I had thought that the Kavanaugh confirmation was a done deal unless something exploded to derail the process and now it looks as if something has done exactly that. The confirmation is in doubt, not killed, but certainly in doubt.

The accusation that he, when 17, drunkenly tried to rape a 15 year old girl has ignited a firestorm and where someone stands on the issue is more determined by the politics of the observer than any objective analysis or consideration. When presented with contradictory or confusing my standard is to go with the simplest explanation. Without supporting evidence, not conjecture, I reject conspiracy theories. The fact that there is a documented trail about Dr. Ford’s experience that well precedes the nomination is enough for me to dismiss that the charge itself is politically motivated. This is not a lie invented to derail the nomination. Someone assaulted Dr. Ford when she was a young teenager and she believes that person to be Judge Kavanaugh,

There are those who think that ‘mistakes’ made as a teenager should not be held against a person many decades later. Certainly that is good general principal but there are mistake and there are actions that transcend that bland descriptor. This was no aggressive flirting; this was no crude and lewd suggestion. This was a violent attempt to rape a young girl. Music turned up loud to cover the sounds, gagging her with his hand, this is not a sexual misadventure this is an assault. Some actions will follow you through you life and rape and trying to rape can certainly be one of those.

Does the drinking excuse?

No. I have read at least one piece that tries to construct a defense that some people are very different when they are drunk. Certainly some people behave very differently when they are drunk. Alcohol removes inhibitions revealing the elements of character that people strive to conceal. One way to think about it is that it is not that drunkenness creates a new persona but reveals the one that had been hidden.

Judge Kavanaugh has categorically denied the event ever took place. He has not claimed  ‘youthful indiscretion,’ he has not claimed to not remember the particulars because of heavy drinking, but flatly declares that he never participated in such an assault. After so many years there is no physical evidence that can be used to confirm contradict the account. Every conclusion observer’s reach will have to be by way on inference and judgment of character.

Eighteen hours after the story surfaced the administration provided a letter signed by 65 women who knew Judge Kavanaugh at that time attesting to his character. They were not at the party. They were not present in the room. I find the letter itself to be very interesting. To produce such a letter less than a day after the events became public is blazingly fast and suggests to me that the letter was prepared and ready to go. Yes, it is physically possibly to locate and contact that number of people in that time but it is less credible than the assumption that the letter was ready in advance. If it was prepared overnight that should be easy to demonstrate, phone logs, and the women themselves should vividly remember getting the calls throughout the night. No logs have been produced to counter the narrative that the letter was prepared in advance and the women have proved to be difficult to contact by the media. All this suggests that the letter was prepared in advanced, which it suggests that an issue of this nature was one that the confirmation team expected as a possibility. That calls into question Kavanaugh’s denials.

It is important to remember that this not a legal process but a political one. Judge Kavanaugh faces no legal consequences from this. He may not be confirmed to a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court but that is not an entitlement. Lifetime appointments need to be made with the utmost care. They are lifetime appointment because the concept is that the people who are confirmed to such position need to be insulated from the hubbub of the storm tossed political seas. Since removing someone from such an appointment is a difficult and rare proposition the people so confirmed need to be of excellent judgment and unimpeachable character.

How both people conduct themselves will be our only guide to their judgment and character.

This week’s confirmation hearing for SCOTUS nominee Brett ‘I’ve changed my mind’ Kavanaugh has reignited the ‘debate’ over a supposed ‘secret’ white supremacist hand gesture. As the word ‘reignited’ indicated this is a fake controversy that has been visited before. Vox has an excellent article explaining the history of the live trolling and how it started. This has been spreading around the Internet faster than heated opinions about geeky media spurred onwards by a large dose of accepting anything that confirms preexisting biases. In addition to pointing people towards the Vox article I have a couple of thoughts on the matter.

First off the very concept of a public but secret symbol to identify one as a member of an ideological group seems quite ridiculous. Certainly secret symbols and identifiers, handshakes and the like, have existed and continue to exist, but they were used, primarily, as a method of revealing oneself as part of one-on-one interactions. So that someone could know that they had a friendly audience before revealing the secret part of themselves. Public gestures and identifiers have a very different purpose and that is to proclaim, loudly, where one stands in respect to an ideological concept, the Nazi Salute, the Black Power Raised Fist, the MAGA hat, and the Lapel Flag Pin all serve the same purpose for different factions, announcing ‘I am here and this is what I stand for.’ A gesture, particularly when is seems out of context, performed publicly creates interest and curiosity from those not part of the communication which defeats the entire concept of secret. It however perfectly aligns with the idea of ‘trolling’ taking actions in order to provoke a reaction.

And before I leave this thought on the absurdity of secret public signs let me also point out that in my opinion nothing about this administration or its devotees has anything in common with subtlety. Steven Bannon, Steven Miller, Richard Spencer, or Donald Trump have no need for secret communications as they loudly and blatantly announce who they are and what they believes quite often.

Another aspect of this is that the meanings of symbols can change over time. Because some people are in on the trolling gag does not mean that everyone is or that new people will adopt the symbol in the same manner.

Take for example the word ‘gunsel.’ In many film noir movies the term is used to describe a low-level thug with a gun, as a synonym for gunslinger. However that is not how it started. In the classic film The Maltese Falcon Spade provokes Wilmer into a rash angry action by referring to him as a ‘gunsel.’ It seems strange that Wilmer reacted so angrily to simply begin called a gun slinger but what Spade, Wilmer, the writers knew is that ‘gunsel’ doesn’t mean gun slinger it means the submissive partner in a homosexual relationship, specifically it is slang from the hobo community. The Breen Office did not the meaning no did most of the audience and the filmmakers flew under the radar with their code violating insult. Over time other writers and filmmaker, taking the definition from their misunderstanding of the context used the word to mean gunman and the new definition became the accepted one.

I believe that most of the people flashing the hand-sign are in on the plan to troll others, but you cannot be certain that everyone is aware of the purpose. Certainly as time passes and the reports grow that the OK hand gesture is really a racist one then there may come a day when the new definition and intent supplants the original intent.

A few weeks ago I came across an article at National Review Online, Corporate Gun Control Might Be the Worst Threat to Gun Rights, and with this week’s announcement by Levi Strauss with respect to their corporate stance on the nation’s gun issues I thought it might be worth revisiting the topic.

The article by David French cites a number of victories for the gun right’s faction of the debate before going into the central thesis of the pieces that actions by corporations taken outside of the political sphere represent a new front in the eternal conflict over firearms in the United States. French asserts that the motion on these large companies on the issue is, in his opinion, driven principally by the cliquish nature of their management. In the case of companies such as Facebook or Twitter, which are helmed by dynamic charismatic persons, he may be correct, but that doesn’t apply to large publicly held companies such as Levi Strauss, Bank of America, or Citigroup; these companies are driven by their board of directors and their focus is the bottom line. If such corporations such as these are taking a divisive political stance it is because they believe that being seen as neutral or on the opposing side would be more disadvantageous than the position that they publicly asserted. These behemoths are cautious and never the vanguard of social movements. These positions are ones taken, in their estimation, which will cause the least damage to their public images.

Why is that? Why do they feel pressured to take a position at all?

Because for many people the current environment is intolerable. What appears to be a steady, deadly, and endless parade of mass shooting, murder, and terror, even as I write this reports are breaking of a fresh mass shooting, coupled with inaction by the political process, instills fear in the population. We live in a time when children come home traumatized because they practiced hiding from their killers as part of their school day. Given that sort of experience people will demand that something be done. Eventually the paradigm breaks and new things, right or wrong, good or bad, will be deployed. In that situation a platitude about ‘thoughts and prayers’ will not quell the fear, sooth the anxiety, and placate the anger. Here we get to the failure on the conservative side.

Not in enacting the legislation proposed or favored by their political opponents, but by their inaction, their refusal to take any action that can be seen as even attempting to resolve the issue/ Now some may claim moves such as Must Issue laws for concealed carry permits or Castle Doctrine laws, or wide acceptance of Open Carry are solutions proposed by the conservatives, but they are not proposal intended as solutions for this issue. If we were living in a culture without these mass murders, random killings, and schoolhouse slaughters, these exact same proposals would remain on the Conservative whish list. They are goals that their political faction wishes to achieve regardless of the current criminal climate and tying them to the issue is an act of rationalization not resolution.

So in a climate of growing terror and trauma one side in a political debate offers legislative solutions, setting aside if such solutions would resolve anything at all, that is not the point, while the offers nothing but at best a wish list of things it already wanted, and some are surprised by which side grows in public sympathy? This is a bed of the Conservatives making, refusing to do anything yields the field to the opponents and while procedural power may hold legislation at bay, and that is a fleeting situation, the culture, including the corporation taking the pulse of the public mood, moves on and to quote a silly but favorite film, ‘You can be a part of it or a victim of it.’