"Republicans should, as they did in 1987, realize that there are plenty of young, well-qualified lawyers who can be counted on to rule the way they want the Supreme Court to rule — indeed, there are plenty of young, well-qualified lawyers who can be counted on to be more reliable justices for them than Kennedy was. They can quickly turn to one of those potential replacements. Or they can drag the nation through an ugly spectacle that at best will produce a victory that gives them nothing substantive while being symbolically poisonous — for the party and for the nation."The article raised the question in my mind: why this guy? I mean, if there are dozens, if not hundreds, of qualified judges that won't offend half the country, why are they so adamant that this guy in particular has to be the one?
To me, it seems reasonable to investigate each claim against Kavanaugh; the FBI investigated Anita Hill's accusations against Clarence Thomas back in 1991. It took three days. But to the denizens of Foxworld, this was all just a plot by "the Dems" to "drag his name through the mud" and "destroy" him "in their sick game." "Sad at what they will stoop to so that their agenda is accomplished." There are also plenty of attempts to discredit the accusers, as well as whataboutism arguments regarding ghosts of Democrats past. One friend posted a link to an article that claimed that the FBI just doesn't do that type of investigation, and that this is really all about confusion about today's sexual mores. Oh, and there's something about a vast left-wing conspiracy involving Hollywood. But has anyone put forth a reason to not take the accusations seriously that makes sense to people who don't watch FOX? Not really.
However...
I listened to a couple of programs this weekend that gave me a clearer picture. The first was a podcast in which Ezra Klein was interviewing Lilliana Mason, who is the author of a book called Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. About nine minutes into the podcast, they start discussing the work of Henri Tajfel, a social psychologist who studied prejudice and social identity theory. His Wikipedia page discusses some of his work thusly:
In these studies, test subjects were divided arbitrarily into two groups, based on a trivial and almost completely irrelevant basis. Participants did not know other members of the group, did not even know who they were, and had no reason to expect that they would interact with them in the future. Still, members of both groups allocated resources in such a way that showed favoritism for members of their own group in a way that maximized their own group's outcomes in comparison to the alternate group, even at the expense of maximum gains for their own group. Even "on the basis of a coin toss...simple categorization into groups seems to be sufficient reason for people to dispense valued rewards in ways that favor in-group members over those who are 'different'."Ms. Mason said that when Mr. Tajfel began his studies, his goal was to find out how long it would take groups to come into conflict. He expected that in the beginning no conflict would exist, but that it would grow more intense as different conditions were added in the experiments. The subjects were asked to look at a wall that was covered with dots, and then asked to estimate how many dots were actually on the wall. Then they were randomly told that they were either an over-estimator or an under-estimator.
That was all it took.
Just the notion that they were a part of a group, and that there was another group out there that was somehow different from them, was enough to put them in competition with the other group. Keep in mind that they had never met any of the members of their own group, much less the members of the other group, nor did they have any expectation that they ever would. But membership was enough to create the attitude that their group must win!
She goes on:
"The one experiment that I think is the best example of this is that, in one of them, he asked them to choose between a scenario in which -- these are not the actual numbers but like, for instance-- everybody gets five dollars, or the over estimators get four dollars and the under-estimators get two. And they tended to choose the one where they get less, but they win. So it sets up this scenario where there is a clear greater good, right? Everybody can have five dollars, and it doesn't hurt anybody. It's the best for everyone. And yet, they choose the scenario in which they have to sacrifice in order to beat the other guys."Kavanaugh is the four dollar option. They can't pick someone else. Yes, he believes in a political philosophy that robs our country of its democracy, but if he's confirmed, our group wins!
By the way, this podcast was both fascinating and horrifying, and if you ears are not doing anything for about an hour and twenty minutes, it's totally worth a listen.
The second program was Monday's Fresh Air on NPR. Terry Gross interviewed Eli Saslow, who is the author of a new book called Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, and the subject of his book, Derek Black, whose father, Don Black, is a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, the founder of the website Stormfront, and the head of the group that popularized the term 'white nationalism.'
At one point in the interview, Ms. Gross asked Mr. Black, "Can you explain to me how it's possible to believe in the first place that the Holocaust didn't happen?" He answered,
"I think the real reason looking back on it now is that the National Socialism, the Nazi regime in Germany, has always been the best example of a modern society that actually tried to impose what white nationalists want - forcing people to leave and try to make a racially homogenous society. And if that ended in mass genocide, then how can it be their example? And so my perspective on it now is holocaust denial now has to be so essential to the white nationalist belief system because they can't accept that what they want is going to lead to such horror."Nobody is suggesting that they want a sexual aggressor on the Supreme Court. That's not the ideal that they are looking for. And yet, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll revealed that a small majority of Republicans don't care if the allegations are actually true. Still, there is so much reluctance to actually do an investigation. Dr. Ford will be testifying today in front of the Senate committee today. At Anita Hill's hearing there were 22 witnesses. That won't be the case today. The whole affair is to be severely limited. In the meantime, they must deny, they must minimize, they must rebut, they must politicize. They don't want the accusers to be believed. Because politicians need the support of rich donors. Because voters really believe in the red herring that is Roe v Wade. And most important of all, the other guys can't win.
Note: a previous version of this post said that most Republicans would find the accusations disqualifying if true. That has been corrected.
