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- The bizarre thing about the Kavanaugh scandal (because what else is it?) is that neither side — sides determined by politics and not by insight — will admit that they — barring some improbable last minute piece of hard evidence — has any real access to the truth.
- The whole ‘case’ is opinion, pure and simple. Your value system — are you part of the old boys club? — determines how you see the case. It is not unlike — just on a far, far smaller scale relative to the national consciousness — like the Dreyfus affair in fin de siècle France, in which your opinion of Dreyfus’s guilt reflected your deeper opinion of the Jews. Historically speaking, we know how strong anti-semitism was in France, because we know roughly how many anti-Dreyfusards there were.
- With historical perspective of course, we can say that Dreyfus was innocent and that the case against him was an extension, a symptom, of anti-semitism, pure and simple. A vast, vast injustice.
- Values produced facts, not the other way around. The question I have now, in regards to Kavanaugh, are: what values are producing what ‘facts’?
- My gut feeling is that Kavanaugh is guilty — but I can’t say probably, because I can’t know. I’m just reflecting what I already believe about how young men behave at parties.
- Republicans are right about a lack of evidence, Democrats are right about an FBI investigation. As much as contemporary idealization of the FBI as the arm of justice — of fairness — makes me uncomfortable, at least an…
