even clearer hubris, is not the end of Democracy. It is not a harbinger of a new American Civil War. It is, however, a survival challenge to the too-loyal, (not) resisting, opposition: aka Democrats.

But first, I really want to take some shots at the Republicans. They have some internal problems that make Democrats seem like good guys. And with Democrats doing everything they can to convince Republicans to vote for them, including ignoring economic realities such as inflation, the plight of the poor and the inherent inefficiencies of Neoliberal policy, that is a tall order. But even with Democrats and Republicans sharing the same economic agenda, the Republicans exist in some bubble of unreality. While Democrats are kissing Republican voters’ butts, those same voters are laughing at them knowing the Democrats are too busy trying to get their vote to actually do anything. But examining the Republican reaction to the revelations that Dr. Ford may have been subjected to an attempted rape by Judge Kavanaugh reveals the just how empty Republicans are.

Dr. Ford revealed her story, previously only told to her husband and a therapist a number of years ago. She revealed her story in a letter to her Congresswoman and her Senator, Diane Feinstein. Dr. Ford, while the nomination was in its early stages, asked for anonymity. Sen. Feinstein was determined to honor that request. Once it appeared that Judge Kavanaugh had lied in his earlier testimony about his involvement in various political hi-jinx, including spying on Democrats and supporting torture for the George W. Bush administration, was going to be ignored by Republicans who view any act that does not hinder their reach for total political authority as irrelevant. Democrats still retained a sense of morality that clearly eliminated Judge Kavanaugh as a viable Supreme Court Justice.

Suddenly, whether Feinstein, her staff, or one of Dr. Ford’s friends that she had recently revealed what was going on, released the information about the attempted rape. The defense, then put up by Republicans was all about the passage of time. The years that Dr. Ford kept the story unknown, and the amount of time Sen. Feinstein took to acknowledge she had the letter, became the Republican talking points to ignore this information. This was a willful and immoral disregard for a human being who had held in the most horrifying event in her life for well over 30 years; they blamed her for not reporting it at the time, which was nearly universally not done in the 1980s; especially when the perpetrator was a wealthy, politically connected white boy. Republicans, true to their anything-to-win, morality and humanity be damned, secret motto only doubled down their support for a clearly flawed candidate. Sen. Feinstein, as far as anyone can tell, kept the story private, but once the story came out moved immediately to have it investigated. Again, the Republicans invoked time as the problem. Only now, they claimed they did not have enough time to investigate, which eventually they did allow.

Yet, in 3 days, the FBI made a thorough investigation of an event that happened over 30 years ago! To call that thorough is a lie and diminishes the honor of the FBI even more than whether or not a couple of FBI agents preferred Clinton over Trump. There were witnesses and sources not even contacted by telephone, who could have filled in the blanks in Ford’s story. Indeed, some of the blanks began to be filled in from her testimony before the Senate. Those blanks were there not because the event did not happen, even Kavanaugh acknowledged that. The blanks were due to trauma. Yet the Republican party ignored and did not bother to get medical confirmation of what a traumatic event can do to memory.

This is about as low as a political party in its unmitigated desire for power can get. It is up to the people of the United States, to stop them. And I am not advocating voting blue, no matter who. This is not about who wins in November: it’s about what we demand of the people who are elected in November. And the people who hold office. This exposes an amoral grasp for power that requires all people take to their soapboxes and insist that the powers and authority vested in them be utilized to cleanse out immoral and amoral choices. Our elected officials at all levels of government have the power to remove persons from office, following procedures such as impeachment and recall elections. Other tools are available for the people and elected officials that want to install justice as a standard by which we are governed.

Politicians, regardless of party, need operate and only vote for policies that bring about economic justice, social justice, and work to change our elections to reflect electoral justice. Instead of calling an end to democracy, we can use this confirmation as a keystone to call for making America a nation based on Justice in all its many configurations, not just an honorary title bestowed on 9 people.