Right, so here's the deal. There's a lot of partisan stuff going on with Brett Kavanaugh, as with any Supreme Court nominee. People on both "sides" of the aisle want to get someone on the Court most likely to side with them. It's always partisan in ways that mock the very tradition of our Judiciary. We can get that out of the way early.
Also, we can dispense with my personal objections: 1) that anyone would get confirmed before Merrick Garland gets a vote. The guy was nominated and is extremely qualified (not to mention moderate, but hey). He deserves a vote. 2) Trump nominated Kavanugh because he's got a robust philosophy of Presidential exception; the guy is about the least likely judge in the entire country to let a subpoena or an indictment of a sitting President go forward. He might be a conservative darling, but Kavanaugh was picked to personally benefit Donald Trump. That's troubling to say the least.
However, none of those things are my topics for the day. Instead I want to talk about the difficult journey of the sexual ethics debates roiling our nation. I read somewhere recently that the only real consent is an "enthusiastic 'yes.'" That sounds great. I affirm and endorse and support this idea, no questions asked. It has always been this way in fact, but, of course, it's not always been this way in culture or common practice. We've also yet to find a path through the thorny world of punishment and consequences, when it comes to sexual offenders.
Brett Kavanaugh now stands accused by two different women of making drunken sexual advances towards them, a couple years apart, roughly 35 years ago. He's making it hard on himself by denying these things so vociferously. Neither of the claims involves actual sex, so his protestations that he didn't have sex until college aren't really pertinent. Also, once you've admitted to occasionally over-imbibing, it's tough to categorically deny anything, right? I mean, you might say you don't remember assaulting these women (and maybe offer drinking as an excuse), but you can't say you didn't do it - at least not under oath, right? You just don't know.
On top of that, we've got the tricky situation of how to address youth. Let's face it, we learn things the hard way. We do. Especially in a time when "no means yes" was common parlance, teenagers working out how to deal with each other sexually is rough ground. That's not to excuse assault - please don't read that. If he did these things, it's wrong and he should've known better, even if it were more accepted then than now. Context doesn't change the right/wrong dynamic. People are still people, even if we've not yet learned to stop objectifying them.
It does, however, have some effect on how we might judge the guy today. I don't know Brett Kavanaugh. People seem to think he's a pretty moral, responsible, upstanding guy - a family man with a long history of integrity. It's just possible he could be all those things, and also a guy who did some terrible things to women when he was a teenager. Those exist together - or at least, it's possible they do. And, people can actually learn from the sins of their past and genuinely change. I'm not saying Kavanaugh has (that's what these hearings and investigations are supposed to help the Senate do), but it's certainly possible. Although, again, he's not helping himself with his response to this.
As much as I disagree with the judicial philosophy and constitutional interpretation Kavanaugh practices, and as much as I think he should be opposed because he's a self-serving pick on the part of DT, I don't think the guy (or any nominee) should be rejected simply because of the positions they hold on the law. Conservative Presidents nominate conservatives; liberal Presidents nominate liberals. I don't like it, but I've come to accept it.
To the extent that Democrats are using sexual assault as a means of blocking a nomination on partisan grounds, it's wrong. I don't know how genuine they are in actually caring about the women involved, but the skeptic in me feels like the answer is "not as much as they should be." That part of this thing feels really icky. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is just as bad as doing the wrong thing for the right reasons - which is the other part that makes me feel icky: to the extent that Republicans are overlooking a history of sexual assault on partisan grounds, it's wrong. I don't know how committed they are to forgiveness and second chances, but I feel like the answer is "not as much as they should be."
In the midst of this, we've got an entire argument in society about powerful men using their position and privilege to abuse, assault, and intimidate women. There have been, for the first time, widespread consequences to these actions. I'm not entirely sure, though, that we have figured out where consequences stop and punishment starts. Retribution isn't healthy for anyone. Les Moonves and Harvey Weinstein have made enough money to survive just fine if they are never able to work another day in their lives; that's not true for everyone else who's been called to account. How much is enough to atone for the crimes of the past? Collectively, as a society, we're still not entirely sure. There is no real justice for victims of rape and sexual assault, but destroying a life to atone for a life destroyed is also problematic.
Now this argument is being played out on a national stage. Should the guy lose a chance at the Supreme Court because of assaults committed decades ago? You can argue 'yes' and you can argue 'no,' but it's certainly not as cut and dry as the armies of antagonism would have us believe. There's always the competing realities of what is and what should be. There's also context.
This was amazingly illustrated in a quick interview Texas Senate candidate, Beto O'Rourke, did with Ellen the other day. She asked about a DUI conviction from his past. The guy gave one of the most politically astute answers I've ever heard. He said, essentially, "White men like me get second chances and I want to use mine to make sure everyone gets a second chance."
It's a great answer and an admirable one, if sincere. You could essentially put the same words in Kavanaugh's mouth and make a decent claim for his nomination (barring, you know, all the other arguments against it that we're not addressing here). Of course, the only reason he can even make the argument is that he's a privileged white dude.
You could say Beto's statement argues for his withdrawal from the race, recognizing that sometimes the way to combat privilege is to give it up. Our system may enable a good and righteous white man to win elections more easily and make a clearer path to equality for women and people of color, but equality is not really equality if it comes on the oppressor's terms.
I think most of us would like to believe second chances exist for people who've really changed. There's a part of us who wouldn't want to deny Kavanaugh the pinnacle of his career because of crimes in his past (if there were real change evidenced and not an increasingly callous defensiveness). The question is whether this could ever become a reality for people who aren't rich, white men. Can Kavanaugh really be an example of second chances, when he's precisely the kind of person who's always fallen ass-backwards into them?
Might it be time for the people who embody "how everyone should be treated" to sit back and endure "how most people actually are treated?"
White men make up an incredibly small percentage of the human race, but we've had an out-sized hand in how history unfolds. That history has often seen us at our most righteous, calling for universally just and equal treatment, exactly when one of our own most stands to benefit. That history has left us conspicuously silent when justice and equality for others might cost us some of our privilege, or the spoils that privilege has won us.
Why should Brett Kavanugh have to pay the price for the problems of white, male privilege? Well, for starters, maybe because we never ask that question when he benefits from it.
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