Guilty Conscience

by Hamir Thapar

Despite Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual assault and the FBI investigation that resulted, Brett Kavanaugh is now an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. The 53 year old’s appointment has successfully split the United States right down the middle for what feels like the millionth time. Kavanaugh’s protesters and accusers are up in arms while the Republicans are celebrating a momentous victory.  While I too regard Kavanaugh's appointment as nothing short of a farce, I believe it represents more than a failed attempt to bring a sexual predator to justice. I think it represents a fundamental flaw that we, as a species, have developed. Namely: A crippling inability to listen and to know a gaping flaw when we see one.

Let me begin by making position clear: I believe that Ford’s accusation was legitimate. She passed her lie detector test, remained poised and composed while recounting one of the most traumatic experiences of her life and was deemed credible by even the staunchest of Republicans, including Fox news anchor Chris Wallace and senator Orrin Hatch. And yet every one of those factors were crushed by the anvil of partisanship as the Republicans displayed a total pig headed unwillingness to stare facts in the face.

Regardless, let’s pause for a moment and consider one of the main pillars of reason that was consistently leaned on by the Republicans, the claim that Dr. Ford’s allegations were false. While it is an argument that contains a modicum of sense, I ask you to consider the following. Even if Dr. Ford was not telling the truth, think of the opportunity this gave Kavanaugh. Here was a prospective associate justice who had the opportunity to appear before the senate and display his temperament, his impartiality and his ability to remain emotionally unattached. These are qualities that are essential in any prospective judge, particularly one who will retain his position for life. Instead, we were treated to a discordant blend of dodged questions, overt hostility and emotional recounts of calendar recitals and communal workout sessions.

In the end, these flaws would amount to nothing as Kavanagh was voted in. In a desperate bid to tilt the Supreme Court firmly in their favor, the Republicans not only appointed an alleged sexual predator to the Supreme Court, they inducted a fundamentally incompetent judge into one the highest court of the federal judiciary of The United States.