High School "Attempted Rape"

This is dangerous territory for Democrats.

Democrats may think they have the silver bullet.  No. They have Kodachrome.


"If you took all the girls I knew when I was single
And brought them all together for one night.
I know they'd never match my sweet imagination
Everything looks worse in black and white."
                  Simon and Garfunkel 1973

Click: Kodachrome

Democrats are grasping at straws and for a good reason. The GOP stole a Supreme Court place from them, and now they are adding a second spot to tilt the Court for a generation or more. They want to stop Kavanaugh.

But almost everything is bad about this new weapon to de-rail the appointment --except one thing. The accuser is a professionally accomplished white woman, and Republicans cannot call her a porn star or fortune hunter. 

But everything else about this fits a different meme, that Democrats and women will "cry rape" or claim "sexual harassment" in order to game the system, either to get ahead themselves or to sabotage a man. That meme is out there, and Trump personally and the GOP generally, promulgated that meme.

Is that unfair to women and does it deny the reality of sexual assault? Yes. But we are talking political effect here, not justice, and this is a political fight and nothing else at this point. Cases of this kind can fall into either of two pre-set paradigms, the just-accusation or the false-accusation, depending on the sex, race, and circumstances, and whom one wants to win.

People who want to "believe the woman" may reverse themselves when it is a white woman using a rape accusation to assert white power, e.g.the "Scottsboro Boys case. False rape accusations drive the narrative of To Kill a Mockingbird. 

It all depends. The rule of thumb is to believe the victimhood of the person we want to believe. Sometimes it is the less powerful of the participants. Black men have less power than white women. White women have less power than white men. 

Click. Falsely accused.

Choosing whom to believe feels good in a partisan fight, but it is politics, not justice. 

Politically there are problems in this case for Democrats because this story feeds the white male resentment and anxiety meme, that women use claims of sexual misbehavior as a weapon of politics, not of truth or actual injury.  

1. The story came out in dribs and drabs, from leaks. First impressions matter, and it came out as rumor, furtively, from an anonymous source.

2. It was new, essentially from out of nowhere, referencing an event about 1981, with no contemporaneous reports to others.

3. They were all young. Brett Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge, were "one or two years older" than her, i.e. 17, making her 15 or 16. There was alcohol involved.

4. She says Kavanaugh groped her, which is being described as at its greatest interpretation, as "attempted rape," and she says she feared being "killed accidentally" as they tumbled on clothes. The accusation positions the accuser as passive, sexually uninterested, acted upon and unwilling, which may be true but it raises the question of the overall circumstances of the event and her interpretation of it as a victim.

5. Of course, Kavanaugh and Mark Judge deny anything happened that way.

What really happened?

Very probably something. Very possibly something improper and disreputable. We don't know and cannot know exactly. It would have been good had there been responsible adults in the house at the time of the reported incident.

Click. Teenagers do it. Problems sometimes ensue.

What we do know is that teenage memories of this kind are powerful and unreliable. Each of the participants is likely to interpret the events in a light favorable to themselves and each have their own very different reality. We know teenagers do sex play, often badly, frequently willingly, then feel weird about it, maybe guilty, maybe thrilled, maybe confused.

Politically: in the long run this will backfire on Democrats. 

In this environment, Democrats have no choice but to "believe the woman," but this means doing so under circumstances that reveal the political basis for their believe rather than the evidentiary "beyond a reasonable doubt" basis. 

The danger for Democrats is that the incident embeds a threat and vulnerability to every voter. Everyone has a history. Women are not exempt. Could someone accuse of woman of being a "slut"? Could someone claim she "came onto me?" Did he or she really kiss me first or kiss me back? Who did what, and how is it remembered by the other person?

Democrats are on safe ground when they accuse the Koch Brothers of using their power to act in a boorish, self-interested manner, taking advantage of other, weaker people. They are on unsafe ground when they make the same accusation of against voters. Going back to this incident means there may be forgetting, but there is no safe harbor.

Even if Kavanaugh is booted, when it is all done this may strengthen Trump's hand.

This isn't what Democrats intend, but it is what they are doing.