Columnist Bret Stephens sometimes poses as a quasi-reasonable reactionary, but his column today in the NY Times sets a new low for deliberate misunderstanding and tortured logic. The column praises Trump for standing up to “bullies” — by which I suppose he means those of us who are seeking a genuine fact-finding investigation into grave charges against a man seeking extraordinary power.
He writes:
I’m grateful because Trump has not backed down in the face of the slipperiness, hypocrisy and dangerous standard-setting deployed by opponents of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I’m 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’m grateful because he’s a big fat hammer fending off a razor-sharp dagger.
Stephens’ position seems to be that because some men feel that they are vulnerable to false accusations of sexual assault, all such accusations are likely to be false. It is this belief that is rallying conservative men around a nominee who has been accused of a violent attack on a young woman in 1982. They don’t take into account that as described, this wasn’t a lecherous kid missing the signals, or refusing to take no for an answer. If true, this was an orchestrated attack on a younger kid by two men who forcibly isolated, incapacitated, and silenced her — the fact that they failed to rape her does not undo the seriousness of the attempt.
Most young men don’t behave in this way. This is not a rite of passage, or hi-jinx, or horseplay. To suggest that most men should be afraid of such accusations insults all men, because it implies that they are close to this kind of behavior all the time. That’s false. It’s the non-normal nature of the actions attributed to Kavanaugh that distresses. Most men do not flash women at parties. Over my lifetime I’ve known (and liked) many a drunken young man, some of whom have engaged in clueless, amorous, or tasteless behavior. This isn’t that. This is predatory and cruel behavior.
All the women making accusations against Kavanaugh have asked (begged, rather) to give sworn testimony to the FBI. All have provided a list of corroborating witnesses, to the extent that that is possible. It’s ironic, then, that Trump has permanently stained all parties involved by limiting the FBI’s investigation. Ford has been humiliated a second time (and explicitly targeted by the president). But ironically any hope Kavanaugh had of rehabilitating his reputation has been permanently destroyed by Trump’s (and McConnell’s) refusal to hear all the evidence. He will forever be known as the nominee who would not request a fuller inquiry, for whom extraordinary efforts were made to rush the Senate to vote for him before a thorough investigation could be completed — which leads one to draw obvious conclusions.
Stephens’ argument hinges on the lack of “corroboration.” Ford’s testimony — sad, but “uncorroborated.” Ramirez’s? Ditto. Swetnick’s? “Preposterous.” In his words, the three allegations are nothing more than triple un-corroboration, or has he puts it,
Uncorroborated plus uncorroborated plus largely uncorroborated is not the accumulation of questions, much less of evidence. It is the duplication of hearsay.
Stephens seems to think that we’re all expecting everyone to accept one woman’s word in a vacuum. The best corroboration for these charges typically comes from other people who have heard the stories at the time or sometime after the fact. And this is exactly the reason that women, victim’s advocates, and Democrats have been demanding a serious, unfettered, and expansive investigation by the FBI. We want to be sure that the forty plus witnesses identified as relevant be interviewed, as is the normal practice for this kind of investigation.
Instead, Stephens is apparently expressing satisfaction that because sexual assault is “uncorroborated,” and rarely occurs in front of witnesses, and because corroborating evidence requires casting a wider net, such an investigation has been shut down.
It’s just that failure to see the nature of the crime itself that explains why sexual assault victims rarely see justice. Because typically these attacks are private, and (deliberately) humiliating.
I’m happy for Stephens if he’s never had to experience such an attack. If he had, he’d know that they are designed to prevent precisely the “corroboration” men like him require before they will even consider that a man might be guilty of committing despicable, unsavory violence on someone weaker and younger than himself — and that such a man might not be a very good judge.
*(I’m disinclined to post a link to his piece but it’s easily findable if you care to read it. Suffice to say, there’s more, and it’s worse.)
