Are you grateful to or for President Trump? How do you see him? What do you see him doing or having done?<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Once, I\u2019m Grateful for Trump\u2026\u201d <\/em><\/strong>is an article published in the New York times. While there is clear evidence of satire and sarcasm there is also an undercurrent of insight and new found discovery.<\/p>\n When the New York Times runs a pro Trump article we need to stop and take note. Is this a joke? Is this real? Is this true?<\/p>\n ...I\u2019m grateful because Trump has not backed down in the face of the slipperiness, hypocrisy and dangerous standard-setting deployed by opponents of Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination to the Supreme Court. I\u2019m grateful because ferocious and even crass obstinacy has its uses in life, and never more so than in the face of sly moral bullying. I\u2019m grateful because he\u2019s a big fat hammer fending off a razor-sharp dagger.<\/p>\n [..]<\/p>\n The first moment was a remark by a friend. \u201cI\u2019d rather be accused of murder,\u201d he said, \u201cthan of sexual assault.\u201d I feel the same way. One can think of excuses for killing a man; none for assaulting a woman. But if that\u2019s true, so is this: Falsely accusing a person of sexual assault is nearly as despicable as sexual assault itself. It inflicts psychic, familial, reputational and professional harms that can last a lifetime. This is nothing to sneer at.<\/p>\n The second moment, connected to the first: \u201cBoo hoo hoo. Brett Kavanaugh is not a victim.\u201d That\u2019s the title of a column in the Los Angeles Times, which suggests that the possibility of Kavanaugh\u2019s innocence is \u201cinfinitesimal.\u201d Yet false allegations of rape, while relatively rare, are at least five times as common as false accusations of other types of crime, according to academic literature.<\/p>\n [..]<\/p>\n A third moment, connected to the second: Listening to Cory Booker explain on Tuesday that \u201cultimately\u201d it doesn\u2019t matter if Kavanaugh is \u201cguilty or innocent,\u201d because \u201cenough questions\u201d had been raised that it was time to \u201cmove on to another candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n This is a rhetorical sleight of hand in three acts: Elide the one question that really matters; raise a secondary set of \u201cquestions\u201d that are wholly the result of the question you\u2019ve decided to ignore; call for \u201canother candidate\u201d because it will push confirmation hearings past the midterms, which was the Democratic objective long before most anyone had ever heard of Blasey\u2019s allegation.<\/p>\n Fourth moment: Watching Julie Swetnick, the woman who accused Kavanaugh of attending parties decades earlier where women were gang raped, change key details of her story in an interview with NBC News.<\/p>\n Swetnick\u2019s claims border on the preposterous. They are wholly uncorroborated. But that didn\u2019t keep Kavanaugh\u2019s opponents, in politics and the press, from seizing them as evidence of corroboration with Blasey\u2019s allegation, which is not preposterous but is also largely uncorroborated, and with the allegation of Kavanaugh\u2019s Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez \u2014 uncorroborated again.<\/p>\n Uncorroborated plus uncorroborated plus largely uncorroborated is not the accumulation of questions, much less of evidence. It is the duplication of hearsay.<\/p>\n Fifth moment: Reading about a 1985 bar fight at Yale \u2014 a story that involved Kavanaugh throwing ice, resulted in no charges against him, and should never have been reported. Or reading a 1983 handwritten letter by Kavanaugh, in which he says of his gang of friends that \u201cwe\u2019re loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us\u201d \u2014 adolescent boasting now being treated as if it is a crucial piece of incriminating evidence. Or hearing from Yale classmates who claim to have seen Kavanaugh drunk, which somehow is supposed to show that he\u2019s a demonstrable perjurer and possible sex offender.<\/p>\n Will a full-bore investigation of adolescent behavior now become a standard part of the \u201cjob interview\u201d for all senior office holders? I\u2019m for it \u2014 provided we can start with your adolescent behavior, as it relates to your next job.<\/p>\n Sixth moment: Listening to Richard Blumenthal lecture Kavanaugh on the legal concept of falsus in omnibus \u2014 false in one thing, false in everything \u2014 when the senator from Connecticut lied shamelessly for years about his military service. And then feeling grateful to Trump for having the simple nerve to point out the naked hypocrisy.<\/p>\n Seventh moment: Listening to Dianne Feinstein denounce Kavanaugh for failing to reflect an \u201cimpartial temperament or the fairness and even-handedness one would see in a judge.\u201d This lecture would have gone down more easily if Feinstein hadn\u2019t gamed the process for her own partisan purposes, and at huge personal cost to Kavanaugh and Blasey alike.<\/p>\n Eighth moment: Being quizzed in recent days about my teenage years at a New England boarding school \u2014 the subtext being that I must know something about elite prep schools and the mentality of the boys who attend them.<\/p>\n I do. It was at boarding school where I first formed lasting friendships with kids of different races and economic backgrounds, and where liberal-leaning teachers showed us how to think critically, keep an open mind, and value tolerance and respect. I have no idea if Georgetown Prep was anything like that, but the facile stereotype of \u201cwhite privilege\u201d that keeps cropping up in discussions of Kavanaugh\u2019s background is yet another ugly tactic in the battle to defeat him....<\/p>\n Source: Bret Stephen - https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/10\/04\/opinion\/trump-kavanaugh-ford-allegations.html<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world;Informational Insights<\/h2>\n
Possibilities for Consideration<\/h2>\n
\n
Add Your Insight: Be the Change...<\/h2>\n
\nindeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
\n<\/em>MARGARET MEAD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"