Notes on Current Events

The most recent mass emotional trauma to convulse the internet was the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation fiasco. I wasn't going to offer any commentary on it because I am not intensely invested in the political aspect of the matter on either side, and everyone has already weighed in on it at great length, though without saying anything that is novel or interesting to me at this time in my life. In addition, given my life experience, or lack thereof, and position in society, I wasn't able to regard the controversy and all of the feminine rage being expressed as having anything to do with me. However while the immediate fervor of the days during the process has died down, it engulfed so much of the professional/college graduate social media conversation for several weeks and continues to influence it, that I thought I should try to make some note of my impressions in the case.


I have written several times that the idea of a Supreme Court made up of partisans whose opinions on cases will be predictable 90% or more of the time based on political leaning does not make any sense to me. The point of having it is not supposed to be merely to produce desired outcomes for one party or another but to subject legal questions and disputes to wise and considered judgment producing at times unexpected insights and decisions. This seems obvious, but this is not how the more energetic partisans who drive political discourse think about it at all.


Now the mid-term elections are approaching and I am least am being bombarded at all hours of the day with dire warnings that the Republicans must be defeated at all costs or unimaginably terrible things, evidently far worse even than the hell most people are already living in, are going to befall the country. I don't disbelieve this, and I certainly wish that Donald Trump were not the president. I did not vote for him, and even if the Democratic candidate in 2020 were to make skinning straight white men alive one of the campaign planks my conscience as currently manipulated would still probably demand that I vote for a third party candidate so as not to be 100% complicit in the dreadful consequences for everyone else that will doubtless follow upon a Trump re-election. The problem with all this of course is that for all Trump's awfulness the result that defeating him and his party will bring at present is the ascension to power of a Democratic coalition that appears to be out of its mind, and so hell-bent on revenging and punishing anybody who might fit the profile of a Trump supporter, that this prospect is actually more disheartening to me than even Trump is. Trump is one person who supposedly is not very organized, does not know what he is doing, and is hated by everyone who is either competent or important. This is admittedly disturbing but he will likely be gone in ten years and I doubt given the massive amount of opposition to him among powerful interests that he will be able to abolish the constitution and establish some kind of dictatorship. If anything his enemies seem almost equally likely to do this in the name of preventing someone like Trump from ever being elected again.


Kavanaugh himself seems like somebody I would probably not like if I knew him. I am not sure if jealous would be the exact word to describe the real nature of the feelings I had towards him apart from whatever popularity he had with girls, which seems like it may not have been as high as what it would have appeared to be from such a vantage as I would have had as a youth. It would have been nice to have grown up with a little more wealth and with a somewhat clearer vision of how to successfully embark on a career more in keeping with my self-perception but I got to go to pretty good schools and I was probably even handsome enough to have achieved most of my fairly modest social dreams if I had had any personality at all. I have no idea whether he is "qualified" to sit on the Supreme Court or not. The only Supreme Court Justice I have any personal experience with is David Souter, who lives near me and whom I have run across a couple of times and had occasion to speak to and to hear speak just in passing. My fleeting impression in these instances was that even in the casual exchange he spoke a very clear, precise English, with excellent diction, "proper words in proper places" such as I at least have not heard in the past twenty years. My wife and her family speak in a clipped, direct 1920s-1940s-ish idiom that when they are on is delightful as well, but the polish and fineness of Souter's speech is quite striking to come upon in one's day to day life. This may well have nothing to do with qualifications either, but it informs my idea of what a Court justice ought to sound like. I have also known a number of people over the years who went to public high school with him, and there does not appear to have been so much as a hint of scandalous, Kavanaugh-esque behavior attaching to that part of his life. Indeed to make the suggestion among people who knew him at that age generally elicits a laugh, so far-fetched apparently is the mere idea of such a thing.


But, (apart from partisan politics generally), the question hovering over this whole controversy was,  how seriously do you take the problem of sexual misconduct/criminality, and how angry are you about it? the correct answers to which of course are, Extremely seriously, and, I am furious about it, so much so that I cannot tolerate that any plausible suggestion of an instance of its having taken place at any time in the past should not have some serious consequences. Naturally I lack the full intensity of rage and enthusiasm for retribution that the times call for. Given the disparity between the number of alleged rapes and sexual assaults (and the fury these arouse) and the official police statistics on these crimes (which indicate that perpetrators can get away with their villainy 99% or more of the time in some jurisdictions), it would seem that either the legal system as a whole needs to revamp the entire way that these offenses are defined and prosecuted to satisfy the activist left and, if not send men to prison in enormous numbers, at least bar them from holding any kinds of lucrative or influential employment (what other retribution can there be?), or eventually the rhetoric and hysteria are going to lose a lot of their power, if they aren't already. I, and doubtless many other men, have long passed the point where the most obvious means of self-preservation from this ongoing crisis, for college women at least is, "how about not going to these damn frat-type parties?" But given the response any time this is suggested, one must come to the conclusion that the men at these events who are getting girls to do shots with them and go to their bedrooms at 2 in the morning--something that the overwhelming majority of men never experience--where they proceed to behave too aggressively and take things too far, are comparatively just too desirable and high status for this to be realistically considered. The object I suppose is to train these highly sought after men to behave better, or more in line at least with what the women are looking for, but what incentive is there for these guys, the absolute pick of the litter in their social worlds, to change their behavior when it has given them everything most normal boys would like to have whether they admit it or not, has done so pretty much forever, and continues to do so even in these supposedly more enlightened times. People complain that they are entitled. Well of course they are entitled. What does anybody imagine these kinds of parties are for? Why do people think that young men endure the ridiculous rituals they endure, such as drinking other people's vomit and eating grapes out of  another guy's bunghole, to get admitted to exclusive fraternities and other social clubs, for the opportunity to perform community service at a higher level? Of course not, they want access to good career prospects and to the most desirable women, that other (usually lesser) men pointedly do not have, and will never have, which is, while not a violent matter, a pretty serious one to many in the latter group as far as certain of their ultimate life prospects are concerned.


None of this, I will be told, is to the point, but unfortunately I cannot see how this is not at all times a substantial part of the point. The bad behavior, though I believe (primarily based on reading novels and memoirs from the 1960s and 70s, mainly by morally oblivious men) it to be less prevalent overall in current society, continues generation after generation among a subset of the population because for the most part it is from the male point of view rewarded by young women as far as attaining its objects goes. The movement over the past few decades to put some restraint on heterosexual male entitlement, ego, conduct, and in much of the population their comparative power and wealth, has been quite successful but I have got to think it may be approaching its reasonable limits. I am, I think, in my behavior pretty much the model of an inoffensive person and causing anybody trauma is the last thing I would want to do but still, as I get older and can see the end of the active part of my life at least in increasingly clear sight, the main regrets that I have are not having been able to more aggressively (though not violently or criminally) go after things, experiences, relationships that I would have liked to pursue. It's a big hole in my life and to have done it would have required risk, which people ultimately demand of you before giving you any respect anyway, and likely would have involved being offensive in some way to somebody. There are built-in conflicts to life, and certainly to most forms of masculine ambition, which if you forego in youth has the tendency to wither you before your time. I don't know how many more generations full of men with no role or positive expectations to fulfill, and consequently no fire or talent for living we can seriously expect to endure.


Yes, I know, this still has nothing to do with the topic in question, the women that Kavanaugh allegedly sexually assaulted 35 years ago and whether this should have disqualified him from sitting on the court. If the accounts were true, given today's environment, and the circumstance that he does not appear to be regarded as such a superlative legal genius that there might be cause to overlook some (quibbles?--there is another word I am looking for here but I cannot think of it. I cannot remember words anymore), I would probably think it prudent to move on to someone else, though Donald Trump's own acknowledged behavior, to name but one example, seems to be considerably worse, and his followers don't care, or don't care very much, so why would he do that? But I don't have any cause to say whether they (the accounts) are true or not in the exact way and using the exact terminology which was used to recount them. So I wouldn't do it.