Unsex Me Here

Pentwater, Michigan
October 10, 2018

Okay, the Kavanaugh nomination happened just as I figured it would.  But I wasn't the only one, and predicting it wasn't exactly a feat of Nostradamus-like proportions.  It was more a foregone conclusion that got interrupted temporarily by the testimony of one of Kavanaugh's several sexual assault victims.

Here again, we have to examine the way we're viewing the news lately (and by "we" I mean the anti-Trump people).  So clouded has our judgment become by our bitter loathing of the president and his people that we fail, often, to see what is and is not happening.  Mostly we fail to see that Republican partisan politics will win out over reason and decency almost every time.  But since those of us who oppose Trump are mostly reasonable and decent people, we view the world through that lens.  We're on the side of fair play, for the most part, and also on the side of diversity and inclusiveness.  Well, it's about time we got a little less tolerant.  If this is a war between ideologies, as it is safe to say it is, then we shouldn't be in the business of giving anybody the benefit of the doubt.  In war you pick a side and try to annihilate the other side.  In that regard I applaud the attempts of the Democratic senators to derail Kavanaugh's nomination, even though they were pretty much doomed from the start by the unwavering mathematics of the Senate as it is now comprised.

When Kavanaugh got nominated most people (and by people I mean news reporter types) accurately predicted that he would be approved, in spite of the fact that, once on the bench, he would surely oppose liberality at every turn.  This conclusion just followed from the fact that there are a majority of Republicans in the Senate.  During his hearings he lost his composure and telegraphed to the whole country that he was precisely what liberals feared he was, namely, a card-carrying right wing Fox News conspiracy theorist of the first order, whose judgment would be unalloyed in the future by any consideration of even the possibility that a Democrat might be right about anything.  (Not that there's anything wrong with being so partisan:  such views almost perfectly mirror my own feelings about Republicans, and I would be happy to go onto the Supreme Court and be the undying voice of left-wing opposition.)  Viewed in retrospect, his tearful rant was a master stroke on Kavanaugh's part, since it established him as a once-in-a-lifetime guaranteed Republican partisan.  The failure to nominate someone with such a pristine pedigree of conservatism would be the great regret of any Republican senator for the rest of his or her life.  Even Senator Murkowski of Alaska was almost apologetic about not voting for him, and made up some bullshit so she could vote "present" rather than "no."

So, to quote a line from one of my favorite Cohen Brothers movies, "What have we learned?"  One thing, for sure, regarding women Republican senators.  They are Republicans first and foremost.  Their womanhood does not "trump," as it were, their conservatism, their hatred, their loathing of liberality and fairness.  This was another miscalculation many commentators made.  Somehow they thought that feminine solidarity would win out over partisan politics.  But no.  And really, why should they have been so rash in their expectation?  These women are, after all, Republicans.  If they'd been the least bit sensitive to the plight and rights of women, they wouldn't have run for office as Republicans in the first place.  And for Christ's sake, it's not as if there aren't dozens of other women who have put in with the forces of evil and been appointed to positions of power--Betsy DeVos, Nikki Haley, Kirstjen Nielsen, the wretched Sarah Sanders, not to mention the many harpies on Fox News.  Why should the Senate, of all places, be exempt from morally compromised women members?  These individuals have, with Lady Macbeth, called out

Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts,
Unsex me here; and fill me,
From the crown to the toe, 
Topful of direst cruelty!

We suffer when we assume that there are good people on both sides of the political aisle, because we waste time that could be better spent opposing the bad ones.  Perhaps at one time there were "good" Republicans, but no more.   If they're good, they won't be Republicans.  Sorry, maybe your dad was a Republican and you think of him as basically a good guy.  But your dad was foolish and misguided at best, and bigoted and filled with fear and loathing at worst.  Time to stop thinking there are salvageable Republicans, male or female, and recognize them all for what they are--the minions of the devil.  And you know who the devil is, right?