Brett Kavanaugh: The Face of Rape
Even before Dr. Ford’s highly credible allegations were known, there was ample reason to equate Brett Kavanaugh with rape, and with the general subjugation and objectification of women. If Kavanaugh tried to rape someone, that simply means he acted on what are clearly his deeply-held principles, and those of the political party whose retrograde, neo-Biblical agenda he seeks to enshrine in the laws of our precious, crippled secular democracy.
This career ideologue paraded his teenage daughters (and their basketball team) onto Capitol Hill in a cheap effort to demonstrate his supposed concern for women, establishing himself instantly as both a condescending prick and a dire threat to the future of gender equality. Needless to say, a man who loves his daughters can still be a virulent misogynist and an abuser of women (and can interpret the law in a way that reduces half the human race to sex objects and baby factories), just as a white person can have black friends and still be a shameless racist (and support the racist Republican Party). Presenting your own family as tacit testimony to your benevolence toward women says exactly the opposite of what you think it says. It’s like when guys respond to sexual atrocities by saying, “What if that was my mother, my sister, my daughter!” as though the fact that it’s a human being is not, in itself, enough. Women are important, this argument suggests, because of the way men feel about them.
Brett Kavanaugh is the second Supreme Court nominee of an illegitimate “president” for whom the American majority did not vote, and who is himself a lifelong hater and abuser of women. To merely skim the surface of Trump’s sex crimes and misdemeanors, he has been credibly accused of rape multiple times, including under oath, and including the rape of a minor; he not only commits sex crimes but boasts about having committed them; he has repeatedly expressed his sickening sexual desire for his own daughter; his contempt for, and mistreatment of, women is an absolute truth challenged only by his blindest and most deranged acolytes.
Brett Kavanaugh was selected by that despicable “president” from a list prepared for him by the Heritage Foundation — a list of potential nominees specifically chosen for their inclination to outlaw abortion, restrict access to contraceptives, contaminate public health education with counterfactual religious doctrine, and a litany of other policy goals certain to damage the health, liberty, and autonomy of women. (And yes, if you don’t think that a pregnant woman should have the legal right to decide whether or not to have a baby, then you favor the subjugation and objectification of women, whether you like the sound of that or not. The civilized world was done with this argument a long time ago. And if you ache with compassion for a fertilized egg, but not for the thousands of children the Trump regime has put in concentration camps at the southern border, then your concern for “life” is counterfeit and deserves to be taken seriously by nobody.)
In a harrowing essay for The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino quotes a whole rogues gallery of abominable conservative men who accept Kavanaugh’s likely attempt at rape, and simply don’t think it’s a big deal. They say things like “I do not understand why the loutish drunken behavior of a 17 year old high school boy has anything to tell us about the character of a 53 year old judge” (Rod Dreher), and “If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried” (an anonymous Republican lawyer). What? These guys are seemingly confessing that they, too, raped girls in high school, or at least tried to; they even presume to speak for an entire gender (and against another gender). Guess what: I was a teenage boy, and never once did I even consider committing an act of sexual violence or coercion. Despite the pronouncements of pro-rape Republicans, it’s not normal to be a rapist. It’s not boys-will-be-boys. It’s bad-people-will-do-bad-things.
If Brett Kavanaugh sits on the Supreme Court, America becomes more dangerous for women, and more accommodating to rapists, the moment he takes his oath.
In addition to the rape-friendly culture championed by Trump, Kavanaugh, and other rapists, there’s also their figurative rape of the American system. This is a stolen Supreme Court seat, seized by an unpopular party which has demonstrated itself to be incapable of winning national majority support, which determined long ago that it can only win by cheating. President Obama’s nominee sat for a year while the Republicans refused to grant him a hearing. (Why didn’t Obama fight harder for Garland? Because he was certain Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election. Which she did.) Then there’s the rape of our planet’s environment, and the rape of long-valued social and political norms — I think I see why these guys all have an R after their names.
Of course, in addition to Kavanaugh’s heartfelt commitment to rape, he has wildly unorthodox, un-American views about the power of the presidency. He envisions the presidency as a monarchy, above the law and invulnerable to subpoena, prosecution, indictment, and imprisonment — all of which are exactly what would, should, and must happen to Donald Trump if this democracy has any future at all. The Republican Party loves Kavanaugh because the Republican Party hates and fears women; but Donald Trump loves Kavanaugh because he thinks Kavanaugh will save him. If Kavanaugh tanks, the next asshole Trump tries to appoint may or may not brush aside Trump’s collusion with a hostile foreign power to steal the American presidency, but will certainly pose the same threat to women and boon to rapists as anyone on the Heritage list. Any Donald Trump Supreme Court appointee should be considered the face of rape.
“We’re going to plow right through it,” says the repugnant Mitch McConnell — referring specifically to Kavanaugh’s confirmation, but also to civil rights, the separation of powers, and the notion that women are human. But malicious, illegitimate Supreme Court justices can be impeached, just like malicious, illegitimate “presidents” — and even setting aside his loathsome career as a likely rapist and certain pro-rape ideologue, Kavanaugh is clearly guilty of perjury. And, in contrast with judges nominated by legitimate presidents who belong to viable political parties, the vast majority of Kavanaugh’s writings and correspondence (including his shameful work on behalf of the murderous Bush regime and its illegal war) has not been released to the Senate or the public. So if the dying Republicans, in the last gasp of their power, give him a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court, we’ll just remove him. We’ll tear him down and consign him to the same junkpile where we throw the entirety of Donald Trump’s rancid legacy.
