The Statement Kavanaugh Should Have Written, Though His Handlers Wouldn't Have Let Him Read It Because Trump Would Have Thought It Made Him Sound Weak

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You may recall that in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, it came to light that Gov. Romney, as a teenager, had put together a little posse to torment and humiliate an effeminate classmate, and to forcibly cut his long hair. I wasn’t effeminate, but was a product of the same culture that produced Gov. Romney. No teenage boy wants to be seen as weak or unmanly, and no teenage boy doesn’t hope for the acceptance or even admiration of his peers. Decency and gentleness didn’t get one very far at all in the world in which I reached late adolescence. One had to exhibit a rapacious appetite for both alcohol and women. A lack of regard for the latter’s wishes was seen as manly, and manliness was something without which we’d all been taught we were contemptible.

With enough beer in him, one such as myself could convincingly pretend not to hear his inner voice saying, “No, this is an awful way to behave, and you know it!” Trying to (and, I might add, succeeding in) winning the admiration of my peers, I very often had more than enough beer in me, and undoubtedly acted appallingly.

I honestly don’t remember the episode that Dr. Ford has described, but can’t in good faith pretend it couldn’t have happened. If it did, I cannot hope to apologise with sufficient eloquence, but I shall never cease trying.

Even if the incident Dr. Ford described involved someone other than myself, there’s no question that I often behaved  deplorably, for which I now, as an adult, as a man who loves and cherishes his wife and daughters, and hopes no less avidly for the admiration of his female colleagues than he did as a teenager for his classmates’, apologise from the depths of my soul. I can’t un-commit the crimes of my adolescence, but I can strive to be a diligent, conscientious, and, above all, just member of the Supreme Court, to stand up at all times for the weak and voiceless as tirelessly as any justice has ever done.

I ask, with sincere humility and contrition without limit, to be granted the chance to make up for my horrid behaviour as a man not yet fully formed.  

Globalism, Sí . Patriotism, No!

In the middle of this decade, I tutored fellow residents of Los Angeles who wanted help with their English. Ivan, the son of Ecuadoran and Mexican parents had partied (that is, drunk himself stupid) through high school, and, at 30, was scrubbing toilets at public playgrounds to afford truck-driving lessons. Isaí had grown up in Oaxaca, the son of an abusive religious fanatic, and was sending most of what he earned as a busboy back to Mexico to pay for his younger sister’s education. Arouna, had attended university in his native Burkina Faso, where students had to show up hours before the beginning of the school day to secure a place to sit in their respective classrooms. Hyuntak, almost 40, had a wife and two daughters, and worked as an architect. Ivan had a pretty big chip on his shoulder — for which he blamed only himself, and quite vengefully, but all four of them were kind, generous, smart, and hard-working. Donald J. Trump, president of the United States, isn’t fit to shine the shoes of any of them.

I am the product of a misogynistic, homophobic culture. There was a pitcher in my Little League named Steve Wyman. Before my team went to bat against him, our coach — a World War II vet, a man’s man, a chainsmoker who probably wound up dying a hero’s death of emphysema — snarled, “Steve Woman! Don’t tell me you can’t kick this little faggot’s ass!” The culture writ large!

To my infinite discredit, I did pretty well (it seemed at the time) on the homophobia front, expressing my contempt for “fags” with the frequency and ardor required of a “normal” American boy. I fell pretty short on the misogyny front, though. I was terribly shy, and terribly horny. Whereas a truly normal boy would have stirred the two together and wound up with hostility, I was only shy and horny, convinced that no girl would ever like me. It wasn't their fault that I wasn’t cute and athletic and self-confident and cool, but my own.

I have never liked beer. I have never been interested in cars. I have never wanted to go out into the wild and shoot something dead. I have never imagined that forcing myself on a girl or woman would be anything other than awful. It would feel like confirmation of the unattractiveness I’ve always felt. I’m not much of a drinker.

My impression is that someone like Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh’s bro and buddy, and I have nothing whatever in common. My further impression is that tens of millions of MAGA cap-wearing “Build the wall!”-bellowers and I have nothing in common, except our nationality, which of course was an accident of birth. I feel infinitely more admiration for and kinship with Isaí, Ivan, Hyuntak, and Arouna.

For which reason I embrace President Trump’s rejection of globalism every bit as eagerly as everything else for which he stands (though I of course recognise that the sole thing he stands for is his own glorification). Patriotism is a ruse invented to get the non-rich and non-powerful to send their children to dies in obscene wars to make the rich richer and the powerful more powerful.  I’ve no reason not to believe that, given Google Translate and a comfortable place to sit down together, I might bond more readily with a person roughly my own age from Eritrea, Myanmar, or Peru than with a hunter or beer-guzzling former frat boy from Topeka or Billings or, yes, Bethesda.

Globalism, sí . Patriotism, no!