This is what I hope:
That Hell, indeed, hath no fury like women scorned. And that we will rise up to defeat and remove every single Republican official complicit in the Trump administration’s raping and pillaging of our democratic institutions — in particular the Supreme Court — beginning in 2018 and through to 2020, 2022 and 2024.
This is what I know:
That the man shouting angrily to drown out the women’s cries during the Judiciary Committee hearing was acting precisely as he is said to have done in high school when he put his hand over her mouth during the assault to keep her from being heard.
That someone who “worked his tail off” to climb to the top of his high school class is not therefore entitled to climb on top of any woman unbidden, much less by force.
That any man incapable of admitting he might have ever made a mistake or exercised poor judgment is not a man intent on or even open to a modicum of the intellectual, professional or emotional growth required of service on our highest court.
That a man whose defense of his personal behavior takes a page from President Trump’s playbook (Deny, Deny, Deny, Attack, Be aggrieved) was playing to an audience of one, and one alone: he dared not risk Trump’s pulling his nomination as things got messy and politically complicated. I’m talking to you Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — he doesn’t really care what you two women think; it was all about Trump.
That an innocent person intent on clearing his name welcomes further investigation. We can only assume there’s something Kavanagh — along with the President and the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — doesn’t want us to know.
That a partisan tirade against Democratic members of the U.S. Senate is at the very least unbecoming a federal judge. A federal judge and Supreme Court nominee who publicly advances conspiracy theories is, well, do I really have to finish that sentence? Is it not at once ludicrous and damning on its face?
That a 17 year-old guy who kept fastidious calendars as a teenager — (and has saved them, what, for posterity?) — should have been a bit more careful about what he published in his high school yearbook. Or own up to the truths the yearbook tells about this self-proclaimed BMOC who appears to have been drinking and partying to excess.
That shouting louder does not make your words truer than those spoken tremulously .
That the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee — all men — who hid behind the skirts of the sex crimes prosecutor from Arizona so as avoid the “optics,” nay, the reality, of 11 old white men interrogating a woman in 2018, were constitutionally incapable of letting her do the job they hired her to do; they were utterly confident they could do better, and so they (figuratively) shouted her down, too.
That men still hold all the power and are perfectly willing to abuse and corrupt it.
That I must apologize to my daughters that these are the truths they inherited instead of the rights I thought the women of my generation and the generation before us had won.
That as sickened as I am by this vile exhibit of raw, male political power and what it means, I am more furious.
And that’s where we began: Hell hath no fury. . . .
