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I have a friend who teaches Gender Studies at a university back east. As you can imagine we have very different ways of looking at things. So different that when I tried to share a few posts with him, he claimed he couldn’t even talk to me about them without understanding my frame of reference and audience. (Also, he may have been trying to figure out how to call me a Nazi without using the word “Nazi”.) Given these difficulties (and the other various frustrations) after several awkward emails back and forth I decided that we should probably not try to talk about it. I suppose he felt similarly. Though, as it turns out, unlike me, he did manage to get some benefit out of the exchange. I found out last month that he was using some of my posts as examples in the classes he teaches. At the time he didn’t get into the details (and based on my previous resolve I didn’t press him on it) but it was clear that my posts were presented as an example of what not to do. Sort of, “Can you believe how clueless this guy is!” Though when I imagine it, I see him standing in front of his class shaking a printout of my writings and yelling, “This is what the patriarchy looks like!”
Of course, he could be entirely correct, it’s possible I’m just as clueless as he claims. As I have said repeatedly, I could be wrong, about everything. And if there was an area I was going to be wrong about it could definitely be everything I say with respect to the current social justice movement. Certainly there are an awful lot of people who think anyone who’s even remotely conservative is not only wrong about most things but hateful to boot, and I think it’s fair to say I’m at least “remotely conservative”. That said, no one is forcing anyone to read my stuff. (The same cannot be said for the millions of students who are daily forced to read whatever passes for the current progressive manifesto.) And much of what I write is just me thinking out loud, and I guess let he who has never had a bad thought cast the first stone?
As you can imagine all of this is leading up to another post which (if my friend reads it) will probably make it into his next class on feminism, as yet another example of my cluelessness, or my privilege, or something similar. But, if I have done poorly in the past, I am going to attempt to do better, or at least do a better job of considering as many viewpoints as possible. And on that note, I’m going to dive into the current political crisis: the Kavanaugh confirmation and the allegations of sexual assault by Ford and Rodriguez. Though before we begin I need to take a slight detour through my process. I work on my weekly post every morning for a couple of hours. Which means that what I’m writing right now was written on Monday the 24th, and so, by the time I publish this on Saturday the 29th, any number of things might have happened. In particular while Ford will have presumably testified by the time this is published, she hasn’t at the time of this writing. Also at this point the Rodriguez accusations are still pretty fresh, and I guess (now it’s the morning of the 25th) last night Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti has announced that there’s a third accuser? All of which is to say that some of the things I say may be out of date by the time I get around to actually publishing this.
With all that out of the way let’s talk about Kavanaugh, though I guess yet one more preface is in order before I do. It should be stated that I write from the standpoint of someone with absolutely zero influence on whether he’s confirmed or not. This is enormously comforting. Also, as much as I might try to imagine my mindset if I did have an impact, it’s not the same, which means I will probably be too flippant and too confident. There are obviously things going on in the Senate which I am only dimly aware of. Whatever I say has no power to change the course of this confirmation hearing. I can’t delay it until the FBI investigates, nor can I push it through despite the evidence, but, all those caveats aside, it is my intention to approach things from the standpoint of someone who does have some impact in that matter and needs to decide what to do.
Join with me in imagining that you’re a member of the Judiciary Committee or just a Senator, period, and you’re trying to decide whether to confirm Kavanaugh. Let’s further assume that you were going to confirm him up until the Ford revelations, and you’re now trying to decide whether to change your vote based on those revelations. Ideally it would be nice to just know, with 100% certainty whether they’re true or not, in which case your decision is easy. But 100% certainty is not going to be possible in this case. You’ve got to make an absolute decision one way or the other despite the lack of any absolutes in the evidence. Needless to say, you’re operating under serious uncertainty.
For those who may not have been following it closely here are some things which might incline someone to favor one side or the other. All the things which appear to preclude absolute certainty, particularly for someone with an initial inclination to confirm Kavanaugh. Also, it should be mentioned, there are definitely people following this more closely than I, so I may miss something big. To be clear, these lists are not meant to be exhaustive.
Pro-Kavanaugh
- The events involved in the accusations happened a long time ago: It would be nice if everyone had a photographic memory of everything that ever happened to them but we don’t. Memory is fallible, and as much as we would like to believe Ford, you do have to take into account that it was 36 years ago. Also if he was a true predator you would expect more recent accusations.
- There are no contemporaneous witnesses: As far as I know there is no one (with either of the accusations) who is willing to come forward and say, I remember Ford telling me about it at the time. Yes, if it happened, not telling anyone at the time is totally forgivable on Ford’s part, but it makes things less certain now.
- The 65 women who signed a statement in defense of Kavanaugh: You certainly can’t imagine something similar happening with Weinstein, so I’d be inclined to give it some weight, though I’m not sure how much. (A statement which really applies to all these points.)
- The stakes of the whole thing: I’ve talked in the past about how the Supreme Court might be considered the true power in the United States, and given that Kavanaugh is likely to be more conservative than Kennedy, this hearing may be as consequential as a presidential election. And if Roe v. Wade is overturned (I don’t think it will be.) Then it would be more consequential. Lying about sexual assault is a rare and extraordinary act, but this is a rare and extraordinary situation.
Anti-Kavanaugh
- The vast majority of sexual assault allegations are true: It’s estimated that false rape allegations make up only 2% to 10% of all allegations. Now that’s rape, not sexual assault, but I assume the numbers (which in any case aren’t incredibly precise) are similar.
- Ford has sworn statements from people who say she told them about Kavanaugh’s assault before the nomination: three women and Ford’s husband have signed sworn statements saying they remember her mentioning the assault. The first instance of this was in 2012.
- The enormous cost of coming forward: Ford has suffered numerous death threats and had to go into hiding. I imagine (particularly if Kavanaugh is not confirmed) that this vitriol will continue for many years.
- Circumstantial evidence: Alcohol and partying seemed to be a big part of Kavanaugh’s life. Lots of people have in particular pointed at his statement in his high school yearbook with all sorts of references to drinking and sex. This apparently continued into college. Finally he was a clerk for Kozinski who was embroiled in his own scandal recently and ended up resigning.
Beyond what I’ve said above there are currently thousands of pages of commentary on each item. To say nothing of the motivations of the various secondary actors. (I haven’t mentioned Judge, or any of the senators.) But this should at least give you a taste of the muddy waters of uncertainty we’re jumping into. And here, approximately halfway through things, we’re finally ready to look at the various ways for approaching this uncertainty.
I’d like to start with a method I hope my friend the gender studies professor would appreciate, though it could just as easily fill him with rage. We’ll call it:
The Folded Paper System: Imagine that you take a piece of paper and you fold it. Now imagine that after it’s been folded for a long time you decide that folding it was bad idea and now you want the paper to lie flat. If you just unfold it and set it down the paper will still bend in the direction it was originally folded. It’s only if you fold it aggressively in the other direction that it will actually lie flat. This can be viewed as a metaphor for past injustice. It’s indisputable that in the past men got away with a lot more sexual harassment than they should have. Or to put it another way, in situations of he said-she said, the “he” was believed a lot more often than the “she”. Or to put it yet another way, the standard of evidence for accusations was tilted against women. All of this is the original fold.
Now we want the paper to lie flat. We want everyone to be believed equally, all evidence weighed equally, and a gender-blind justice to prevail. But in order to get to that point we have to instead fold the paper the other way. We have to give women the benefit of the doubt, in cases of he said/she said we have to believe the “she” more often than the “he”, we have to tilt the standard of evidence in favor of women. That in areas of massive uncertainty, like with the Kavanaugh nomination, we should believe the woman.
I’m sympathetic to this system, and the folded paper metaphor is arresting, but I think it only takes you so far. Culture is not a piece of paper, and when you bend stuff back the other way, you’re implicitly saying that unfairness in one direction is going to make up for unfairness in the other direction when in reality you have just compounded the injustice.
The “What’s going to get me re-elected” System: On the one hand you would hope that this isn’t the system any of the Senators are using and on the other hand it’s probably the system they’re most likely to use. For Republicans my guess is that they’re getting a lot of feedback from their base along the lines of, “Ford is lying and if you’re too stupid to see it or to spineless to push ahead regardless then you won’t be getting my vote in the next election.” (Possibly with several additional profanities thrown in.) And on the Democratic side of things I assume they’re getting something similar, but in the opposite direction.
As I said I hope this isn’t the primary consideration of any of the Senators, but I’m not naive enough to assume that’s actually the case. And even if, by some extraordinary exercise of ethics it’s not the primary consideration it has to be among the considerations. And unfortunately this is not a bug in our system, this is a feature. A feature that may have unfortunate effects in situations of high emotion and polarization, but we also definitely don’t want the reverse, where our representatives never take our opinions into account.
The Wisdom of the Crowds System: Closely related to the above, we could take a broader sample of things. There are various polls and prediction markets with their own take on the accusations. And insofar as these represent a broader snapshot of public opinion than just listening to the most vocal members of the two parties, it could be argued that they’re preferable. On this count we have the favorability of Kavanaugh on steady decline and places like fivethirtyeight.com advising Republicans that the least bad option is for Kavanaugh to withdraw as soon as possible. On the prediction market side of things I don’t see anyone actually predicting whether Ford is telling the truth, but we do have one for whether Kavanaugh will be confirmed which after surging to over 50% on Tuesday dropped to 40% after the latest accusations (The Avenatti/Swetnick accusations, I’ll get to those, before the end.)
Robin Hanson (who coincidentally) invented prediction markets, went a step beyond that and posted a poll on his twitter account. The question was:
What fraction of women assaulted by a nominee for Supreme Court in high school would wait to publicly accuse him not just 30 yrs, but after Congress hearings & just before Congress vote?
He gave people the options of:
- < 1%
- 1-5%
- 5-20%
- >20%
The most popular response, with 62% of the vote was “<1%”. Of course he also got many responses claiming that he was “pro-rape” for even asking that question. Though being fairly familiar with Robin Hanson (I just finished Age of Em which I’ll talk about sometime in the next few posts, also I we did meet once, briefly) I don’t think that’s what was going on. He claims he genuinely didn’t know what the response would be. And was surprised to see such a huge percentage in the less than 1% category. I believe him on this point, and I also think that something like this should be a valid question.
We all have an opinion on whether something is likely, but perhaps we’re horribly biased on that question in ways we don’t even realize. And being able to ask a large group of people whether it’s just you or if X seems unusual, should be perfectly acceptable, particularly when it’s consequential. Now the appropriateness of asking the question is separate from the utility of the answers. I totally agree that it was appropriate to ask the question, but I also don’t think twitter polls should carry a huge amount of weight, though if I was a Senator and I came across it, I probably wouldn’t give it zero weight either.
A System of Strict Utilitarianism: While all of the systems I already covered have some degree of utilitarianism to them, this system imagines a Senator making his decision entirely based on long term machiavellian calculus that has nothing to do with the actual accusation. Perhaps it’s a Republican senator who feels so strongly that abortion is wrong, that despite believing Ford and her accusations, votes to confirm Kavanaugh anyway based on the chance that he could be instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade.
On the other hand you might also have a Senator that firmly believes Kavanaugh, but thinks that elevating him to the Supreme Court would fatally undermine the court and by extension the entire nation leading to some future catastrophe. Or that it would create an immediate catastrophe in the form of widespread civil strife.
I either case the utilitarian calculus could move them to vote against their present best guess of the facts in the favor of some greater payoff later.
Antifragility: I talk a lot about antifragility in this space. Which may appear to be another form of long term machiavellian calculus, though with more focus on embracing short term pain and less focus on any kind of future knowledge, than the previous options. Also with a greater focus on long-term norms. So how would an antifragilist vote? What criteria would they use?
Frankly I’m not sure, the whole situation is a giant mess. It’s kind of hard not to feel that things are definitely off the rails, and it’s far too late and there’s far too much momentum for the actions of any one Senator or group of Senators to avoid a large negative outcome. (Speaking of any one Senator, it’s now Friday morning and I just saw where Flake has agreed to vote for Kavanaugh at least at the committee level.)
I do think there have been a lot of decisions which seemed great in the short term but which had long term costs which are only now becoming apparent. The list of things which contributed to the current debacle include, but are not limited to:
- Merrick Garland
- Bill Clinton’s various sex scandals and the lack of any consequences
- Bush v. Gore
- The Bork Nomination
- Roe v. Wade
At this point, I think the best we could hope for is a backroom deal where the Republicans agree to withdraw Kavanaugh in exchange for the Democrats agreeing to confirm Amy Coney Barrett even if the Senate changes hands in November. I can’t see such a deal being made at this point, and maybe even this idea would be just another short term bandaid with long term costs.
Beyond what I’ve just discussed, there are, of course, many other systems you might use. And some might in theory be based on the evidence. Perhaps you’re convinced, after listening to Ford and Kavanaugh, that it’s obvious that one of them is lying and the other is telling the truth. Perhaps you think the evidence shows that women never lie about these sorts of things (I don’t think it does, which makes this more of a folded paper system, but that’s just me.) But I think most such, supposedly evidence-based systems, are just covers for one of the systems I mentioned above, and most likely a cover for the “What’s going to get me re-elected” System. You may have noticed that there was really no new evidence of any substance during Thursday’s hearing and yet everyone seemed more convinced of whichever position they had before the hearing started. Meaning whatever system they were using it wasn’t based on the accumulation of evidence.
In conclusion I’d like to offer up a few miscellaneous observations:
Observation 1- As an example of people following their biases rather than the evidence. We’ve reached the point where how you feel about the credibility of an accusation is entirely based on the party of the accused. From the American Conservative:
According to a recent YouGov poll, 53 percent of Democrats consider Ford’s allegations credible, compared to only 4 percent of Republicans. Ah! Yes! Down with the evil, misogynistic GOP—the “party of rape,” as I’ve seen them called on Twitter.
But wait. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison is currently favored to be elected as the state’s next attorney general despite ex-girlfriend Karen Monahan’s allegations of sustained “emotional and physical abuse.” One poll shows that, while 42 percent of Republicans believe Monahan, only 5 percent of Democrats do.
Observation 2- For a long time people have been complaining that worthwhile candidates for high government office are being discouraged from accepting nominations because of the media circus which immediately ensues. This is certainly not limited to just one side or the other, and it’s hard to see how the Kavanaugh hearing won’t make this problem (whatever it’s actual impact) worse.
Observation 3- There has been a push recently to extend or entirely eliminate the statute of limitation on things like rape, sexual assault, attempted rape, etc. I know that sounds like a good idea, and I totally understand why people want to do it that way. But you can apply the same logic to essentially any crime. Why should any criminal be able to get away with it just because enough time has passed. This is one of those long-term norms I’m talking about. Statutes of limitation date back to Roman Times, Now of course the Senate wouldn’t care about the statute of limitation even if there was one, I’m just making a related but not directly applicable observation.
Observation 4- I’m sorry, I’m calling BS on the Avenatti/Swetnick accusation. It just sounds too much like what people imagine happens at a drunken high school party with evil dudebros. Also Avenatti does not have the best track record on this sort of thing. Finally, I would expect this to be the kind of thing that is so outrageous that it should be easy to verify. And given that this is the first we’re hearing of it despite all the attention, I’m declaring, that this, at least, didn’t happen.
As I end, Kavanaugh has made it out of committee, and Flake has called for an FBI investigation before the full vote. I suspect that means we’ll get one. I think that’s a good thing. Certainly not sufficient to calm anyone down, but I think that’s what I probably would have done as well. Though as I said in the beginning, the biggest takeaway here is that I’m glad I’m not the one deciding.
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Subverting your pro-Kavanaugh claims:
1. I could see how you might forget where you parked your car 36 years ago but it seems pretty hard to see how you could ‘forget’ you were NOT sexually assaulted 36 years ago and suddenly misremember that you were. ” Also if he was a true predator you would expect more recent accusations.” Well he appears to have been a true blackout drunk along with his best friend 36 years ago (his BFF wrote several books about dealing with his drinking issues), yet no one has stories about him being drunk recently. Plenty of people do things as teens and young adults they never repeat. Penty of people are in jail because they only committed one crime in thei rlife.
2. Well they refused to call his best friend who Ford claimed was there and put him under oath. This doesn’t make much sense if you’re going with the idea that she’s making it up. Why make up and name best friend as being there when all that’s going to happen is the guy is going to say it didn’t happen? If you’re making it up you can just say a 2nd guy was with him but you didn’t know his name. She also did confide the assault to her therapist in 2012 which was confirmed by the therapist’s notes. Also she did seem to nail a lot of contemporaneous facts about him. The name of his best friend, the fact that they both drank and parties hard, the fact that his friend later ended up bagging groceries for a while in the same town (verified by the friend’s autobiography). Granted if she was pulling off an elaborate hoax or spent years stalking him collecting all sorts of details about him to construct a multi-decade revenge plot but is that plausible?
3. I’m sure Bill Cosby interacted with well over 20,000 females plus who he never laid a hand on. I’m sure the world’s best pickpocket comes near a thousand pockets for every one he picked. Even prolithic serial rapists and killers can produce huge lists of people they had perfectly friendly interactions with. In fact it is almost a cliche to imagine a news story about some killer with the neighbors saying “he was such a nice boy”.
4. Stakes here are steeper than you think. There’s nearly 100 days until the next Congress convenes. All that’s likely to happen with a Kavanaugh withdrawal is Trump will pick someone else from his list of Federalist Society judges and that confirmation will be rushed through regardless of what any Blue Wave does to Congress. So what are the stakes for Ford? She has had to move because of death threats. Should any evidence emerge that indicates she’s part of a hoax or pulling a hoax off on her own, this administration will gleefully prosecute her for perjury and conspiracy and use he as a weapon against Democrats in the upcoming election. The stakes are kind of super high against Ford and the potential payoff, sinking his nomination or even getting him to resign his current lifetime seat on the bench seem pretty small.
I mostly agree with your anti-Kavanaugh points except #1 is a bit problematic as it is reasoning about an individual case by population states. Consider, many women who are murdered are murdered by their husbands or bfs. Does that mean if your wife is murdered we should use that fact in deciding whether or not you’re guilty? I’d say no, in fact I’d say it wouldn’t even be fair to consider it as just one fact among all the other specific facts of the case. Population states are made by collecting the data points of individuals in the population, I think you should be careful about going in reverse…trying to apply the population statistics to individuals.
I disagree that there argument about past bias means today people are saying always give the woman the benefit of the doubt no matter how unfair. During this debate I noticed quite a few people going after the ‘faulty memory’ theory. In it either Ford was assaulted but her memory mistook some other guy for Bret and Mike or she wasn’t even assaulted and somehow a ‘false memory’ was created inside her head resulting in her charge being false but she isn’t lying. This went on quite a while until it dawned on at least a handful of people that this could apply even more to Kavanaugh. Perhaps he did assault a girl during one of his HS bing drinking until blackout drunkness sessions. Perhaps he doesn’t remember it just like the drunk driver who wakes up in his driveway thinking he had an uneventful ride home but three’s scrape marks all along the side of his car. Even with #MeToo there was tremendous openness to assume Ford just had to be lying or misremembering which wouldn’t exist anywhere else. If you related a story about how you were once carjacked in 1993, or in 1985 you lived in NYC and came home one day to find the TV gone from your apartment, no one would seriously entertain the idea you were lying or suffering from some implanted false memory. In terms of motivations here it seems far more plausible to me that Kavanaugh simply did it and is now lying about it to protect his career advancement just as we have multiple well document lies he’s told on other topics all with the same goal than to see Ford as enacting some elaborate plot to sink him with a made up accusation either in conspiracy with ‘THE LEFT’ or just on her own accord.
Kind of an interesting angle I think you should have considered would have been assuming I’m correct, what would have happened if he was simply honest? Suppose he said “Yes I did it back then. When I was a kid I drank recklessly and the culture celebrated it (note the school actually allowed yearbooks back then with photos of kids drinking beers) and ignoring women’s consent when it came to sex was also a trap I fell into as a kid. As I grew up, I stopped drinking and learned to have respectful relationships with women. I’m happy I grew out of my ways but I feel deeply horrible that I damaged someone else and she had to deal with it far into adulthood. For that I apologize deeply.” Or suppose he simply said “Yes I drank to excess back then and to be honest I’m not proud to say I don’t know all the things I did, I have no memory of ever doing anything like this” In both those cases I think it would have been very hard to maintain an argument against him on these grounds.
But as often happens liars tend to undo themselves by pushing their lies too far. The consensus I think among those who watched was that Ford was quite believable and he was over the top defensive, self-righteous and entitled.
“The most popular response, with 62% of the vote was “<1%”. Of course he also got many responses claiming that he was “pro-rape” for even asking that question. Though being fairly familiar with Robin Hanson (I just finished Age of Em which I’ll talk about sometime in the next few posts, also I we did meet once, briefly) I don’t think that’s what was going on. He claims he genuinely didn’t know what the response would be. And was surprised to see such a huge percentage in the less than 1% category."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/09/24/brett-kavanaugh-allegations-timeline-supreme-court/1408073002/
I think the question was biased. The question assumes there was a public forum to accuse Kavanaugh for over 30 years, there wasn't. No one knew who he was and even when he rose to Federal judgship, he was not the type of person you'd likely be familiar with unless your thing is handicapping conservative judicial candidates. She also didn't wait 'until a few days' before hearings or a vote. His nomination was announced July 9th and she sent her letter to Diane Feinstein on July 30th. Hearings would not even begin until September 4th.
Hanson's question seems to be setting the stage up to be 30+ years of being silent only to come out just at the last moment when everyone feels like they completed their research and are about to vote. It may look like that to someone who is only half paying attention to this case but if you're 3/4th paying attention that isn't the facts here.
This question also seems to be reasoning by population stats to individual cases. What we are being asked to imagine here is a hyptohetical 100 women who are assaulted in their teens by another teen and then imagine what would they do for the next 40 years or so up until they turn on the TV one day and see the guy who did that back in HS is about to be voted on the SC. Do you think 100% of women would respond one particular way? If not then the question is worthless. Less than 1% of men will murder their wives, yet if you're a cop and you come to a house and there's the husband covered in blood with a knife and a dead wife, well that 1% means nothing.
I think the answer here is 100 different women in the exact circumstance would have a range of responses running the mill from going to the police that very same day to remaining silent about it for the rest of time. Furthermore I think the proportions would differ based on the era that these 40 years span (I suspect today many more women would report it immediately while going back even more in time into the 70's or 60's the number of women who would have every said anything would be even lower).
I think the question is fair but it has a lot of potential to be unfairly used either by people who don't understand the timeline or by people who will try to reason from population stats to individual stats.
"At this point, I think the best we could hope for is a backroom deal where the Republicans agree to withdraw Kavanaugh in exchange for the Democrats agreeing to confirm Amy Coney Barrett"
Why are 'we' hoping for this? If We elect a Blue Senate is Amy Coney Barrett the person one would normally expect a Blue Senate to embrace. If not then I think you are confusing who exactly 'We' are and you're assuming you're part of that group when you may not be. This might be the 'the best' for ideological right wing judicial fans might hope for or 'the best' for someone who thinks overturning Roe is the ultimate goal of all politics, but if by 'We' you mean the voters then the best would be Kavanaugh goes and Trump negotiates the next nominee with a Democratically controlled Senate.
But wait. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison is currently favored to be elected as the state’s next attorney general despite ex-girlfriend Karen Monahan’s allegations of sustained “emotional and physical abuse.” One poll shows that, while 42 percent of Republicans believe Monahan, only 5 percent of Democrats do.
Hmmm not really familiar with this but the Trump card here is Al Franklin. Highly effective and respected Democratic Senator forced mostly by Democrats to resign. Even though his replacement is also Democratic and may show great promise in the future, it is roughly the equilivant of swapping an experienced quarterback for a rookie. Keep in mind Republicans wouldn’t even do that with Roy Moore where the accusations were much more disturbing. One side has proven skin in the game while the other doesn’t, but is happy throw rocks from their glass house (recall Trump’s use of Bill Clinton’s accusors and tweets about Franklin?).
Observation 3- There has been a push recently to extend or entirely eliminate the statute of limitation on things like rape, sexual assault, attempted rape, etc. I know that sounds like a good idea, and I totally understand why people want to do it that way. But you can apply the same logic to essentially any crime. Why should any criminal be able to get away with it just because enough time has passed.
I believe the recent PA grand jury report on the Catholic Church’s abetting of abuse was based on records the Church provided (not with a great amount of eagerness). Interestingy almost all of the cases in the report just happened to be outside the statute of limitations…one estimate I heard was for the time period covered over 14% of active priests had some type of issue surrounding them. That level to me seems outrageous and indicates a huge amount of complicit aid from the rest of the flock who couldn’t possibly have been totally in the dark. I think the issue here is a lot of efforts were made to keep charges bottled up and sileneced as well as general cultural biases that encouraged people to hide being sexually victimized whereas there’s no such bias against other types of victimization (say someone steals your checkbook and forges checks).
“Also Avenatti does not have the best track record on this sort of thing.” – I can’t speak about Swetnick but the solution would seem to be FBI investigation and calling her to testify. It’s a crime to lie to an FBI investigation or lie under oath. If this is a hoax to score book/tv deals that might take some air out of it. I’m not sure why you thikn Avenatti doesn’t have a good track record here. He is Stormy Daniels lawyer and so far it appears everything Daniels has said is true and everything Trump has said about it is false.
Observation 2- For a long time people have been complaining that worthwhile candidates for high government office are being discouraged from accepting nominations because of the media circus which immediately ensues.
I suspect you under estimate just how powerful the incentive is for these high power positions. Also before any of this happened there was nothing to indicate Kavanaugh was a particularly good candidate. His main qualifications appear to be he would vote the right wing line on major judicial issues & he famously ‘changed his mind’ after working on the Clinton impeachment and decided that maybe a sitting President should be immune from any possible criminal indictment….which I kind of think isn’t the idea we should be entertaining while this particular President is in office.
I think you also overetsimate just how rare the skill set is for the highest jobs in society. There’s quite a few people who could intelligently serve on the SC. (I personally think it would be a hoot to see a Democratic President nominate Anita Hill thereby getting another seat opening by causing Thomas to have a heart attack ont he spot). A while ago we had a discussion about abusive people in high power….I looked up the stats on the incidence of psychopaths and in the top 1% it was something like 15%, about what you’d see if you were locked up in prison.
The idea you’re pushing here is the ‘key man theory’. There are special people with special talents that make life better. Weinstein, for example, had the vision to fund exceptionally good movies that might have otherwise never seen the light of day. Bill Cosby was an innovative entertainer. Maybe we have to put up with abuse to get the fruits of these talented ‘top men’. But maybe the ‘top men’ have conned us a bit, made us think they are a bit more essential than they really are to us (see psychopathy incidence again). There were a lot of careers Weinstein cut short, a lot of talent that we lost because of his abuse. Perhaps it would be a good idea if we took a chance and call the bluff of some of the abusive psychopaths at the top of our society to see really how essential they are. Is there really no one else worthy of sitting on the SC than the list of 20 or so Yale grads/Federalist Society members that Trump ‘pre-vetted’ during his campaign? Note the Founders crafted a system of forced geographic diversity, they weren’t so concerned with what might happen if all the top minds happened to live in one single state. I suspect we’ll be ok.
I think it is not sufficiently well understood how difficult it is for women to come forward as victims of rape. It’s not like a robbery where you hope they catch the guy and get your stuff back. It’s hard just to admit to yourself that it happened, and it’s really hard to admit in any type of public way that you’ve been violated in such a demeaning manner.
This is a huge problem with trying to catch rapists because the evidence disappears very quickly. Trying to establish cultural space to help victims be able to come forward so we can catch these creeps is hard work. But it’s hugely important.
In my experience, this isn’t taken seriously to the least degree by Republicans. This particular situation makes convincing the Right about the importance of this issue more difficult. All the best arguments start looking like base political ideology.
“It’s hard for victims to come forward. It can literally take years for them to do so. Delayed accusation is not indicative of a false accusation.” This is an important point. But try to make that point when the delay is conveniently timed to cause maximum political impact. Rational people reject that argument even though it’s true!
“False accusations aren’t really that common.” Again, this is harder to convince people of when you have cases like Swetnick.
“Victims should be believed.” This is probably the hardest of all for the unconvinced to understand. Part of the problem with rape is that victims often blame themselves. Even in the most clear cases they’ll do this. Or they’ll deny it happened. Anything to not have to accept the horrible truth. It seems irrational to outside observers, but there’s a lot of trauma and PTSD that accompany this kind of crime. Saying victims should be believed is about supporting their decision to be honest with themselves and to work on healing, not just suppressing. That doesn’t mean we should throw away due process based on this principle, but it means we need to privately affirm and help victims work through the process of blaming the person actually responsible. This is a process, not a snap judgement, and it should become clear through that process when someone is lying, without having to approach actual victims in a way that makes this already difficult process harder for them.
Again, the simplistic ideological battle that surrounds the current topic makes it more difficult to persuade the other side, not less. I find the best I can do to counter the dismissals by those on the Right about each of these points is to reply, “When it comes to political accusations it’s entirely possible that all that is reversed. Please don’t try to take any lessons away from the public discourse on this issue.”
I wish this wasn’t a partisan issue. It’s frustrating that the Right refuses to listen. It’s equally frustrating that the Left appears willing to use it for shameless political gamesmanship. I feel like nobody really cares. And the more cases like this one, the father we get from actual justice for victims.
Could you speak to your argument that the Left is using it for shameless gamemanship? Is that a throwaway line to read like you’re being fair? IMO the contrast between the left and right was pretty shap with the case of Al Franklin versus Roy Moore.
I’m not convinced. Sharpton was definitely an experienced politician, so I’m sure they didn’t like losing him. But it’s not like they lost a seat, or even put one in jeopardy. He was part of an old guard that it wasn’t that inconvenient to boot out.
Bill Clinton was definitely a bigger deal. It has been awhile since the nineties, but it’s not like the Left ever paid more than lip service to the things he did wrong. And the way they went after his accusers at the time showed that when it matters they don’t care about accusers. They care about the politics.
But then, at that time, the Right was more than happy to use accusations for their own political ends in that very case. They thought they were going to impeach and replace Clinton, and they used the issue for shameless political ends. Hence, when it comes to politics, don’t try to learn anything about how we should treat this in the real world.
Same with the recent accusations against the Catholic Church. The last round of accusations the Right defended the church because, “they’re just trying to attack religious institutions as a front in the culture war!” But, you know, there are all those boys being molested. How is that ‘balanced’ by considerations of how it’ll impact the Church? If it’s systematic, there’s a real chance for reform in order to effect lasting change that will prevent many children from being molested. Or we can ignore it and pretend it’s not happening.
Now recently we have new accusations of systemic abuse and cover-up. But this time the implicated Pope is liked by the left and disliked by the right. So the roles reverse, and everyone wants to talk about who should get all the blame. But what about systematic changes that prevent future abuse? Nah, let’s focus on scoring political points. We can work on solutions to problems later.
The shameless political gamesmanship line was a description of how the Democrats are handling the current situation. To be fair, both sides are guilty of ignoring criminality on their side, but then shedding endless crocodile tears when the other side gets accused. It only ever goes as far as achieving the short-sighted political objective of the moment, and never really focuses on long-term solutions to real problems. That’s what gamesmanship is. You care more about scoring points in the game, and the cause du jour is simply a way to score more points, not a cause in itself.
My point was that what I’m witnessing appears to be just another example of exactly that phenomenon. And the biggest tell for that is it becomes MORE difficult for those of us who care about the actual cause to persuade the unconvinced. Because the public discussion isn’t about the underlying cause. The public discussion is focused on using that cause to further an unrelated end. Please don’t try to ‘help’ the cause in this way. It’s not helping.
I’m unaware of any issue about Al Sharpton. He isn’t ‘lost’ but he also isn’t an experienced politician. He never held office and last I heard was hosting a talk show. In the 80’s, I believe, he was probably taken in by a teen girl who was out all night and then alleged she was kidnapped and raped by some white police officers. He made a huge deal of it but then the story started to unravel. While he continued to believe it happened till this day, as far as I know, almost everyone in the end saw it as a hoax.
But I think you’re not quite seeing a stark difference between the MeToo era and before. The 90’s scandals, IMO, were pretty traditional as they were centered on pre/extra marital sex. The MeToo probably was precedented with the Hill-Thomas affair and took off with the election of Trump and the takedown of Weinstein. What you’re seeing is a debate about power and consent with sex not an argument about the morality of affairs. The culture wars of the 90’s more or less ended for the right when they embraced Trump. Previous surrenders included the Gov who disappeared for a week or so to reappear with his mistress and Vitter, the Senator from Louisanna. If the GOP ceased insisting on sexually faithful candidates then that was the end of that.
i’m not really following ‘both sides ignoring criminality’. I guess you can go back to BIll Clinton if you insist…but I’ll point out Democrats have challenged whether Bill Clinton should still be held in high esteem today and he probably couldn’t win the nomination again if he was able to run. On the other hand the GOP has demanded more tribal loyalty from it’s members than principle and as a result members have had to pretend people like Roy Moore are ok or come up with absurd arguments for why the victims should not be believed. Again Moore .v. Franklin. I just don’t see your argument for ‘both sides’ here.
I’m also not clear about the Cathollic Church. The scandal never ended. Never got fixed. The PA report was from the files the Church released. There’s no reason to think it doesn’t extend to many other states too but of course those files are closed. I think both left and right had it in their head this is something that could be fixed by the right type of Pope (either very orthodox or very liberal) but Yet we had/have both and the problem, IMO, is much more deeply systemic.
Bill Clinton was campaigning for his wife not two years ago. He may not be as popular as he was ten years ago, but that’s probably because he’s super old, more so than his history as a sexual predator. SOME principled Democrats have held him to account (after the presidency), but the party has largely defended him and excused his behavior in much the same way you just did.
Meanwhile, his wife notoriously went after the women who accused him of abusing his office to coerce them to have sex with him, calling them bimbos and prostitutes. The party went on to nominate her for president, and avoided the topic when Republicans tried to bring it up.
Also, no. What Clinton did was not just “cheating on his wife”. He used his position as governor of Arkansas and later as president to coerce young women to have sex with him. That’s wrong. It’s what these Hollywood creepers were doing. It’s what Trump bragged about doing. “They let you do it” because you’re famous and can leverage your position to get what you want regardless of consent. If you have problems with Weinstein, I don’t see how you can call Clinton’s behavior “legacy unfaithfulness” that has nothing to with what MeToo is all about.
Interesting most of the Democratic criticism I’ve heard of Bill Clinton centered around his relationship with Monica Lewinski and the question of power imbalances. You, however, cite right wing conspiracy theory talking points, which suffer from the problem of, shall we say, ‘too much processing’. Regardless Bill Clinton couldn’t win the nomination today. As for the fact that he campaigned with his wife. It’s not exactly like you have to get permission from the MeToo Twitter hashtag to campaign.
The point that Bill campaigned for Hillary was brought up contra your claim that all this is, in essence ‘passe problems from the 90’s that we’ve moved on from.’ You claimed that Bill’s conduct was simply a matter of marital infidelity, and that this infidelity was determined by voters in the 90’s not to matter. I countered that use of his position to ply sexual favors out of his underlings is well within what MeToo was about, and that not only is Bill still relevant today given his public campaign activity, but clearly something from 36+ years ago is an issue today on the other side of the aisle. Therefore, why can’t we continue to ask whether someone like Clinton should finally get what he deserves? It’s fairly moot whether he’d win the nomination or not; he continues to hold significant political clout, but it seems we’re not going to question gross misbehavior on one side, but we will on the other. Given that Republicans made a big stink about Bill during the campaign, but didn’t really seem to care about Trump’s behavior (and vise-versa) it’s clearly all crocodile tears on both sides. Clearly you can take advantage of interns and underlings and not suffer political taint from it, no matter which side you’re on.
Regardless, I doubt I’ll convince you on this point any more than I’ll convince my Trump-supporting friends about Trump. Ideology is simply too strong. Which is why I cringe when these things are brought up in media about politicians, because everyone entrenches into defending their own side to the detriment of actual solutions to the real problem.
I would call the phrase “right wing conspiracy theory talking points” hyperbole at best. I’d cite the Wikipedia page, which fairly sums up the discussion so far. Claiming that Clinton abused his power is at least something Lewinsky herself has claimed – partly because of MeToo – so you could dismiss her, as Hillary did when she smeared her in the 90’s (before we found out she was at least telling the truth and Hillary was not). But whatever, we’ll probably never know the truth about most of these things, because this kind of crime is hard to find evidence for after the fact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_sexual_misconduct_allegations
On the one hand, there are the allegations that Clinton used his office routinely for this kind of thing. You’re disputing the credibility of this claim. I think this is probably a place where whether you like a politician colors whether you think they’re likely to do something more than once. Whatever. It’s a fact-based problem, but clearly not one the Left is interested in answering, any more than the Right is interested in answering fact-based questions about their own seedy politicians. That you claim it’s a problem ONLY encountered on the Right is simply not credible. Or I guess your claim is more specifically that the Right is not interested in holding the creeps on their side to account, but the Left will nobly and aggressively pursue creeps on their side. Looking over lists of political sex scandals from the last 50 years doesn’t seem to bear this narrative out. But I guess the counter-argument is that if I can’t see how the Left has a clean record and the Right is totally dirty I must be the biased one?
I’ve been a skeptic of claims about Bill Clinton because quite frankly they were all passed through the right wing manufacture machine. That is not a partisan statement but simply one of fact. Clinton inspired a collection of passionate haters who, probably for reasons as inexplicable as his passionate loyalists, felt it was their duty to ‘get out the truth’ about him. This is problematic because it means all claims have been tainted. For example, the claim that Clinton used his power to procure sex from ‘under lings’ came from The American Spectator article by David Brock…which alleged he got sex from willing women like Paula Jones. The story was ten changed into a lewd come on from Clinton after being procured by troopers. Then David Brock announced he had been ‘blinded’ by the right wing and became a liberal because he was tired pushing manufactured stories. True accusations, if they existed, have to be uncovered by future historians who have to try to dust away layers and layers of not ideological politics but personal politics.
The only two confirmed affairs we know happened without dispute were Flowers and Monica. Neither of them, from anyone’s descriptions, appeared to follow the pattern claimed by Jones & co. I also found it odd that all accusations against Clinton more or less vanished the moment he left power, the moment they ceased to be politically useful. (BTW, I don’t recall Hillary trashing Monica, not really sure how that would have worked as both were denying an affair so she was trashing her how? Saying she did have an affair with her husband? Anyway aren’t you a bit much? Even if a wife does come to terms with a periodically unfaithful husband do you really expect her to say positive things about the women he sleeps with?)
Anyway I think you missed the inflection change. It came not so much during the election but after with #MeToo and yes Bill Clinton was caught up there from the angle that his relationship with an intern was problematic even assuming no coercion or pressure or favors. Your focus is , sorry to say, dated and will start showing your age if you keep it up. You say Clinton is still ‘influential’. Yea, sure, whatever. What does that really mean and how do you really measure it. If Clinton ceased being influential on Tuesday at 6PM EST, would we know?
As I said I think the defining moment here is/was Al Franklin. Democrats sacrificed a Senator, and a rather effective and popular one at that. Republicans choose to double down when it came to their weakest, most pathetic, most replaceable of candidates. One side here is going where the culture is going and the other isn’t.
I have to recommend Slate’s Slow Burn season 2, which goes into Clinton in detail. The episode I listened too,, I think, had a remarkable observation by Dick Morris. Political consultant known for playing both sides of the fence advising first Republicans, then Clinton, then back to Republicans. Last I saw him he was doing the Fox News rounds, I imagine he still does.
His observation about Bill Clinton was that he is a pure narcissist. He constantly needs attention that he reflects in others. The analogy he uses is a highway reflector which shines very brightly as you approach it but as soon as your headlight passes, it is just a dull piece of metal on the road. He inspired intense emotions because he reflects other people’s feelings back to them making them feel like they’ve made a deep connection to him. When that isn’t available, though, he is tempted towards young women who likewise reflect back this attention to him.
What I think we have to keep in mind then is with Clinton you have to reverse that old phrase “the personal is political”. When it comes to Bill Clinton, for many people but especially his most bitter enemies, “the political is personal”. Their underlying beef with Bill Clinton is deeply personal and not something we are privy too. We are just seeing the surface of what really made them go after Clinton. Not quite unlike a bitter divorced couple who will talk to you for hours about outrageous things the other did with child support, visitation, alimony etc. but before you start getting too involved with the right or wrong of those things (unless you are being paid by the hour from one of them) you have to understand that’s not the real cause of the dispute. You’re just window dressing in a deeper drama.
I think this explains quite a bit of Clinton derangement syndrome. The radical changes of stance people do (flipping from Clinton hater to lover or vice versa). The over the top conspiracy theories spun (people claiming Clinton has agents stalking them, killing people on a hitlist etc.). The somewhat detached ‘throw everything in the shopping cart’ view of policy they take towards Clinton.
As a consequence I feel justified in saying the reality is we are denied the reality about Bill Clinton in almost all cases. The players have too many agendas or have hooked their stars to people with agendas that are not transparent. Hence the most conservative and fair response is a shrug.
That being said the only two serious criticisms of Clinton that cannot be said to suffer this fault came first from the right (that extra-marital affairs are immoral) and now from the left (consensual relationships between the powerful and those under them are suspect and problematic).
The right has forfeited their argument by their support of Trump and a host of lesser moral ingrates. The left’s argument appears to have taken the culture more or less lacking any serious opposition. I’m noting, however, this is a new argument. Until recently the left’s position was more or less moral libertarianism, as long as it was between consenting adults. The right did not care much about power imbalances in male-female work to romantic relationships. We’ve entered an actual change in the rules of the game but many are unable to recognize it.
I think the only thing we can be truly convinced of at this point in the process is that our politics will be worse no matter what happens in the end. The Left is justifiably convinced that the Right cares more about getting a judge confirmed than finding out whether that judge is guilty of attempted sexual assault and the Right is convinced that the Left is using this accusation to further their own political agenda. Otherwise, why wait to leak this accusation until the end of the confirmation process? Maybe there was a sincere attempt to protect Ford’s desire for anonymity, but it certainly looks like political gamesmanship particularly to the other side. So if he gets confirmed the Left will be filled with anger at the Right and if he doesn’t get confirmed the Right will also feel justified in being angry with the Left. And if you think that one of the biggest problems we face is that we have significant fractions of the population that increasingly hate each other. Then the whole thing has been really depressing to follow. It would have been preferable if the Democrats brought the accusation forward soon after it was made and if the Republicans had immediately agreed to an investigation. But those options are now past and I’m not sure that dragging in the FBI will resolve anything at this point though it will likely damage their credibility in the eyes of half the country no matter what the outcome (just remains to be seen which side).
It would be nice if we could be completely certain that he is guilty or innocent but I don’t think we can. I think the case for considering false memory is stronger than you might first think. I found this article informative: https://www.weeklystandard.com/thomas-w-kirby/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-what-memory-science-can-tell-us-about-christine-fords-allegations. Obviously that is coming from a right-wing outfit so take it with a grain of salt. But if you can’t imagine something similar coming from a left-wing outfit if the roles were reserved then look up the sources they cite. Though of course, that doesn’t prove that her memory is false. Similarly, Boonton makes a good point that all the character witnesses in his favor will never prove that he didn’t do it. Even if you think it is unlikely that someone would attempt a full-blown rape and not exhibit some kind of weird behavior to those around him, we end up with the same problem with memory. Maybe he did but people ignored it because it didn’t fit with their view of him and now they don’t remember it. It’s also possible that this was truly a one-time event. It could have been that it was done on a dare and he was acting under social pressure. There any number of ways that he could be guilty of everything Ford said and the people around him could be oblivious.
So to me, there is no clear right answer to the situation. I hope the FBI finds something that can resolve it one way or the other, but after 36 years I am doubtful they’ll be able to find anything significant. As the post said, maybe the best we can hope for is that Republicans find someone else to confirm at least that’s the best outcome if you don’t want the country to continue heading down the road to greater and greater civil discord with a risk of civil war waiting at the end. Because that’s what these fights do, they increase the anger on both sides. Everyone is more and more convinced that they are justified in their position and thus in their anger. I think we need to be a little more concerned about the overall direction of the country and a little less focused on whatever is the present fight.
1. Why wait ’till the end’. Well Roy Moore. During the Roy Moore scandal, a woman approached the Washington Post with a story about being abused as a minor by Moore. The Post took down her details but before going to press started checking out her story. Things didn’t square. Turned out she was an agent conservative James O’Keefe’s operation trying to catch the media running with a fake story. Instead the Post outed O’Keefe’s operation.
So just imagine it is July 30th and you’ve just received Ford’s letter at Feinstein’s office (nomination was announced the 9th). Before screaming about it in public I think you might consider letting the FBI see it, just to make this isn’t a big set up.
2. ” I think the case for considering false memory is stronger than you might first think” Don’t you think an unbiased article about false memory would consider the possibility that maybe the frequent black out drinker might be the one with a false memory of what he did or didn’t do? I mean we had thousands of words exploring the possible ways Ford might have had a false memory implanted or corrupted yet Kavanaugh’s memories are taken at face value.
1. As I said they may have had good reasons to wait, but it still looks very suspicious to the other side. Sure it makes sense that they didn’t come forward on Jul 31 for that reason among others, but to say that it took them exactly the length of time from July 30 to the weekend after the hearings were finished to be completely sure the story wasn’t a setup is really pushing it.
2. Again I acknowledge the article is clearly biased to the right, but the basic point remains that people’s memories are by no means reliable. Clearly, that should apply to everyone involved including Kavanaugh and the 65 people who vouch for his good character or the four people Ford listed as being at the party and now say they have no memory of it happening. All of them could be afflicted with a faulty memory or have simply forgotten crucial details. The point is that we should be very hesitant to say we know what really happened when all we have is people’s memories of what happened 30+ years ago. We’ll have to wait and see if the FBI turn up anything to shed more light on the matter. My prediction is that they won’t and that we’ll have a new fight with Republicans wanting to press forward with confirmation and Democrats calling for the investigation to have more time. Both sides will feel justified in their position and the contention between the sides will only get worse. I hope I’m wrong, I hope they find something that shifts the balance clearly one way or the other, but I’ll stand by my opening statement. The only thing we can be sure of is that this will make the political environment worse down the road.
I’m comfortable opposing him. The investigation would be useful if it confirms the charge or reveals it’s a hoax. Probably 30% chance that will happen and the balance would be IMO 45% it will provide more evidence that the charges could be true and 45% it won’t be anything that we don’t already know.
In terms of credibility, I think she had it and he didn’t. This is by far the most simple explanation and implanted memory on her part really makes things stretch IMO. I think the memory article applies more to the other side. Memory gets mixed with opinion. “Bret was always a nice guy” is an opinion and not very informative as a memory. You may correctly remember him being a nice guy but so what? Charles Manson probably had thousands of perfectly fine interactions with people who, if they remembered him, remembered him as a nice guy. That may be a valid memory but not a useful one if you are asking a question like did he arrange the murder of Tate & company? Likewise memory is suspect when it conforms to your opinions. “I would know if someone was almost raped at a party I was at” is an opinion, not a memory. But memory might deceive you to serve that opinion….”How would you know? Could you see the entire house the entire night? Was the music always soft enough to hear everyone? Were you awake and aware all night? Where you the first to arrive and last to leave?” Good investigators can tease out how much of a memory is really an opinion.
I hear a lot of opinions in the Kavanaugh side’s memories. Few in Fords. Implanted memories can happen and could explain Ford if you’re committed to it not happening but don’t want to assert a conspiracy, but that’s a much more rare bird and it’s stretching. The standard here, let us remember, is not proof. This is a job interview and people have lost jobs for simply having a Facebook picture of them drinking with friends, not even evidence that they are problem drinkers.