It really shouldn’t be hard to know right from wrong, but it sure seems to be getting that way. The airwaves, including the world-wide net of everything, has opinions blasting at us non-stop 24/7/365, all variations on one of two themes “We’re right” or “They’re wrong.” It doesn’t matter the subject; the public faces of whoever will weigh in with why it is right or wrong and the public faces on the other side will counter with why the first faces are stupid. It will go that way, back and forth until it’s time for the next news cycle.
People are now being whipped into a frenzy by those who know very little but sound like they know everything. It is almost as if those who call themselves journalists have taken a page from the announcer’s script at a WWE match. In their efforts to become rich and famous they are willing to cast anyone as the bad guy, broadcast opinions as facts, or ignore the duplicity of one side or the other. Don’t even get me started on the entertainment industry. When you’re listening to someone who happens to have a stage and an opinion telling us that he or she knows best, or is famous as a singer or an actor (neither of which requires a degree in “being brilliant”) then you’ve given up your right to free will.
Chuck Schumer (D-NY), has claimed the Kavanaugh confirmation signals the end of bi-partisan confirmations. I’m sorry Chuck that boat left the dock in the 1980’s with Ted Kennedy’s attack on Bork, it left the harbor during the Obama administration, and reached the open sea back in 2016 when the people chose to elect Donald Trump to the White House and the DNC chose to encourage as much anti-Trump hate as possible. From his selection of Neil Gorsuch until today I ask, has there been one iota of democratic support or any kind of thoughtful deliberation on a middle ground that is best for the nation? I can say this for Senator Schumer, he is easy to understand. His words today, or any-day, have little to do with reality, they are scripted simply to gain media and supporter attention and keep him with as much power with the party as possible. But I digress.
The original idea of the #MeToo movement was a good one. Encourage women who had been victims of sexual harassment and abuse to report that abuse, to highlight an unfortunate reality in the law enforcement agencies and courts who often show far more concern to the abuser than to the victim, and to help others understand how sexual abuse affects those who’ve been caught up in it. The unfortunate reality is it became a political tool almost immediately with very little effort to remain non-partisan. Its spokespeople chose to hold one political side to one standard while allowing the politicians they like to get a pass. In so doing it has opened itself up to all the backlash we see today.
Here are my takeaways from the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, but I doubt those screaming in the streets will see it the same way.
a. Victim Rights (regardless of sex) should be protected and defended. The victims should be listened to with all the humanity possible, and their stories investigated with as much rigor as we would a murder.
b. To be effective that investigation must be done quickly, quietly and outside the public forum. Once anyone involved chooses to make that investigation public the victim and the accused become part of a public circus (in the sense of a Roman Circus) where the rights of neither are protected and both are subject to intimidation and/or character assassination. The counter-argument for this is it would allow the legal process to cover up abuse, as it has in the past. That is a human problem I am not sure how to fix. The choices are a process supported by our constitution or a public lynch mob. For me the constitution wins out. (note: If you claim to be concerned with a past abuse and wait until that abuse can be used as a political club than are you really all that concerned about the victim?)
c. False accusations occur and if you believe one gender or the other is always right or always wrong then you are a sexist and you don’t make your choices based on reason and fact, but rather on totally irrelevant emotional beliefs. Any process that assumes guilt as an entering argument is flawed and runs contrary to what our forefathers believed to be a fundamental right for its citizens.
d. Public media, and its “journalists” have absolutely no desire to seek or know the truth, although some will claim that is their role. Their singular purpose is to make themselves as famous as possible, make money, and perhaps rake some muck along the way. Anything that suggests otherwise is simply chaff. This holds true for any and every medium from the print to the internet. It is as true for FOX as it is for ABCNNBCBS/MSNBC. It’s as true for the NY Times as it is for The National Enquirer, and it as true for Huffington Post as for Breitbart. Of course, they all hire inspiring writers who all tend to think alike and believe they know what is best for all the rest of us. These same reporters will sacrifice any victim without a second thought if it will further their storyline, although they like to play the role of guardian and will from time to time protect their sources, this choice is also a selfish one, for they know their access to gossip and unsupported storylines depends on people thinking they can keep secrets.
e. The young in our society no longer seem to understand why our government exists, how it should work, and what binds us together as a nation. They have been taught that everyone has a right to a participation trophy, and if they don’t get their way they should have a public tantrum to show how unhappy they are. As a result, they willingly join in with those who have an agenda to overthrow the society we have and create something where those with the agenda will be swept into power and enriched. Their loyalty is usually based on emotional promises and little else. (BTW this is what swept the communists into power as they overthrew the corrupt government of the Czars. The communists shaped the USSR at the cost of some 62-millions[1] of its citizens as they made the ruling class rich within the workers’ paradise.
f. The left talk quite a bit about how angry and evil the right is, but all the public information supports the idea this is simply a transference of their own anger and incivility to those who don’t agree with their positions. I haven’t seen a lot of reports of conservatives hounding public officials out of restaurants, protesting the right of free speech on college campuses, pushing claims that speech they don’t like is really hate-speech, but perhaps I am living in a sheltered world where I miss all those angry conservative protesters in the halls of Congress, or the twitter feeds filled with profanity aimed at our legislators from such political commentators as Kathy Griffin.
g. One of the original fears in the Kavanaugh confirmation process was the claim he would shift the political balance of the court and they would overturn the courts 1973 decision in Roe v Wade and remove a woman’s right to abortion on demand. This is a big dollar issue for both the left and right, as evidence with how much money Planned Parenthood spends on candidates who support the abortion industry. This is such a “hot topic” issue we have the likes of Chelsey Clinton claiming as a deeply religious person it would be un-Christian of her to limit the rights of a woman to abort her fetus. Of course, there are other deeply religious woman who are not democrats and believe the rights of a fetus capable of sustaining life (or upon conception) should be equal to the rights of the woman.
Justice Kagan made an interesting point recently, she bemoaned the loss of Justice Kennedy as a middle ground for the court and its shift toward the conservative right. The question this raised was why should it be the conservative who is the middle ground? Why couldn’t a liberal? That kind of sums up the whole world of the progressive left. They can’t be the middle ground. It also reflects the problem with knowing good from evil for the left. When the goal posts keep moving it is impossible to have a consistent good.
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