How could the greatness of America have come
down to this?
Thirty five years ago a young teenage boy may
or not have tried to (i) get lucky (ii) take advantage of (iii) sexually abuse
(iv) rape or (v) attack with attempt to harm (insert the term of your choice) a
young teenage girl, at a party, where alcohol may or may not have been involved.
Based on the actions and comments of both
Democrats and Republicans in Congress and their respective supporting team of
cheerleaders in both the left leaning and right leading media, this once
obscure and certainly very dated story has dominated the media and the debate
in our country for the better part of 10 days, and it is surely going to
continue.
You would have thought that a gigantic
asteroid was on a collision course with earth which would wipe out half of the
population, and each party was posturing to insure, that the other side ….would
make up most of the unfortunate half.
Really? Is this happening? Does anyone else see the absurdity of all
this? That this possible incident would be
contemplated/dissected/reimagined/hypothesized with such magnitude that the
world has almost stopped turning? I can’t be the only one. I can’t be the only person in the country
asking….
How the hell did we get here?
Without belittling the impact that this event
would have had on that young teenage girl, if it happened, because I am sure it
would have been traumatic, on a larger, macro level I can’t contain my contempt
that this moment is emblematic of the larger scale failure of America. Not the country of, but the idea of.
By all accounts the nomination of Brett
Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump is a contentious one. His election
would represent a clear cut shift in the balance of the Supreme Court, where
five justices would lean heavily right, and this new balance might continue for
years to come.
Dianne Feinstein’s choice to sit on the news
of this possible incident between two teenagers until the 11th hour of the
Kavanaugh nomination was clearly a partisan effort to delay and possibly derail
it. That by itself is bad enough, but
the apparent leaking of Ford’s name to the press presumably by some Democratic
staffer, when Ford had first come forth under the condition of anonymity,
represents just another selfish political maneuver and the sell-out of an
individual’s right of privacy for purely political purposes.
Oh, we all know why this happened. It was political payback time for Mitch
McConnell’s decision to shut down the nomination of Merrick Garland for the
Supreme Court with 10 months remaining in Barack Obama’s second term. To be clear,
I think McConnell’s despicable decision represents one of the most disgusting
political acts in the 240+ year history of our country. It was then followed up
by his decision with the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to remove the filibuster
rule in the Senate which would have required 60 votes to confirm.
As I wrote in my post, #102 - Mitch McConnell:
The Second Most Despicable Man in American Politics (I don’t have to tell you
who gets the top spot, do I?)
McConnell’s actions represented an outright suppression of the President’s
constitutional power. And they weren’t
based on any legitimate rationale or any justifiable righteousness. They were based on McConnell’s belief that the
end, his end, justified any means.
It was the start of a theme perpetuated by Republicans
across the country as they put aside the shameless and loathsome behaviors of
Donald Trump because he gave them the greatest chance to sway the Supreme Court
in their favor. They chose to lower our standards and to disregard the outright
danger this man represents to our country, because they too concluded, that their own selfish ends
justified any means.
Fast forward to the circus spectacle of recent
days where Democrats are now doing their level best to mirror the loathsome behavior
of the opposition. Why should they try
to hold the high moral ground? Why
should they exhibit integrity when Republicans can’t even spell the word?. If the rules of the game have changed, they
are just going to do their best to adapt.
But it hasn’t ended there. It just gets worse
as the crazies just try to one up each other.
Ed Whalen, the president of a conservative
think tank called The Ethics and & Public Policy Center, (let’s give it a
moment and let that sink in…. ) and an assertive supporter of Kavanagh suggested
on Twitter that Ford, might have mistaken the identity of her alleged sexual
assaulter and then, then, then, went ahead and actually provided the name and
picture of a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Prep. Whoa! I bet that poor dude had no idea what
hit him!
And I was never so happy…that I went to public
school growing up.
So you see, this is how we got here. This is why an obscure event which may or may
not have occurred some 35 years ago has dominated the political landscape in
recent days. This is why our political
leaders are falling over themselves.
This is why nothing of any substance ever gets done.
A cynical observer might conclude that that
aforementioned asteroid was coming much closer to earth now, and the light from
the sun was beginning to dim on the idea of America.
I would be lying if I said, I hadn’t had
similar thoughts in the last 22 months, but I still believe that over time,
America will wake up and the good guys on both sides of the aisle will prevail.
I won’t stop believing otherwise. I can’t.
The threat of the asteroid is too terrible to
contemplate.
[This is just part one of Ford v. Kavanaugh. Mind you, I have no idea what part two will entail;
I just know there won’t be any shortage of material]
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