gracchusdixit

Brett Kavanaugh’s inexorable march toward confirmation as the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was fueled, at least in part, by a backlash from the political right against accusations that he had, in a drunken stupor, attempted to rape Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, while the two of them were teenagers, attending elite Washington-area prep schools 36 years ago.

Kavanaugh did not himself ignite this backlash, but he poured plenty of gasoline on the fire.  By angrily decrying a fictional “left-wing conspiracy,” which he claimed was out to destroy his career, his reputation, his family, he sought to divert attention from his own bad behavior  to the bogeyman of “liberalism”.  The right-wing rant-o-sphere immediately joined in, leaping instantly to Kavanaugh’s defense.

Orrin Hatch, the octogenarian senior Senator from Utah, denounced the confirmation hearings as a “national disgrace” and, as he put it, “worse than Clarence Thomas”.  Hatch could care less that Clarence Thomas brazenly lied to the Senate when he was up for confirmation 27 years ago and was almost certainly guilty of the sexual misbehavior Anita Hill accused him of.  He won confirmation in the end, not because he was innocent, but, rather, because he shrewdly played a right-wing version of the “race card,” asserting that the accusations leveled against him were a “high-tech lynching”. 

Not to be outdone, Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, unleashed what can only be described as an hysterical tirade, claiming that a “good man” was the target of baseless accusations cooked up by unethical Democrats. As Graham—quite literally—shrieked at Kavanaugh’s accusers, his lips flecked with foam, his pupils dilated, and the carotid artery in his throat throbbed like a firehose.  It was not entirely clear whether Graham’s rage was sincere or merely theatrical, but he has repeated the performance many times since.  Perhaps practice makes perfect.  

Outside the corridors of the Senate, the backlash was even more vitriolic.  Professional ideologues like Laura Ingraham, who screams for a living on Fox News Channel and right-wing talk radio, asserted that criticism of Kavanaugh threatened the very ideal of American manhood itself, which in her telling seems little different from a testosterone-crazed chimpanzee beating his hairy chest with an empty banana peel.  Although most Americans blessedly do not share Ingraham’s view of virility, there are enough on the right who do, including more than a few Republican women, whose self-esteem it little better than sludge in a gutter.

For his part, Donald Trump whined, “It’s a very scary time for young men in America.”  His point, I suppose, was that bad-behaving young men are now plagued by the fear that their bad behavior may someday be exposed.  Trump went on to complain that he and his friends have themselves been the targets of “very false” accusations because of their celebrity or wealth.  What actually irked him, of course, was that he and his brutish friends may no longer be able to get away with their sexual improprieties. 

Despite all that, thousands of Republicans across the country rose to Trump’s bait, rejecting the accounts of Christine Blasey Ford and countless other women, insisting that men like Kavanaugh and Trump are innocent victims, refusing to accept the proposition that men, particularly powerful men, could possibly be guilty of anything except “boys being boys”.  Indeed, they went further, rejecting the very idea of “white male privilege” as a baseless slur.

The phrase, “white male privilege” is not a cultural cliche´or a feminist trope, let alone a baseless slur.  It describes a deep-seated and troubling social reality—the stranglehold that continues to be exercised by privileged white men on the throttles of power, wealth, political influence, and social prestige.   This stranglehold is centuries-old and reinforced in ways both obvious and subtle—in exclusive fraternities and clubs, in elite colleges and universities, in professional societies and boardrooms, in media representations of “strong” men and suitably submissive women.  It amounts to an unspoken and unwritten pact that elevates white men above everyone else and silently justifies their privileged place in our society. 

This pact protects its beneficiaries by dismissing and demeaning anyone who dares to question their status or the privileges they enjoy.  Some of these beneficiaries are canny enough to pretend that no such pact exists.  Others, like Orrin Hatch, are too stupid and tone-deaf even to pretend.  Recently confronted by protestors in the halls of Congress, Hatch waved them away with a contemptuous “Grow up!”  To a moral dinosaur like Orrin Hatch, it would appear that being a “grown-up” means accepting the god-given right of men to bestride the world like the colossi they imagine themselves to be.

The dinosaurs got their way by confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court—and we all will be living with the consequences for decades to come.  But history is nothing if not fickle.  As Kavanaugh himself said during his final and incendiary testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee:  “What goes around, comes around.”

To young men across America, who may find this to be the “scary” time that Donald Trump described, let me say this:   If you treat women with the respect they deserve; if you recognize them as the fully equal human beings they are; if you value them, not for their anatomies, but for their intellects, their accomplishments, and their humanity—then relax, for you have nothing to fear.

If, on the other hand, you believe that you are privileged; if you think that your bad behavior should be inoculated against challenge or inspection; if you choose to walk in the footsteps of sexual predators like Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh—then you should be more than scared.  You should be terrified.  

Like Medea, the enchantress of ancient Greek mythology, who was betrayed by the man she loved and for whom she sacrificed everything, the women of America have had enough.  They are no longer prepared to surrender their dignity or to have their stories dismissed.  They no longer willing to submit themselves to “white male privilege”.  And like Medea, they will have their just, terrible revenge.