Authored by Victor Davis Johnson via NationalReview.com,
Truth, due process, evidence, rights of the accused: All are swept aside in pursuit of the progressive agenda.
George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is no longer fiction. We are living it right now.
Google techies planned to massage Internet searches to emphasize correct thinking. A member of the so-called deep state, in an anonymous op-ed, brags that its “resistance” is undermining an elected president. The FBI, CIA, DOJ, and NSC were all weaponized in 2016 to ensure that the proper president would be elected — the choice adjudicated by properly progressive ideology. Wearing a wire is now redefined as simply flipping on an iPhone and recording your boss, boy- or girlfriend, or co-workers.
But never has the reality that we are living in a surreal age been clearer than during the strange cycles of Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
In Orwell’s world of 1984 Oceania, there is no longer a sense of due process, free inquiry, rules of evidence and cross examination, much less a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Instead, regimented ideology — the supremacy of state power to control all aspects of one’s life to enforce a fossilized idea of mandated quality — warps everything from the use of language to private life.
Oceania’s Rules
Senator Diane Feinstein and the other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had long sought to destroy the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. Much of their paradoxical furor over his nomination arises from the boomeranging of their own past political blunders, such as when Democrats ended the filibuster on judicial nominations, in 2013. They also canonized the so-called 1992 Biden Rule, which holds that the Senate should not consider confirming the Supreme Court nomination of a lame-duck president (e.g., George H. W. Bush) in an election year.
Rejecting Kavanaugh proved a hard task given that he had a long record of judicial opinions and writings — and there was nothing much in them that would indicate anything but a sharp mind, much less any ideological, racial, or sexual intolerance. His personal life was impeccable, his family admirable.
Kavanaugh was no combative Robert Bork, but congenial, and he patiently answered all the questions asked of him, despite constant demonstrations and pre-planned street-theater interruptions from the Senate gallery and often obnoxious grandstanding by “I am Spartacus” Democratic senators.
So Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed unless a bombshell revelation derailed the vote. And so we got a bombshell.
Weeks earlier, Senator Diane Feinstein had received a written allegation against Kavanaugh of sexual battery by an accuser who wished to remain anonymous. Feinstein sat on it for nearly two months, probably because she thought the charges were either spurious or unprovable. Until a few days ago, she mysteriously refused to release the full text of the redacted complaint, and she has said she does not know whether the very accusations that she purveyed are believable. Was she reluctant to memorialize the accusations by formally submitting them to the Senate Judiciary Committee, because doing so makes Ford subject to possible criminal liability if the charges prove demonstrably untrue?
The gambit was clearly to use the charges as a last-chance effort to stop the nomination — but only if Kavanaugh survived the cross examinations during the confirmation hearing. Then, in extremis, Feinstein finally referenced the charge, hoping to keep it anonymous, but, at the same time, to hint of its serious nature and thereby to force a delay in the confirmation. Think something McCarthesque, like “I have here in my hand the name . . .”
Delay would mean that the confirmation vote could be put off until after the midterm election, and a few jeopardized Democratic senators in Trump states would not have to go on record voting no on Kavanaugh. Or the insidious innuendos, rumor, and gossip about Kavanaugh would help to bleed him to death by a thousand leaks and, by association, tank Republican chances at retaining the House. (Republicans may or may not lose the House over the confirmation circus, but they most surely will lose their base and, with it, the Congress if they do not confirm Kavanaugh.)
Feinstein’s anonymous trick did not work. So pressure mounted to reveal or leak Ford’s identity and thereby force an Anita-Hill–like inquest that might at least show old white men Republican senators as insensitive to a vulnerable and victimized woman.
The problem, of course, was that, under traditional notions of jurisprudence, Ford’s allegations simply were not provable. But America soon discovered that civic and government norms no longer follow the Western legal tradition. In Orwellian terms, Kavanaugh was now at the mercy of the state. He was tagged with sexual battery at first by an anonymous accuser, and then upon revelation of her identity, by a left-wing, political activist psychology professor and her more left-wing, more politically active lawyer.
Newspeak and Doublethink
Statue of limitations? It does not exist. An incident 36 years ago apparently is as fresh today as it was when Kavanaugh was 17 and Ford 15.
Presumption of Innocence? Not at all. Kavanaugh is accused and thereby guilty. The accuser faces no doubt. In Orwellian America, the accused must first present his defense, even though he does not quite know what he is being charged with. Then the accuser and her legal team pour over his testimony to prepare her accusation.
Evidence? That too is a fossilized concept. Ford could name neither the location of the alleged assault nor the date or time. She had no idea how she arrived or left the scene of the alleged crime. There is no physical evidence of an attack. And such lacunae in her memory mattered no longer at all.
Details? Again, such notions are counterrevolutionary. Ford said to her therapist 6 years ago (30 years after the alleged incident) that there were four would-be attackers, at least as recorded in the therapist’s notes.
But now she has claimed that there were only two assaulters: Kavanaugh and a friend. In truth, all four people — now including a female — named in her accusations as either assaulters or witnesses have insisted that they have no knowledge of the event, much less of wrongdoing wherever and whenever Ford claims the act took place. That they deny knowledge is at times used as proof by Ford’s lawyers that the event 36 years was traumatic.
An incident at 15 is so seared into her lifelong memory that at 52 Ford has no memory of any of the events or details surrounding that unnamed day, except that she is positive that 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, along with four? three? two? others, was harassing her. She has no idea where or when she was assaulted but still assures that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were drunk, but that she and the others (?) merely had only the proverbial teenage “one beer.” Most people are more likely to know where they were at a party than the exact number of alcoholic beverages they consumed — but not so much about either after 36 years.
Testimony? No longer relevant. It doesn’t matter that Kavanaugh and the other alleged suspect both deny the allegations and have no memory of being in the same locale with Ford 36 years ago. In sum, all the supposed partiers, both male and female, now swear, under penalty of felony, that they have no memory of any of the incidents that Ford claims occurred so long ago. That Ford cannot produce a single witness to confirm her narrative or refute theirs is likewise of no concern. So far, she has singularly not submitted a formal affidavit or given a deposition that would be subject to legal exposure if untrue.
Again, the ideological trumps the empirical. “All women must be believed” is the testament, and individuals bow to the collective. Except, as in Orwell’s Animal Farm, there are ideological exceptions — such as Bill Clinton, Keith Ellison, Sherrod Brown, and Joe Biden. The slogan of Ford’s psychodrama is “All women must be believed, but some women are more believable than others.” That an assertion becomes fact due to the prevailing ideology and gender of the accuser marks the destruction of our entire system of justice.
Rights of the accused? They too do not exist. In the American version of 1984, the accuser, a.k.a. the more ideologically correct party, dictates to authorities the circumstances under which she will be investigated and cross-examined: She will demand all sorts of special considerations of privacy and exemptions; Kavanaugh will be forced to return and face cameras and the public to prove that he was not then, and has never been since, a sexual assaulter.
In our 1984 world, the accused is considered guilty if merely charged, and the accuser is a victim who can ruin a life but must not under any circumstance be made uncomfortable in proving her charges.
Doublespeak abounds. “Victim” solely refers to the accuser, not the accused, who one day was Brett Kavanaugh, a brilliant jurist and model citizen, and the next morning woke up transformed into some sort of Kafkaesque cockroach. The media and political operatives went in a nanosecond from charging that she was groped and “assaulted” to the claim that she was “raped.”
In our 1984, the phrase “must be believed” is doublespeak for “must never face cross-examination.”
Ford should be believed or not believed on the basis of evidence, not her position, gender, or politics. I certainly did not believe Joe Biden, simply because he was a U.S. senator, when, as Neal Kinnock’s doppelganger, he claimed that he came from a long line of coal miners — any more than I believed that Senator Corey Booker really had a gang-banger Socratic confidant named “T-Bone,” or that would-be senator Richard Blumenthal was an anguished Vietnam combat vet or that Senator Elizabeth Warren was a Native American. (Do we need a 25th Amendment for unhinged senators?) Wanting to believe something from someone who is ideologically correct does not translate into confirmation of truth.
Ford supposedly in her originally anonymous accusation had insisted that she had sought “medical treatment” for her assault. The natural assumption is that such a term would mean that, soon after the attack, the victim sought a doctor’s or emergency room’s help to address either her physical or mental injuries — records might therefore be a powerful refutation of Kavanaugh’s denials.
But “medical treatment” now means that 30 years after the alleged assault, Ford sought counseling for some sort of “relationship” or “companion” therapy, or what might legitimately be termed “marriage counseling.” And in the course of her discussions with her therapist about her marriage, she first spoke of her alleged assault three decades earlier. She did not then name Kavanaugh to her therapist, whose notes are at odds with Ford’s current version.
Memory Holes
Then we come to Orwell’s idea of “memory holes,” or mechanisms to wipe clean inconvenient facts that disrupt official ideological narratives.
Shortly after Ford was named, suddenly her prior well-publicized and self-referential social-media revelations vanished, as if she’d never held her minor-league but confident pro-Sanders, anti-Trump opinions. And much of her media and social-media accounts were erased as well.
Similarly, one moment the New York Times — just coming off an embarrassing lie in reporting that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had ordered new $50,000 office drapes on the government dime — reported that Kavanaugh’s alleged accomplice, Mark Judge, had confirmed Ford’s allegation. Indeed, in a sensational scoop, according to the Times, Judge told the Judiciary Committee that he does remember the episode and has nothing more to say. In fact, Judge told the committee the very opposite: that he does not remember the episode. Forty minutes later, the Times embarrassing narrative vanished down the memory hole.
The online versions of some of the yearbooks of Ford’s high school from the early 1980s vanished as well. At times, they had seemed to take a perverse pride in the reputation of the all-girls school for underage drinking, carousing, and, on rarer occasions, “passing out” at parties. Such activities were supposed to be the monopoly and condemnatory landscape of the “frat boy” and spoiled-white-kid Kavanaugh — and certainly not the environment in which the noble Ford navigated. Seventeen-year-old Kavanaugh was to play the role of a falling-down drunk; Ford, with impressive powers of memory of an event 36 years past, assures us that as a circumspect 15-year-old, she had only “one beer.”
A former teenage friend of Ford’s sent out a flurry of social-media postings, allegedly confirming that Ford’s ordeal was well known to her friends in 1982 and so her assault narrative must therefore be confirmed. Then, when challenged on some of her incoherent details (schools are not in session during summertime, and Ford is on record as not telling anyone of the incident for 30 years), she mysteriously claimed that she no longer could stand by her earlier assertions, which likewise soon vanished from her social-media account. Apparently, she had assumed that in 2018 Oceania ideologically correct citizens merely needed to lodge an accusation and it would be believed, without any obligation on her part to substantiate her charges.
When a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, followed Ford seven days later to allege another sexual incident with the teenage Kavanaugh, at Yale 35 years ago, it was no surprise that she followed the now normal Orwellian boilerplate: None of those whom she named as witnesses could either confirm her charges or even remember the alleged event. She had altered her narrative after consultations with lawyers and handlers. She too confesses to underage drinking during the alleged event. She too is currently a social and progressive political activist. The only difference from Ford’s narrative is that Ramirez’s accusation was deemed not credible enough to be reported even by the New York Times, which recently retracted false stories about witness Mark Judge in the Ford case, and which falsely reported that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had charged the government for $50,000 office drapes.
As in 1984, “truths” in these sorts of allegations do not exist unless they align with the larger “Truth” of the progressive project. In our case, the overarching Truth mandates that, in a supposedly misogynist society, women must always be believed in all their accusations and should be exempt from all counter-examinations.
Little “truths” — such as the right of the accused, the need to produce evidence, insistence on cross-examination, and due process — are counterrevolutionary constructs and the refuge of reactionary hold-outs who are enemies of the people. Or in the words of Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono:
Guess who’s perpetuating all of these kinds of actions? It’s the men in this country. And I just want to say to the men in this country, “Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing, for a change.”
The View’s Joy Behar was more honest about the larger Truth: “These white men, old by the way, are not protecting women,” Behar exclaimed. “They’re protecting a man who is probably guilty.” We thank Behar for the concession “probably.”
According to some polls, about half the country believes that Brett Kavanaugh is now guilty of a crime committed 36 years ago at the age of 17. And that reality reminds us that we are no longer in America. We are already living well into the socialist totalitarian Hell that Orwell warned us about long ago.
Genius writing Mr. Johnson
As far as I’m concerned, the US of A is done.
We were supposed to have ‘citizen’ legislators. Legislators that would meet for a couple of months, then go back home to their real jobs. It is nothing less that a disgrace to the Founding Fathers that these elected people behave in such a manner.
The old saying “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” It’s happening right before our eyes.
I am disturbed that most defenses of Kavanaugh assume the form of a legal case. These issues have nothing to do with legalisms, they have to do with a man’s character. We all engage in character analysis. I don’t know anybody who constructs a legal case for or against a person…until after a preliminary judgment has been made. Is Kavanaugh a piece of garbage? Everything about Kavanaugh signaled a stellar character until the Ford accusations. The quality of life he lived earned him the presumption of innocence, not some esoteric concept of legal justice. In that context, it is only fair that any accusation (and the accuser) be scrutinized with a healthy amount of skepticism. In this particular case, the accusation falls far short immediately. I feel like the lawyer Republican Senators violated Kavanaugh and the public by failing to openly and vigorously defend Kavanaugh from these allegations. How hard would it have been to forcefully and publicly declare that the allegations would be viewed as mere slander until such time as actual substantive and credible evidence was presented? The burden should have been on Ford and the Democrats. By allowing these accusations to ferment, the Republican Senators have participated and soiled their own reputations. Rant over.
I feel like the lawyer Republican Senators violated Kavanaugh and the public by failing to openly and vigorously defend Kavanaugh from these allegations.
That’s because the Republicans are slime – just like the Democrats.
It’s VD Hanson, not Johnson
In a way, I am glad this is happening. These events should give everyone a heads up about how degraded the justice system and its laws have become in this country. When Brett K gets approved to the SCOTUS, maybe, just maybe, he will be a fighter for the Constitution, since it should now be obvious & personal to him the value of its wisdom.
As far as Kavanaugh being a “fighter for the Constitution”, I’m wondering if all of this noise is just a smokescreen to avoid looking at real issues we should be having with this guy:
Dan just confirmed all of my suspicions regarding this dog and pony show. It’s a despicable charade from all sides of the political spectrum.
I got downvoted yesterday in another article about this subject for my comment regarding reluctant sympathies. The attacks seem to be goading us into supporting a nominee that has some disturbing flaws that have nothing to do with sexual escapades.
No sweat, MC. I think people get in a hurry and hit the downvote instead of the upvote by accident. And if it wasn’t by accident, then they must have overlooked something in their haste. Don’t worry. It happens to me all the time as well.
Thank you for a non emotional explanation of K’s relevance to our lives. I found his Yale roommate’s comment about his drunken behaviours revealing. Likely true it still does not disqualify him in my eyes. As to his statism as described by Dan, it does give some concerns.
http://theweek.com/speedreads/797971/kavanaughs-yale-freshman-roommate-says-when-drank-heavily-got-aggressive-belligerent
Why were the pertinent yearbooks of Ford’s schooldays scrubbed from the web? More importantly who did it.
https://cultofthe1st.blogspot.com/2018/09/why-christine-blasey-fords-high-school_19.html?showComment=1537409523569&m=1
Great addendum Druid. thanks for your efforts
Bingo, Dan. Even so, VDH touched most of the bases. I almost wrote a similar piece, but decided to go Clockwork Orange instead. All is theater. If we win, they win. If we lose, they win.
Moreover, the progressives have weaponized everything, especially sex. But it is always the accused and the supporters of the accused whose integrity is held hostage. Funny how that works. Just like clockwork; and as predictable as the sunrise and sunset.
I feel a bit vindicated when I see Stucky and you, Doug echo my comment. What vexes my thought is; say, if Trump et al does 1/10th of what Q theory says, how would K’s presence play out given his track record. Would it help or hinder draining the deep state swamp? Would his leanings protect or slay the creatures?
KS,
I would say protect. It seems hopeless, I know, but reality can’t be denied and this is reality: We’ve passed the point of no return on more levels than this comment allows. America is a turd spinning down the toilet and in accordance with the plan. All of her institutions are under attack currently and, barring any great and unforeseen circumstances, won’t survive.
Even if Q was real – that can’t stop (or even slow) the crazy. Sealed indictments would only make it worse. In that scenario, Trump would have to get all martial lawlike. Even with Military Tribunals, how do you think the press is going to cover that? Even if Repugs take (or hold) the midterms, the left will just go more apeshit and when the economy crashes, which it will, then pop go the weasels.
In order for Trump to truly drain the swamp, a lot of people would have to die. Of course, they will either way; it’s just a matter of time.
The Russian investigation has decimated the trust of 50% of the country in the voting system. The FBI and DoJ credibility has been destroyed in the eyes of the other 50%. Trump has tarnished the office of the presidency with the former-mentioned half of the country. Obama dismantled the military, Trump surrounds himself with bankers and globalists while throwing red meat to his base via Tweets. Congress has it’s lowest approval ratings in history, and this Kavanaugh debacle will act like a splitting maul in a country of felled trees; as the Supreme Court nomination process (and possibly the Court itself) fall to the sounds of “timber”.
Doom. Doom. All is doom. Unless I’m wrong then it will all be OK. Or, perhaps I’m just in a bad mood this afternoon.
In any event, have a great evening.
Wow! Your word pictures have so much more texture this evening. If it’s a bad mood, well I’m sorry to hear that.
Dear Doug, Late at night here and your response seems perceptive and accurate, as you always skillfully write wise words, unfortunately . I hold out a fantasy that given his past rulings, K perhaps could protect Trump and all the king’s military men in the tenuous possibility heads are rolled, or at least exposed for what they are.
Wow, Dan! That is a sobering article.
I’m a little put off that much of the article relies on ACLU research. Nevertheless, facts are facts, even if Satan tells them.
So … Kavanaugh sides with security over freedom …. when he moved to deny “a remedy to an American citizen detained and abused by FBI agents overseas,” . Shit. That’s disturbing.
And this is fucken horrifying …. “In a 2009 case, Saleh v. Titan, he asserted military contractors cannot be held liable to human rights abuses as long as they are acting under the authority of the U.S. military.”
And there’s lots more scary shit listed in the article. Yikes!!
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I do abhor what the libtards are doing. I do still believe Kavanaugh is 100% innocent. I do believe this process has 100 thousand percent solidified that Demoncraps don’t give a flying fuck about truth, or this country, or the Constitution, and that they are all evil, and that this really is like “1984”, and I believe the time for killing is coming upon us, and all that etc etc ………..
….. but, #fuckmedead! ….. what if Kavanaugh is just another Swamp Creature???
Again, thanks for submitting a non-smear article about Kavanaugh, and one that makes you think. I nominate you for TBP Poster of the Month.
“I’m a little put off that much of the article relies on ACLU research. Nevertheless, facts are facts, even if Satan tells them”
I know, me too, but with reasonable people, it doesn’t matter where the facts come from, it only matters that there is a record of his views regarding the constitution and these decisions don’t bode well for us.
“what if Kavanaugh is just another Swamp Creature???”
It’s said that he participated in the cover up of Vince Fosters murder or at the very least, looked the other way.
http://www.fbicover-up.com/justice-brett-kavanaugh.html
Is he innocent of the sexual escapades he is accused of? Yes, I think he is but the democrats that are part of the swamp (probably 99% of them) do not want the real reasons why he should not be confirmed to be brought to light because the very decisions that Dan posted from the ACLU are exactly the kind any nominee that they would support would want.
Well Dan, I quit reading at ACLU
Excellent summary….Speaking from my experience as an attorney, Ford is a clumsy liar who would be eviscerated in a deposition by any competent trial lawyer. I doubt she is willing to testify under oath, given the possible penalties for perjury…
Anyone who has issues from 35 years ago – needs counseling. Not to accuse a person with an accusation that cannot be proved / disproved because of the length of time.
Stepford Wives was a utopian dream. Dutch and his robot ‘wife’ are living the fantasy. No memory, no issues.
“Victim” solely refers to the accuser, not the accused, who one day was Brett Kavanaugh, a brilliant jurist and model citizen, and the next morning woke up transformed into some sort of Kafkaesque cockroach.
I can relate to this. Justice has no meaning when it comes to a politicized evangelical agenda by a fundamentalist vigilante prosecutor as proxy for an alleged victim; who was surely a victim but not from my actions. I am confident she would say so if asked. My front page photo and contrived story pasted above the fold of the local yellow tinted newspaper, folded any chance of true justice for me.
It was 1972 or so when I grokked Kafkaesque. It was a Friday night in the Graduate and Professional dorm at Emory. I was holed up in the 8×16 dorm room of a lovely radiograph technician student along with her suite mate whom I was sweet on. Plus a few others, notably a heavy bearded long hair literature grad student. We sat around on the convertible style couch and the floor while a bookcase candle lit the room with flickering shadows. We were chitting and chatting about all things, maybe even toking about things. The room’s resident had a large cecropia moth specimen on her bookcase, a souvenir and trophy, long dead but still beautiful. As I sat cross legged on the floor watching the shadowy figures of the room I saw the moth move. It’s movement emphasized dramatically by the stark shadows cast upon the bookcase. I exclaimed to the others, seeking verification of my observation. They too gasped as the animated but long dead moth seemed to come alive.
The light was turned on and we discovered a large cockroach feeding on the body and thorax of the Lepidopterian specimen. The girls groaned and we all felt a thrust of disgust at our discovery. The literature grad student described the event as Kafkaesque. As I had never read any of Kafka’s works and only had heard his name used in ways unfamiliar to me, I began to understand the oft used adjective.
The treasured trove of justice is subject to be consumed by reprehensible and despicable creepy crawly things and it is a duty to turn on the light.
“Victim” solely refers to the accuser, not the accused, who one day was Brett Kavanaugh, a brilliant jurist and model citizen, and the next morning woke up transformed into some sort of Kafkaesque cockroach. ”
It happens to a lot of folks who come in contact with the Orange One.
This article was a kick in the gut for me. I have already joined alternatives to mainstream media because “I can see what’s happening,” but this rubbed my nose in it. I pray the Center will coalesce & defend itself from TPTB.
It’s time we have a national discussion on separating from the garbage that calls itself liberal. Build the wall (the one that will be built along the eastern state lines of WA, OR and CA). Tell the trash to move there. There is no chance we can live and share politics with this vermin. It’s time.
The most immoral are the ones who don’t to hear about morality.