Finally – finally! – a Republican has
expressed appropriate fury, disgust and contempt for the way in which the
Democratic Party turned Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court
into a political lynching.
Christine Blasey Ford had accused Kavanaugh of having
sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers in high school. She had
taken her allegation, made for the first time after 36 years, to Senator Dianne
Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Feinstein
sat on it for six weeks until virtually the last moment in the Senate’s
consideration of Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Having heard both Ford’s accusation and Kavanaugh’s
emotional and angry response at yesterday’s hearing, a scarcely less emotional
and angry Senator Lyndsey Graham could contain himself no longer and denounced
the whole circus as “the most unethical sham” during his entire time in
politics (view this here).
He accused the Democrats of having boasted they would
destroy Kavanaugh’s life in order to hold his Supreme Court seat open in the
hope they would win the presidency in 2020.
“If you really wanted to know the truth”, he erupted at the
Democrats, “you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you’ve done to this guy.
Boy, y’all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people
can see through this sham. That you knew about it and you held it! You had no
intention of protecting Dr Ford! None! She’s as much of a victim as you are
[pointing at Kavanaugh]. God I hate to say it ’cause these have been my
friends. But let me tell you, when it comes to this: you’re looking for fair
process? You came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend… Would you say
you’ve been through hell?”
KAVANAUGH: “I’ve been through hell and then some”.
GRAHAM:”This is not a job interview. This is hell.”
Ford’s testimony garnered widespread sympathy. Many have
concluded she was sincere and that she probably did experience a traumatic
sexual encounter. The question, though, is whether her assailant was Brett
Kavanaugh or someone else, especially given the many contradictions and lacunae
in her account. Those concerned about this affair are not seeking to judge Ford
herself. The concerns, and they could hardly be more grave, are about an abuse
of process by the Democratic party which has been engaged in character
assassination on the basis of wholly uncorroborated and flaky claims.
To this travesty of justice and decency must also be added a
travesty of journalism.
The New
Yorker decided to say #MeToo to this
lynching. Its reporters, Ronan Farrow and Jane Meyer, suddenly produced one
Deborah Ramirez, who claimed Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a drunken
party in their freshman year at Yale. Kavanaugh says forcefully that this
didn’t happen and that the claim is a smear.
In their own story, Farrow and Meyer wrote:
“In her initial conversations with The New Yorker,
Deborah Ramirez was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged
incident with certainty”, not least because “her memories contained gaps
because she had been drinking”. But then: “After six days of carefully
assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she
felt confident enough of her recollections…”
The reporters further admitted they contacted “several
dozens of classmates of Ramirez and Kavanaugh” and yet had “not confirmed with
other eyewitnesses that Kavanaugh was present at the party.” All they obtained
was a classmate of Ramirez who “declined to be identified,” and who said that
“another student told him about the incident either on the night of the party
or in the next day or two.”
Oh dear. And Farrow and Meyer thought this somehow held
their story up?
Even the New York Times, which has itself
systematically junked journalistic norms in the Democratic cause, balked at
endorsing this patent insult to the intelligence. As it told
us, it wasn’t for want of trying. “The Times had interviewed several
dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and
could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted
former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of
them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed
himself.”
Farrow, whose story said that the allegation by Ramirez “was
conveyed to Democratic senators by a civil-rights lawyer”, told “Good
Morning America” that Ramirez had come forward “because Senate Democrats came
looking for this claim. She did not flag this.”
A responsible editor – no, more than that, an editor with
even a vestigial understanding of the distinction between journalism and
propaganda – would have told Farrow and Meyer to junk the story as ancient,
unproveable and utterly suspect. But the New Yorker editor,
David Remnick – whose publication’s on-line ad boasts that it is “Fighting fake
stories with real ones” – ran it.
This is the same Remnick who, under pressure from the same
kind of people who believe that rabid hatred of Donald J Trump is the
non-negotiable condition for freedom of expression, censored his
own festival event when its glittering participants threatened to boycott it if
he went ahead with his planned interview of Trump’s erstwhile eminence
grise, Steve Bannon.
Despite (or because of) all this, Democrats and their
partisans knew for a fact that Kavanaugh was guilty as
charged. At Yale, some 31 law classes were reportedly cancelled due to protests
against Kavanaugh’s nomination. These law students just knew he
was guilty – because he was accused of sexual assault by a woman, and as
the #MeToo movement has schooled us, any man thus accused is axiomatically
guilty as charged.
So we can now see how these future lawyers will treat the
the presumption of innocence, the core premise of the justice system in a free
society. They will stamp all over it. And we can now also see, if the Democrats
regain power in the mid-term elections or in 2020, how they will treat their
constitutional duty to uphold the presumption of innocence. They will stamp all
over it, along with the sterling reputations they will grind to dust under
their heels.
This is nothing less than the substitution of justice by the
abuse of power, the hallmark of the former Soviet Union and now adopted in all
its brain-frying, fact-twisting, totalitarian cynicism by America’s Democratic
party.
All this is taking place against the backdrop of the rolling
coup against President Trump, with elements of America’s justice department and
others in the administration collaborating with the Democratic party and their
partisan panders in the media to bring Trump down and impeach him for the high
crime and misdemeanour of having been elected President of the United States.
And that, in turn, represents America’s current
revolutionary moment: its toleration and even endorsement of thuggery first
with the Occupy anti-capitalist movement and then Black Lives Matter and
Antifa; the #MeToo war against men; the onslaught against the
traditional family and the willed production of children made feral through
mass fatherlessness; the systemic hijack of schooling by anti-western
propaganda; the stamping out of dissent on a myriad topics, and the
transformation of the university from the crucible of enlightenment into the
funeral pyre of reason itself.
And along with the media, which has betrayed its own
historic role as the ultimate guarantor of liberty by promulgating falsehoods,
suppressing factual evidence and conducting witch-hunts against dissenters, the
worst thing of all about them is this: that those committing these gross abuses
of power actually believe their own lies.
More is at at stake than the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh
as a justice of the Supreme Court. More is at stake than the political survival
of Donald J Trump.
What’s at stake is the survival of justice and freedom
against tyranny and chaos. What’s at stake is the very soul of America itself.
Melanie
Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster and author - you can follow her
work on her website HERE.
7 comments:
An excellent coverage of the savage farce now filling the headlines and Media..a travesty of the Justice system. Here in New Zealand judgement is an acceptance that the accusers being female are right.
i leave my only comment to that of the great Irish Poet W.B. Yates
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed; and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W.B. Yates 1865-1939
Is this the level our Western Civilisation has now reached? Are we to stand by and just walk away, leaving the future of this world to the horrors of a socialistic bureaucracy?
Brian
The simple fact is that the process is making America an international laughing-stock, and does not speak well for their judicial system where the two parties are vying for control of the Supreme Court. What about
'justice'?
CNN. New York Times & Washington Post.
No different to TV1 or TV3 News, The NZ Herald, or any other Stuff news publication.
The LEFT have nothing to offer, & so they rely on believed fake news, & straight out lies, to gain traction. What we desperately need is a N.Z. Fox News Channel, & some 'cover both sides of the story' news-papers..
The presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of democracy. Once that goes, democracy goes with it. The mass hysteria surrounding Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh would simply not be happening if his vote did not threaten to overturn Roe Versus Wade.
The French revolution all over again. If an anonymous action was made the accused was guilty.
@Aris Totelian
Democracy is already dead. In England many Muslim people have been voted into power, simply because there were five nominee's, four Christian and one Muslim. All Muslims voted for their man, while the Christians all voted for the man they thought best for the job, from the other four options.
What a joke democracy has become in the USA and we are no better here in NZ. The political left has a mantra of its "my way or no way" they will stop at nothing to force their views and political beliefs onto everyone. The farce that has occurred ion the states regarding Kavanaugh is so crazy, one Woman giving very suspect views on an event that happened 36 years ago that she can hardly remember but suddenly its the most traumatic experience of her life. Gosh if indeed its now a crime for young teenagers to engage in passionate experiences then 'me Too" is guilty, and one or two women also guilty who took advantage of me, it was very traumatic, memorable, and still affects me today. However respecting "no" was always foremost. I will not be sueing anyone and I doubt if any of my past girlfriends will sue me because I'm not famous or rich enough and I'm not a political figure.
Who knows where this will all end but one thing is certain democracy is under real threat.
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