Two Memories are Not Necessarily Equal

the one thing about living in the d.c. media market is that you get all the television ads aimed at congress. right now, it's all kavanaugh all the time.

the newest judicial crisis network ad -- the group that actually knows how to get what it wants on the bench -- is telling us that kavanaugh is "brilliant." but i wonder.

there is no way that kavanaugh and ford have the same memories about this. they did not go to the same schools. kavanaugh went to an elite boys school that has a culture of privilege and entitlement. he was 17 and she was 15. he may never have even known her name. i seriously doubt he can remember a single name of the women who rejected him romantically or sexually throughout his life.

but this event, as described by the victim, was an abuse of power. abuse of power borne from a culture of privilege and entitlement.

for ford, this event was consequential. it affected her life in ways both understood and mysterious.

for kavanaugh, this event was part of the norm. drunken debauchery was (and remains) a rite of passage for georgetown prep. study hard and play hard. why would he remember it?

the fact that he can claim that it did not happen not only exposes an arrogance, but a complete lack of empathy for the lessons of the #metooage. instead of doing what normal men have been doing -- asking themselves if they've ever been in a position where they took advantage of the women in which they have crossed paths -- kavanaugh has leaned on that culture of privilege and entitlement and ne'er given it a second thought.

which signals that he would be a horrific supreme court justice. he is lying to himself (for me, the worst of all lies). instead of being able to rise above a situation and give it an "independent look" (another one of the claims in the jcn ads), he demonstrates a profound bias towards that culture of privilege and entitlement.

ford's memory should be given preference because it lived in the absence of this profound bias.  kavanuagh's memory should be completely discounted. kavanaugh is not brilliant, he was sculpted. he has demonstrated no evidence of independent thought. rather, he represents a reprehensible past that we need to get away from...