Growing up, I was never really an athletic kid. The thing that I did learn from my misadventures in Little League was how important it was to be a "good sport." The first lesson in good sportsmanship is how not to throw a tantrum when you lose, but at some point it is important to learn how to be a good winner as well. As it turned out, the things that I tended to win in life were more mental than physical in nature, and in that arena it is even more important to learn how to win gracefully. In the world of competing ideas, presentation and demeanor can be supremely important. In my line of work, I have had to realize that being right is not even 50% of the job description.
"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing," is the mantra of a sociopath. It is the path to wickedness. Thus, here in the wake of the Kavanaugh debacle, I feel like we are losers, all of us. The gloating of the winners makes them appear to be insensitive to the plight of people who have experienced sexual assault. This is multi-faceted: they refuse to believe that it happened, the oldest and most familiar form of negation, they may call her a liar, they may simply say that she doesn't remember it correctly. Worst of all they may, in fact, find her credible, but simply not care enough to delay or even halt their march to victory. I feel like the responses to the whole scenario I have seen on social media, while they do not add any clarity to the truth of what happened so long ago, tell me an awful, awful lot about the people who double down on scoffing and self-righteous anger.
On the side that feels like they just lost, there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Suspicions (perhaps even hopes) that the legitimacy of the Court is on the wane, vengeful fantasies about voting all the bastards out, and general vilification of those who have dug the bunker of white male privilege that much deeper, have been pretty common over the past few days. I feel the sort of stomach turning futility of this whole affair. I have felt it before. It is what Psalm 40 refers to as the miry clay, that sucking pit or bog that just will not let you move and threatens to drown you. It is indeed hard to be a good loser when that involves explaining to my daughter that the highest level of our justice system may have two men who were credibly accused of treating women badly sitting on its bench. I understand that accusations are not proof, I understand that we need to have protections against false allegations, this is true and important. But any quest for the truth was beggared by the limitations of the investigation that eventually took place only because one Republican man grew a temporary spine.
It is unfortunate that the spine was not a permanent addition. It is unfortunate that many Republicans (not just Susan Collins) had reservations that needed to be put to bed for real, and still decided to just plow ahead. It strikes me that this decision was too important to be made as quickly as it was. If I were Kavanaugh I would want every possible measure taken to verify my innocence before becoming a permanent public figure, who will, rightly or wrongly, become synonymous with sexual assault and frat bro misbehavior.
Time will tell what happens as a result of this. It may be that the last retrenchment of white male hegemony was simply the digging of a grave not a fortress, but I am not sanguine that the days of McConnell, Grassley and Trump are at an end. We may be on the verge of outing and holding the Harvey Weinsteins and Bill Cosbys of the world accountable, but the system that enables them and even protects them is not going to go quietly. To think it will just fade away is naive and perhaps even dangerous to the cause of justice. I know every time I see Clarence Thomas, I can't help but think about pubic hairs and "Long Dong Silver," I consider his judgment to be less than Supreme Court worthy. Kavanaugh will be a similar case for me, even if I give him the benefit of the doubt that he actually didn't do what Dr. Ford said he did, and he was just a rowdy drunk frat bro doing rowdy drunk frat bro things, as many more corroborating witnesses attest, I still think he needs to own up to who he was. I doubt the veracity of his characterizations of himself, and while dishonesty with oneself is certainly not rare or disqualifying, it does not give me many good feelings about what has just happened in our country.
He is where he is, and we are where we are. At this point nothing can change that. My lingering angst right now is that the whole affair was so squalid and rancorous, how can we be proud of what we have wrought? Win or lose, how can you be happy with how we got here?
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Friday, October 5, 2018
L'etranger
I remember reading the opening of Albert Camus' L'etranger, in French IV as a senior in high school. It opens with something like, "My mother died, whatever." I was rather more interested in finding out what the book had to do with The Cure's song Killing an Arab, but I remember being struck by the starkness of that opening. It was really my first introduction to existentialism, and I was reading it in French, because my French teacher, Mrs. Beachy (aka Madame Plage) was awesome.
Looking back, I realize that the course my life took was rather shaped by reading things. The books that shaped my thinking, and sometimes warped my thinking are important, but not always fun. Reading Sartre's No Exit, actually lead me to re-evaluate what I believed about heaven and hell, and left me open to the more hopeful visions of C.S. Lewis. Reading The Catcher in the Rye and The Sufferings of Young Werther, taught me that perhaps teenage angst isn't really that noble of an emotional state. The existentialists, along with Dostoevsky, Emerson and Thoreau, led me to an understanding that people are fundamentally estranged from one another, and yet, we must struggle against that estrangement. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," wrote the Walden hermit.
There is this little blurb in the NY Times this morning, which seems like just a data point in the ongoing saga of human estrangement. I'm not a great fan of statistics, nor a great believer in polls, but the upshot of that Upshot, is that a whole lot of people, on both sides of our current Left/Right divide feel like a stranger in a strange land. 47% of Republicans (who currently control all the major levers of power in the government) and 44% of Democrats, feel like the country is completely out of their control. How is that possible? Well, objectively, it's not. Just like Holden Caufield's romantic self destruction, it doesn't make any sense. By the time you get done reading Goethe, you realize that "young Werther" is a whiny punk, we need to get over ourselves. We are not the underdog any more, none of us. We are the Roman Empire that Caesar himself could only dream about, we are also possibly a more entrenched dystopia than Orwell could have imagined, we are also Aldous Huxley's Brave New World on a level that few have fully apprehended.
We are a big humanity sized mess. Old white men sitting in the seats of power deny the experiences of the young and the oppressed and the female. Money rides roughshod over all of our systems. The power-hungry and greedy take brutal advantage of anyone and everyone at some point or another. As Emerson said, "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." But existential despair is not in order, because we have a situation here that has never existed in the history of the world, we have the capacity to change it, possibly without violence, because for all our flaws we still have a voice and it is a voice that far too many of us choose not to use.
In almost exactly a month we get to vote. I daresay this is probably the most talked about, and maybe the most important "mid-term" election in the history of our country. But the trends of voter turnout, especially in non-presidential years are pretty grim. Roughly half of our eligible voters will not show up. Because I have read existentialists I know why; these people are convinced that nothing they do matters. Maybe it's because they have been sated and sedated, maybe it's because they have been oppressed and depressed, maybe it's because they have abandoned all hope, but I know this, their estrangement is not an iron fact, it is a trap of their own mind, and it is one the world will suffer and the powerful will encourage and sustain.
I think what I may lamenting here is the dying value of Liberal Arts education, even if it doesn't lead to marketable skills, it does in fact lead to being able to understand the world as it really is outside the 24 hour news cycle. If you read enough, you will notice that none of our struggles and estrangement are new things, and when you realize they aren't just afflictions of the present historical conflagration, you have a valuable shred of hope to hang on to: this disease is not usually fatal. Chronically depressed sociopaths, dissociated psychopaths and nihilists, are characters we should read about, not personalities we should emulate, and certainly not characters we should elect. Read more, vote, watch less TV news, shalom.
Looking back, I realize that the course my life took was rather shaped by reading things. The books that shaped my thinking, and sometimes warped my thinking are important, but not always fun. Reading Sartre's No Exit, actually lead me to re-evaluate what I believed about heaven and hell, and left me open to the more hopeful visions of C.S. Lewis. Reading The Catcher in the Rye and The Sufferings of Young Werther, taught me that perhaps teenage angst isn't really that noble of an emotional state. The existentialists, along with Dostoevsky, Emerson and Thoreau, led me to an understanding that people are fundamentally estranged from one another, and yet, we must struggle against that estrangement. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," wrote the Walden hermit.
There is this little blurb in the NY Times this morning, which seems like just a data point in the ongoing saga of human estrangement. I'm not a great fan of statistics, nor a great believer in polls, but the upshot of that Upshot, is that a whole lot of people, on both sides of our current Left/Right divide feel like a stranger in a strange land. 47% of Republicans (who currently control all the major levers of power in the government) and 44% of Democrats, feel like the country is completely out of their control. How is that possible? Well, objectively, it's not. Just like Holden Caufield's romantic self destruction, it doesn't make any sense. By the time you get done reading Goethe, you realize that "young Werther" is a whiny punk, we need to get over ourselves. We are not the underdog any more, none of us. We are the Roman Empire that Caesar himself could only dream about, we are also possibly a more entrenched dystopia than Orwell could have imagined, we are also Aldous Huxley's Brave New World on a level that few have fully apprehended.
We are a big humanity sized mess. Old white men sitting in the seats of power deny the experiences of the young and the oppressed and the female. Money rides roughshod over all of our systems. The power-hungry and greedy take brutal advantage of anyone and everyone at some point or another. As Emerson said, "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." But existential despair is not in order, because we have a situation here that has never existed in the history of the world, we have the capacity to change it, possibly without violence, because for all our flaws we still have a voice and it is a voice that far too many of us choose not to use.
In almost exactly a month we get to vote. I daresay this is probably the most talked about, and maybe the most important "mid-term" election in the history of our country. But the trends of voter turnout, especially in non-presidential years are pretty grim. Roughly half of our eligible voters will not show up. Because I have read existentialists I know why; these people are convinced that nothing they do matters. Maybe it's because they have been sated and sedated, maybe it's because they have been oppressed and depressed, maybe it's because they have abandoned all hope, but I know this, their estrangement is not an iron fact, it is a trap of their own mind, and it is one the world will suffer and the powerful will encourage and sustain.
I think what I may lamenting here is the dying value of Liberal Arts education, even if it doesn't lead to marketable skills, it does in fact lead to being able to understand the world as it really is outside the 24 hour news cycle. If you read enough, you will notice that none of our struggles and estrangement are new things, and when you realize they aren't just afflictions of the present historical conflagration, you have a valuable shred of hope to hang on to: this disease is not usually fatal. Chronically depressed sociopaths, dissociated psychopaths and nihilists, are characters we should read about, not personalities we should emulate, and certainly not characters we should elect. Read more, vote, watch less TV news, shalom.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
The End of Argument
Sometimes I like to argue, sometimes I really like it, sometimes I really can't help myself. That is at least part of why I spend time writing this blog, because there are arguments that I need or want to make, which are not things that I would use my pulpit to put out there. Sometimes my arguments here make my wife Michele nervous, because while I do draw a line between what I am willing to say here and what I would say from the pulpit, not everyone will appreciate that there is, in fact, a line.
I have found lately that argument is becoming less enjoyable, and I think it's because we have lost something crucial in our public discourse. Donald Trump is an incarnation of what has gone wrong with us. As I have said before, he is not a cause, he is a symptom, he is an embodiment of our arrogance and our narcissism, he is a manifestation of our tendency to let our own insecurity blind us to the truth and deafen us to Wisdom's voice.
Last night at a rally, he finally got around to mocking Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, for him it was pretty mild, but he clearly fed into the notion that all of Brett Kavanaugh's accusers are nothing but "evil" Democratic operatives, trying to derail a good man. Funny how people who are so very sensitive to the possibility of false accusations are willing to believe something so false in response. I have said from the beginning of this that the truth is going to be beggared by this process, and that is in no small way because of the strong desire that each side has to confirm what they already believe to be true.
Last week changed very little, the liberal tribe believed Dr. Ford, the conservative tribe believed Kavanaugh, and got a special little charge out of the venom that he and Lindsey Graham brought to the proceedings. That extra little flourish of spiteful rage, was what poker players refer to as a "tell," an almost unconscious action that can give away a player's status. People can have "tells" for different things, sometimes it's when they're lying/bluffing, sometime's its when they know they have a good hand, sometimes it's when they're conflicted.
The decision that Kavanaugh and Graham both made to come out with bile and "righteous" indignation, was calculated to firm up the position of those who already support Kavanaugh. These two men are both savvy public figures that to read either display as spontaneous would be naive. Their anger was a tactic, and it might work. Trump has demonstrated the immense power that white male grievance can wield in our current situation. He has repeatedly demonstrated that the only people he really needs to please are the people who will chant with him at his rallies and swell with pride at his latest display of arrogant ignorance. I think he is, contrary to some opinions, fairly happy with his 40% approval rating,because he has figured out that 40% is what he needs, especially if he can simply outrage, discourage and disgust his way into some of the swing votes.
You see this in the attrition of moderate Republicans, voices who would have wanted more time and more truth to be a part of this moment of consequence, many times just get in line with the tribe, because they know if they don't they will be left without a political home. You cannot persuade people in such a predicament that they should stand courageously for the truth (unless they're about to retire). That's why we don't seem to be able to argue very well any more, no one really feels safe in advancing their opinion if they are going to run up against people who will simply reply with dogma and rage.
I have noticed a rather disturbing symmetry on two sides of the current tribal divide. Right and left are both dedicated to portraying the other side as hostile and irrational. The left will point to Fox News, Breitbart and such as "echo chambers" of conservative talking points and breeding grounds for various and sundry conspiracies about the "Deep State." But the peculiar thing is that, from a right wing perspective, the Washington Post and the New York Times along with pretty much the entire system of academia are doing the same thing in reverse. Also symmetrical across the divide is the lament that the enemies of the cause are the ones who are playing hardball. Bill Maher often laments on his show that the Republicans have broken faith with our national institutions by doing things like blocking Merrick Garland and blatantly endorsing the numerous lies and half truths that spew from the White House these days. Oddly enough, conservative commentators make similar claims about Democrats, as we saw erupt out of Kavanaugh and Graham last week.
The problem is that there seems to be no lack of bad faith to go around. Once you start gouging eyes and hitting below the belt the behavior is contagious. I'm not equivocating behavior here either, I will admit to some sour behavior on the part of Democrats, going back to how things went during the Clinton administration, but it was Newt Gingrich who really pushed us over the edge of one of those dreaded slippery slopes. He decided that the argumentative, yet productive, relationships of say Reagan and O'Neil were unacceptable and that adversaries must be treated as enemies. The GOP has always been a step ahead on the way down, leaving the Dems playing catch up, and even occasionally pumping the brakes. Once Trump happened the brakes failed for both parties. Dirty pool looks different depending on which side of the aisle is playing at the moment, but it is still dirty, and is mounting to the point where it may be a threat to our Republic. We can't argue anymore, because argument requires good faith between the adversaries. Faith in anything other that tribal identity and brute force is lacking at the moment.
Friday, September 28, 2018
What to Believe?
I didn't have time to watch the whole day of testimony yesterday, neither could my heart take such a thing. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony was more convincing than I expected, and Kavanaugh's refutation of said testimony was at least as vehement as I expected. I still don't know where the truth is in all of this, but yesterday didn't seem to change too many minds, least of all the minds that matter in the immediate context. Out there in this nation of ours there may have been minds changed, or there may have just been bitterness magnified. The impact of that can only be seen with time and distance.
What I offer here are some observations based on what I do know, I do not expect they will change your mind, in fact, I am still reserving judgment about Mr. Kavanaugh's guilt or innocence, I have no proof beyond the words of two people, neither of whom I know well enough to really say whether they are telling the truth. I do have some professional experience with hearing people's stories, including stories about trauma, and I have observed, on a few occasions, the different ways that the perpetrators of abuse and their victims can perceive the same events.
Let's start with Dr. Ford. Her demeanor, the way that she presented her testimony, including the obvious trepidation that she had about it, was entirely consistent with what one would expect from a survivor of sexual assault after over 30 years, therapy and some obvious healing work. Her composure in such a scenario was admirable. If she was sitting in my office, telling me as her pastor about this occurrence, I would believe her. I have had that actual experience over the years, women with different degrees of distance from the trauma, telling me what happened to them, and Dr. Ford's testimony was absolutely within the range of what I would consider truthfulness. Could she fake it? Maybe, but not likely. I think most people that watched, even the skeptics, would have to admit that she seemed like a woman who was telling the truth.
I think the Republican senators on the committee were wise to have a woman do their questioning for them. Today there are the usual post-mortem critiques of Mitchell and her questioning techniques, but honestly, the optic of a bunch of old men trying to break Ford down would have been even more disastrous than what took place yesterday. And I do believe that it was disastrous, but more on that in a moment.
So on to Kavanaugh, as you may gather from earlier posts, I do have some sympathy for Brett Kavanaugh. Most of that went out the window yesterday, as I watched him let his anger get the best of him. It's not that I blame him for being angry, especially if he is falsely accused, but I would hope that in testimony such as this he would have been able to keep it together. He understands the legal system as well as anyone in the room, and he was evasive about whether or not the FBI should investigate this matter. If he is innocent, indeed, if he wasn't even in the house where the alleged assault took place, he should be as interested in having dispositive proof of such a claim uncovered as anyone. He seemed to know that his buddies hold the majority and that the people who support him will do so without proof. He is also probably fairly certain that dispositive proof is going to be hard to come by, and is understandably anxious to avoid more of what has been going on this past week.
Emotionally his testimony was not as convincing, because he seems awfully sure of something that I would have a hard time being sure of myself. For me, it would be hard to say that I wasn't at some random gathering of kids at someone's house when I was in high school. I would have a hard time saying for sure that I was never with a certain assortment of people, and I wasn't even much of a drinker in High School, nor was I often at the sort of gatherings described, because unlike Kavanaugh, I wasn't a football player or the sort of person who spent a lot of time sort of hanging out with my bros, I didn't really have bros. Still, I went places on occasion and at this point, I can't really remember much about that.
You know who would remember? A girl who was traumatized at one of those gatherings, a fifteen year old who got pulled into a room and pawed at, by two guys who thought it was hilarious. And that is where this sort of breaks for me, for Kavanaugh this evening might have been totally and utterly unremarkable. Kavanaugh himself mentioned that Animal House and Fast Times at Ridgemont High were current movies in those days and that they informed the sense of humor that he and his friends shared when they put crude inside jokes in their yearbook. From the perspective of a couple of 17 year old boys who had "a few too many beers," a brief tussle with a pretty young blonde might not be much of a memory at all. Ford's account is that Kavanaugh grabbed her and groped her and then Judge jumped on top of them and knocked him off and allowed her to escape, neither of them pursued her. To them, especially if they were inebriated (not to the level of black out intoxication mind you, just enough to be fuzzy) this might have been thirty seconds to a minute of foolishness. Nothing ever came of it, she didn't go to the cops or her parents or anyone for a long time, it passed out of their memory because there were no consequences. Nothing else would have been strange for anyone at the house, except maybe for them wondering where Christine went suddenly. People suddenly leave parties all the time without explanation, it's called "ghosting," it is unremarkable.
My point is that there is a very real and plausible explanation for Kavanaugh having no recollection of this event, but for Ford it became a trauma that she had to deal with for decades. Let's say this is the truth: it happened, but to everyone except Christine Blasey, it was such a nothing evening that they can't even remember it. Kavanaugh isn't exactly lying, and he may not be the sexual predator that some of the other accusers are trying to make him, but should he be on the Supreme Court?
My answer based on his testimony yesterday is no, not because I don't believe him, but because he appears to be so very angry at the wrong people, and that makes me question his ability to put his personal feelings to the side and be an impartial arbiter of the law. That's what the Supreme Court is supposed to be and do, and it has become something rather different, it has become a de-facto legislative body. A few weeks ago a Republican Senator, Ben Sasse gave this speech at the beginning of this confirmation hearing:
What I offer here are some observations based on what I do know, I do not expect they will change your mind, in fact, I am still reserving judgment about Mr. Kavanaugh's guilt or innocence, I have no proof beyond the words of two people, neither of whom I know well enough to really say whether they are telling the truth. I do have some professional experience with hearing people's stories, including stories about trauma, and I have observed, on a few occasions, the different ways that the perpetrators of abuse and their victims can perceive the same events.
Let's start with Dr. Ford. Her demeanor, the way that she presented her testimony, including the obvious trepidation that she had about it, was entirely consistent with what one would expect from a survivor of sexual assault after over 30 years, therapy and some obvious healing work. Her composure in such a scenario was admirable. If she was sitting in my office, telling me as her pastor about this occurrence, I would believe her. I have had that actual experience over the years, women with different degrees of distance from the trauma, telling me what happened to them, and Dr. Ford's testimony was absolutely within the range of what I would consider truthfulness. Could she fake it? Maybe, but not likely. I think most people that watched, even the skeptics, would have to admit that she seemed like a woman who was telling the truth.
I think the Republican senators on the committee were wise to have a woman do their questioning for them. Today there are the usual post-mortem critiques of Mitchell and her questioning techniques, but honestly, the optic of a bunch of old men trying to break Ford down would have been even more disastrous than what took place yesterday. And I do believe that it was disastrous, but more on that in a moment.
So on to Kavanaugh, as you may gather from earlier posts, I do have some sympathy for Brett Kavanaugh. Most of that went out the window yesterday, as I watched him let his anger get the best of him. It's not that I blame him for being angry, especially if he is falsely accused, but I would hope that in testimony such as this he would have been able to keep it together. He understands the legal system as well as anyone in the room, and he was evasive about whether or not the FBI should investigate this matter. If he is innocent, indeed, if he wasn't even in the house where the alleged assault took place, he should be as interested in having dispositive proof of such a claim uncovered as anyone. He seemed to know that his buddies hold the majority and that the people who support him will do so without proof. He is also probably fairly certain that dispositive proof is going to be hard to come by, and is understandably anxious to avoid more of what has been going on this past week.
Emotionally his testimony was not as convincing, because he seems awfully sure of something that I would have a hard time being sure of myself. For me, it would be hard to say that I wasn't at some random gathering of kids at someone's house when I was in high school. I would have a hard time saying for sure that I was never with a certain assortment of people, and I wasn't even much of a drinker in High School, nor was I often at the sort of gatherings described, because unlike Kavanaugh, I wasn't a football player or the sort of person who spent a lot of time sort of hanging out with my bros, I didn't really have bros. Still, I went places on occasion and at this point, I can't really remember much about that.
You know who would remember? A girl who was traumatized at one of those gatherings, a fifteen year old who got pulled into a room and pawed at, by two guys who thought it was hilarious. And that is where this sort of breaks for me, for Kavanaugh this evening might have been totally and utterly unremarkable. Kavanaugh himself mentioned that Animal House and Fast Times at Ridgemont High were current movies in those days and that they informed the sense of humor that he and his friends shared when they put crude inside jokes in their yearbook. From the perspective of a couple of 17 year old boys who had "a few too many beers," a brief tussle with a pretty young blonde might not be much of a memory at all. Ford's account is that Kavanaugh grabbed her and groped her and then Judge jumped on top of them and knocked him off and allowed her to escape, neither of them pursued her. To them, especially if they were inebriated (not to the level of black out intoxication mind you, just enough to be fuzzy) this might have been thirty seconds to a minute of foolishness. Nothing ever came of it, she didn't go to the cops or her parents or anyone for a long time, it passed out of their memory because there were no consequences. Nothing else would have been strange for anyone at the house, except maybe for them wondering where Christine went suddenly. People suddenly leave parties all the time without explanation, it's called "ghosting," it is unremarkable.
My point is that there is a very real and plausible explanation for Kavanaugh having no recollection of this event, but for Ford it became a trauma that she had to deal with for decades. Let's say this is the truth: it happened, but to everyone except Christine Blasey, it was such a nothing evening that they can't even remember it. Kavanaugh isn't exactly lying, and he may not be the sexual predator that some of the other accusers are trying to make him, but should he be on the Supreme Court?
My answer based on his testimony yesterday is no, not because I don't believe him, but because he appears to be so very angry at the wrong people, and that makes me question his ability to put his personal feelings to the side and be an impartial arbiter of the law. That's what the Supreme Court is supposed to be and do, and it has become something rather different, it has become a de-facto legislative body. A few weeks ago a Republican Senator, Ben Sasse gave this speech at the beginning of this confirmation hearing:
I agree with pretty much everything Sasse says about the current state of our politics, which is a strange thing for me to agree that thoroughly with a Republican. What he says at around the 10 minute mark though is that he believes Kavanaugh has the ability to put his politics "in a box marked irrelevant," as he puts on the black robes of a judge. I do not believe, after watching Kavanaugh explode at the Democratic minority on the Judicial commission, that he has that ability. I think his past as an extremely partisan operative for the Republican party makes him rather unsuitable for the Supreme Court, and that is regardless of whether or not I believe Dr. Ford.
I do, in fact, believe her. As for Kavanaugh, I'll give him the benefit of some kind of doubt, and I suspect he's probably safe in the reality that he is innocent until proven guilty and proof is going to be really hard to come by at this point. He's also safe in that he has an invertebrate Senate majority and a tight network of ivy-league power on his side. He's safe in that the Democrats like Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi rub the MAGA crowd so wrong that anything they say must be conspiracy against the good, hard working people of America.
Kavanaugh is probably going to be confirmed, and we will have a second Supreme Court Justice who has been credibly accused of treating a woman badly. I'm just going to have to vote, and tell my daughter that I will always believe her.
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Skeletons in the Closet
To live outside the law, you must be honest.
-Bob Dylan
I got into some of the reasons why the accuser's story sounds plausible in the last post, but today I would like to offer an opinion about what Mr. Kavanaugh should be doing if he is indeed innocent of the charges leveled at him. The first thing that he should do is sort of the exact opposite of what he actually did in his interview with Fox News. He should acknowledge what he was actually like in High School and College, even if there are some unflattering aspects to be told. There are simply too many people who knew him then, and despite the fact that many of his Frat Bros have, in good Bro fashion, stood up for him as a stand up guy who could hold his liquor, some of the people, even some who initially supported him, aren't buying his clean cut kid routine.
As someone who probably would not like to have incidents from his college years replayed for all to see, I find it far more wise to simply acknowledge that I did some things I am not proud of when I was young rather than trying to paint myself as a young St. Francis. I don't need Kavanaugh to come out and give a soul-wrenching confession of puking in the bushes at Yale or detailing every time he got a little too drunk. I would like to see some harmony between the stories that witnesses tell and what he "remembers" about himself. I kind of wish we didn't have to go here in this particular process, but as they say, here we are.
General ribaldry in one's late teens is not something that would disqualify a 50 year old man from just about anything. This includes the idea that perhaps young Mr. Kavanaugh was not always quite as "gentlemanly" as he would want his grandmother to believe. I do not doubt that now, as a husband, father and respected figure, he treats women with respect and dignity, I have no reason to believe otherwise. Whether he did as a teenager in the early 1980's is and entirely different matter. Again though, Bro behavior would not necessarily disqualify him, but dishonesty and perhaps even perjury about said Bro behavior in the here and now is another matter.
So Brett, as hard as it may be, you need to be super honest with us and with yourself I think. If the accusations are false it is even more important to be honest. The simple fact is that everything about this is going to be hard to prove, but don't bank on the technical protections of the law, this isn't a trial. If you want to take your seat on the bench of the highest court in this land, and serve there with your integrity in tact, you're going to have to navigate a world of ideas and assumptions that fall outside of the technical boundaries of the law. If you actually did what Dr. Ford says you did, then you might as well keep lying, because you're going to answer to a higher justice than the Supreme Court.
Monday, September 24, 2018
What Is Wrong With Us?
If I'm honest I really don't know what to think about this whole Brett Kavanaugh business, other than it is, beyond a doubt, a supreme sort of a mess. There is not likely to be an adequate resolution to the matter that befits the austerity of the Supreme Court, but then again, Clarence Thomas has been a justice for nearly 30 years. As a teenager I chuckled through watching Ted Koppel dourly discuss "Long Dong Silver," and pubic hair laden cans of Coke. Honestly, I thought it was funny then (because I was 14), but that joke isn't funny any more. There are a lot of jokes that aren't funny anymore when you're concerned that the honor and function of important institutions may not survive human stupidity.
As to the question(s) surrounding Mr. Kavanaugh, they are important questions that need answers, not things that should be brushed aside because one political party is afraid they're about to get their butts handed to them in November. I make no presumption of guilt or innocence, nor do I necessarily think there can be a completely satisfactory verdict based on proof in this case. The things that weigh against him, are highly subjective, but given what I know about the times, the setting, and the general behavior of Prep School rich kids and College Frat boys, I do not find the accusations utterly unbelievable. In fact, I might even go so far as to conjecture that they are believable, because such behavior, in the era of my youth, rather commonplace. So much so that, given a bit of alcohol and the guise of goofing around, Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Judge, might have done such a thing to a young girl, and thought very little about it.
It's effect on the victim however, would have been rather different. Do you remember a time you got bullied? In my school it was rather common place for certain people to walk by and punch other people in the arm, or shove them in the back, sometimes pushing them into metal lockers, violent acts that sometimes hurt. As the victim of those actions, I remember them, but I'm reasonably sure that the people who did them do not. What about gossip and taunting? Do you remember everyone you ever whispered foul things about or teased in High School? I will bet the victims probably do.
Which leads me to the first thing that bothers me about the whole thing: the categorical denial. I have done some drinking in my time, during the college years it was rarely well controlled social drinking. I know there are things that happened while I was drinking that I am not proud of, and there is a fair to middling possibility that there are some of those sorts of things which I do not remember. I'm not talking about black out drunk either, but in the course of an evening of party hopping there are just things that you might forget very easily, especially if you, in your addled mind, didn't really think they were all that memorable. I know why Kavanaugh categorically denied it, but I would feel a lot more comfortable if he at least acknowledged that his accuser might have some grounds for making such a claim. Once he categorically denies it, any evidence, however slim, that confirms an encounter between the himself and young Ms Blasey, makes him a liar in the here and now. It speaks to a lack of humility and repentance if he did actually do what his accuser claims he did. That, and not whether he was a 17 year old idiot (most of us are idiots at 17) is what would disqualify him from being a Supreme Court Justice.
The second thing that actually bothers me a lot more than anything Mr. Kavanaugh has done, or might have done in the past, is the way that our systems of government are demonstrating their own decrepitude. George Will makes this point rather well in a column from Friday's Washington Post regardless of what the truth might be here, the process is being revealed as deeply flawed and partisan in a way it is not intended to be, ever. He traces the root of this phenomenon back to the failed nomination of Robert Bork by Ronald Reagan. Bork was the guy who finally helped Nixon commit the "Saturday Night Massacre" and thus had a political taint on him that was a bit of a bridge too far for congress back in those days, but the confirmation hearings were something of a farce, as were the Thomas hearings, as was the stonewalling of Merrick Garland. Farce and Supreme Court of the United States of America are not things that should ever go together. As Will lays out though, perhaps we have already crossed that line.
If the Senate treats Dr. Ford in a similar way to how they treated Anita Hill, the legitimacy of the court will be called into question, not because of Mr. Kavanaugh, but because of the process by which he was confirmed. This would be true, whether or not Mr. Kavanaugh was the depraved Frat boy from a John Hughes film, or whether he was actually a virtuous young man who was falsely accused. The process deserves time to be done properly, after all, they kept Scalia's seat open for over a year, so what's the hurry?
The consequences the Judicial panel not doing their duty are grave, even if Kavanaugh is an honorable man, in fact, they may be more grave for any legacy he leaves on the court if he always has an unproven and yet un-disproven allegation, as Ross Douthat argued in the NY Times last week, hanging over his tenure. I have a bad feeling that the truth, as has happened so often lately, is going to go begging in the halls of our government. The old white men in charge seem to be committed to trashing the integrity of the system of late, and the Diane Feinstein's of the world aren't exactly stopping them by mismanaging and grandstanding.
The aftermath of the Thomas/Hill "investigation" was that some people believed him, and some people believed her, the lines of who believed what tended to be largely drawn down the liberal/conservative divide. Division is what happens when people can't agree on the facts, in those moments the process by which you make decisions becomes very important. We have an obvious problem with agreeing on facts right now, and thus this abuse and abrogation of the processes of our most important institutions is all that much more dangerous.
As to the question(s) surrounding Mr. Kavanaugh, they are important questions that need answers, not things that should be brushed aside because one political party is afraid they're about to get their butts handed to them in November. I make no presumption of guilt or innocence, nor do I necessarily think there can be a completely satisfactory verdict based on proof in this case. The things that weigh against him, are highly subjective, but given what I know about the times, the setting, and the general behavior of Prep School rich kids and College Frat boys, I do not find the accusations utterly unbelievable. In fact, I might even go so far as to conjecture that they are believable, because such behavior, in the era of my youth, rather commonplace. So much so that, given a bit of alcohol and the guise of goofing around, Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Judge, might have done such a thing to a young girl, and thought very little about it.
It's effect on the victim however, would have been rather different. Do you remember a time you got bullied? In my school it was rather common place for certain people to walk by and punch other people in the arm, or shove them in the back, sometimes pushing them into metal lockers, violent acts that sometimes hurt. As the victim of those actions, I remember them, but I'm reasonably sure that the people who did them do not. What about gossip and taunting? Do you remember everyone you ever whispered foul things about or teased in High School? I will bet the victims probably do.
Which leads me to the first thing that bothers me about the whole thing: the categorical denial. I have done some drinking in my time, during the college years it was rarely well controlled social drinking. I know there are things that happened while I was drinking that I am not proud of, and there is a fair to middling possibility that there are some of those sorts of things which I do not remember. I'm not talking about black out drunk either, but in the course of an evening of party hopping there are just things that you might forget very easily, especially if you, in your addled mind, didn't really think they were all that memorable. I know why Kavanaugh categorically denied it, but I would feel a lot more comfortable if he at least acknowledged that his accuser might have some grounds for making such a claim. Once he categorically denies it, any evidence, however slim, that confirms an encounter between the himself and young Ms Blasey, makes him a liar in the here and now. It speaks to a lack of humility and repentance if he did actually do what his accuser claims he did. That, and not whether he was a 17 year old idiot (most of us are idiots at 17) is what would disqualify him from being a Supreme Court Justice.
The second thing that actually bothers me a lot more than anything Mr. Kavanaugh has done, or might have done in the past, is the way that our systems of government are demonstrating their own decrepitude. George Will makes this point rather well in a column from Friday's Washington Post regardless of what the truth might be here, the process is being revealed as deeply flawed and partisan in a way it is not intended to be, ever. He traces the root of this phenomenon back to the failed nomination of Robert Bork by Ronald Reagan. Bork was the guy who finally helped Nixon commit the "Saturday Night Massacre" and thus had a political taint on him that was a bit of a bridge too far for congress back in those days, but the confirmation hearings were something of a farce, as were the Thomas hearings, as was the stonewalling of Merrick Garland. Farce and Supreme Court of the United States of America are not things that should ever go together. As Will lays out though, perhaps we have already crossed that line.
If the Senate treats Dr. Ford in a similar way to how they treated Anita Hill, the legitimacy of the court will be called into question, not because of Mr. Kavanaugh, but because of the process by which he was confirmed. This would be true, whether or not Mr. Kavanaugh was the depraved Frat boy from a John Hughes film, or whether he was actually a virtuous young man who was falsely accused. The process deserves time to be done properly, after all, they kept Scalia's seat open for over a year, so what's the hurry?
The consequences the Judicial panel not doing their duty are grave, even if Kavanaugh is an honorable man, in fact, they may be more grave for any legacy he leaves on the court if he always has an unproven and yet un-disproven allegation, as Ross Douthat argued in the NY Times last week, hanging over his tenure. I have a bad feeling that the truth, as has happened so often lately, is going to go begging in the halls of our government. The old white men in charge seem to be committed to trashing the integrity of the system of late, and the Diane Feinstein's of the world aren't exactly stopping them by mismanaging and grandstanding.
The aftermath of the Thomas/Hill "investigation" was that some people believed him, and some people believed her, the lines of who believed what tended to be largely drawn down the liberal/conservative divide. Division is what happens when people can't agree on the facts, in those moments the process by which you make decisions becomes very important. We have an obvious problem with agreeing on facts right now, and thus this abuse and abrogation of the processes of our most important institutions is all that much more dangerous.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Welcome to the Club
For years I have been marking the start of football (American style) in a two sided manner. On the one hand, as a fan, I watch games I don't really care about much, just because football is back, and because I'm trying to sort out my fantasy football team. On the other hand, as a pastor, the church being in a sort of erstwhile competition with the NFL for the Sundays of America, I have made jokes about how church will be done before kickoff. But this year, I came to a conclusion that it has perhaps taken me too long to finally admit, but it's time to acknowledge something, and do so without any bitterness or resentment: sports is a religion.
Not only is sports a religion, but in many cases, especially in affluent western countries like the United States, it's kicking the Church's butt. The two things that people call football are perhaps the most obvious competition. The American version is played mostly on Sundays, and I very rarely hear people complaining about it taking too much of their time. Soccer (the other football), may not be quite as much of a phenomenon in this country as it is abroad, but give it time, the concussion issue and the fact that we are now shifting so much of our emphasis with kids to soccer is going to make an impact going forward. I have been to Europe though, and I have seen the devotion that Real Madrid and La Liga evoke in Spain. I have learned a bit about the zeal that many Brits have, not just for the Premiere league, but for local clubs, which consist of plumbers and accountants booting it around the pitch, and frankly, any church would be glad to have such energy about its mission. And even in less crowd oriented games, like golf, the religious intention shows through. I'm always impressed with the advertising that leads up to the Master's Tournament. It's practically liturgical in style and substance, except it's about a bunch of guys hitting a little ball around a very beautiful and expensive series of lawns.
But you know what? It's not worth fighting any more, so I'm going to offer some friendly advice to the latest addition to the world of religion. I mean this quite seriously, even if my sarcasm peeks out at times. Take this advice sports world, you're going to need it, because you have decided to wade into the waters of human hopes, dreams and devotion, and this can get deep quickly.
Not only is sports a religion, but in many cases, especially in affluent western countries like the United States, it's kicking the Church's butt. The two things that people call football are perhaps the most obvious competition. The American version is played mostly on Sundays, and I very rarely hear people complaining about it taking too much of their time. Soccer (the other football), may not be quite as much of a phenomenon in this country as it is abroad, but give it time, the concussion issue and the fact that we are now shifting so much of our emphasis with kids to soccer is going to make an impact going forward. I have been to Europe though, and I have seen the devotion that Real Madrid and La Liga evoke in Spain. I have learned a bit about the zeal that many Brits have, not just for the Premiere league, but for local clubs, which consist of plumbers and accountants booting it around the pitch, and frankly, any church would be glad to have such energy about its mission. And even in less crowd oriented games, like golf, the religious intention shows through. I'm always impressed with the advertising that leads up to the Master's Tournament. It's practically liturgical in style and substance, except it's about a bunch of guys hitting a little ball around a very beautiful and expensive series of lawns.
But you know what? It's not worth fighting any more, so I'm going to offer some friendly advice to the latest addition to the world of religion. I mean this quite seriously, even if my sarcasm peeks out at times. Take this advice sports world, you're going to need it, because you have decided to wade into the waters of human hopes, dreams and devotion, and this can get deep quickly.
- You're going to have to develop a social conscience. No matter how much you might want to just play ball, people are assigning significance to what you do and what you say. You want to be about equality and fair play and good sportsmanship, those are important for sure, but they are going to come into conflict with the larger cultural events of our society. Your players and coaches are going to say things and do things that reflect their values, and sometimes they're going to make people mad and sometimes they're going to inspire people. A lot of the time this will happen concurrently. You're going to get people who tell you that you shouldn't be so political, and you're going to have to decide whether or not to ignore them. This is not always easy, the church often gets this one wrong, one way or another. Over the course of time, values are what matter, pleasing people is an unwinnable game.
- You're going to have to be super vigilant about protecting the vulnerable, and I'm not just talking about player safety, in fact, I'm not really talking about player safety at all. I'm talking about the fact that people are trusting you with their children. Seriously, we can barely pull together Sunday School and Youth Group stuff any more because people have got their kids going to some sort of sports practice or game almost every night of the week. And I see you embracing this role too, with your little commercials about kids who benefit from the discipline and and purpose that sports gives you, but when people trust you with their kids, you had better protect those kids, or else stuff is going to go down. Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky have proven that sports can be a fertile hunting ground for pederasts, any place that young people are tends to become that way. I know you think it's never going to happen in your program, but let me tell you, it very well might, and when it does, you had better learn to stop trying to quash the news and hide it in the closet. Take it from the Roman Catholics, that is going to make it much, much worse in the long run. Remember that Joe Paterno was practically the Pope of College football and his refusal to see what Sandusky was up to brought him down. Until JoePa, I didn't believe it was possible to actually die of shame, but I think that's what happened.
- You should also learn how to treat women. I know, coming from a member of clergy, this seems really hypocritical. Historically the church is about as patriarchal and often misogynistic as you can get, but I'm trying to give you the benefit of a wisdom that took us nearly 2000 year to realize. I get it, men and women are different, the WNBA and the NBA practically look like different sports, but there are places in all of sport where the glass ceiling just seems way too thick. You had better learn to recognize that, every once in a while, a female sports figure can transcend our usual sexism. You're missing the boat on Serena Williams right now, I know you think you're glowing about her, but that lady could and probably should be Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods rolled into one (and without the baggage). She should be your high priestess right now, you're only letting her be an impressive sideshow.
- Finally, put your ego aside, and don't think you are in competition with other sports or other religions. That's not how this works, and I do so wish that the church would actually understand this too. The reservoir of human hopes and faith is massive, in fact, I would go so far as to say infinite. We have a deep need to believe in things. We have a profound ability to hope that's why there are still Cleveland Browns fans. (until last year I could have said Philadelphia Eagle's fans, but I don't have to any more!) At our very best we want to invest in something bigger than ourselves, the church has squandered this in ways too many and too painful to count. Don't make that same mistake.
In the spirit of trying to follow #4, I am offering you these pieces of advice in good faith. I might still get a little frustrated when I have to re-schedule church activities because of a playoff game, but I am done trying to swim against the tide. Welcome to the gang Sports.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)