Here are some random thoughts on the Kavanaugh episode:
• The purpose of this blog is to be hard on the left, because it’s in their own best interest to be self-critical. Had they been self-critical, they never would have been in this situation because they would not have lost the last election. Assuming they had lost anyway, self-critical people would not have acted as these people did. They would not have made public such a weak case because if you push a weak case like this and act as though it’s strong, it makes people question your judgement. It also makes people question your ethics. Did none of the participants on the Dems side ever imagine how they would have liked it if they had been on the receiving end of this kind of treatment? Or did they think that progressives have special privileges so that they are allowed to dish it out but should never be forced to take it? If that was their attitude, they deserved to lose.
• What should they have done? Since Republicans who have been chosen in the past have a history of shuffling to the left, the Democrats should have put up minimal resistance and, once he was confirmed, launched a subtle and quiet campaign to pull him over to their side.
• Not only were their tactics sleazy, but the use of sleazy tactics seems to have both united the right and drawn in people from the center. If true, then their tactics backfired. Maybe even Democrats have been drawn in. After all, why should black males buy into the campaign to accept a woman’s word when historically they were victims of white women lying about them?
• For me the best moment came when someone shut up Linda Sarsour, who whined about the process and claimed that black men never get the presumption of innocence (here). The response was, “What are you on about. Ford didn’t produce 4 male witnesses so under Sharia Law Kavanaugh is innocent.”
• Steve Sailer links to a column in the NY Times (here) in which a woman complains that the jocks always win and those who were marginalized in high school are still marginalized:
For those who lived at the margins during high school — and I was one of them, an adolescent made of nerve endings and giant hair and an outsize desire to ingratiate — this is a bitter pill to swallow.
No, it’s not a bitter pill to swallow. I, too, was marginalized in high school, so I went into academia where I thought I would be treated well. But I ended up being marginalized there, too. Yet, I am supposed to support people like Professor Christine Blasey Ford who are not marginalized in academia. And I ask, why should I? Just as she won’t support the jock Brett Kavanaugh, I don’t see why I should support Ford. Would she support me on anything? Of course not.
• Unfortunately, I don’t like beer. Sigh.
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