The crassness of Brett Kavanaugh's opening statement

Behold, the glory of theatre!  For you see, those of us who live and breathe the living theatre also spell the word, "theatre!"  I, of course, am typing in the proper Brrrrritish accent.  Tongue rrrrrrolls, and all.  Where did I put my crumpets and my scones?

Ah, yesterday was glorious theatre!  The drrrrrama!  The pathos!  The....



OK, that's enough for the morning.  Anyway, as I always say, Supreme Court confirmation hearings are nothing but empty, transparent theater.  There.  American spelling.  I will admit, though, that yesterday's events were somewhat more dramatic than usual.  Meaningful in any meaningful sense of the word, "meaningful?"  No.  The Democrats accomplished nothing, the protesters accomplished nothing, and Brett Kavanaugh has already drafted the language of plenty of his rulings because like every nominee to go before that committee, he's completely full of shit.

Reminder:  "the attitudinal model."  This is the political science model that says Justices are basically just ideologically-motivated politicians in stupid costumes, who dress up their ideology in the affectations of phony doctrines of "constitutional interpretation," which are really ex post facto rationalizations for opinions that long precede any ideas they ever had about how to interpret a vague and badly written document.  Yes, I am an attitudinalist.  My basic interpretation of empirical observations is that Justices are, like any other politicians, ideologues who occasionally have idiosyncratic opinions and frequently rule on non-ideological issues, which undervalue the empirical power of the attitudinal model.  Give me an abortion case, a gay rights case, or something like that, and watch how these costumed politicians rule.  Anyone who seriously thinks Kavanaugh's mind isn't made up, let's make a bet.  What kind of odds do you want?  You really think it's gonna be 50/50?  If so, a 60/40 bet should sound good to you.  Costumed politicians.

And that leads me to the crassness of what happened.  He gave his opening statement, and most of it was just the boilerplate text that every Republican nominee reads.  These guys (yes, guys) are a bunch of damned clones.  And not like Orphan Black clones, where there's cool variation.  Republican nominees are just the same fuckin' guy, over and over again.  Hence Gorsuch's plagiarism!  Zing!  No, I'm never letting go of that.  Kavanaugh could have read Gorsuch's statement and nobody would have noticed because he basically did.  Gorsuch basically read Roberts's and Alito's, and so on.  They're all a step shy of plagiarists.  Except Gorsuch, who is just a fuckin' plagiarist.

That's bad enough, but the line that really got me was this one:  "The Supreme Court must never be viewed as a partisan institution."

I am a truth-teller.  Truth is big for me.  My purpose in life is to destroy lies.  Even comforting ones.  I don't care how comforting your lies are.  They are lies.  Your lies must be eradicated.  I hate lies.  I hate liars.  Hatred.

Kavanaugh didn't say that the Supreme Court shouldn't be partisan, and the ship sailed on that long ago.  Want some data?  According to the American National Election Studies 2016 survey, of high school graduates, 19.9% identified as "independent," even after being pressed for a leaning.  Among those with a professional degree, including a JD (that would be law school), that drops to 9.1%.  There is a funny little myth that educated citizens are the independent ones, and it is exactly backwards.  The more educated you are, the more partisan you are.  The more you know about politics, the less likely you are to be independent.

Supreme Court Justices, and even nominees?  They're partisans, and that's all there is to it.  Anyone who says otherwise is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.  Believing it may be comforting, but I hate lies, even the comforting ones.

The Supreme Court is a partisan institution.  Brett-y-boy knows it.  Every single Senator knows it, which is why Mitchy-poo blocked Obama from filling the vacancy left by Scalia's death for a fucking year, hoping a Republican would win in 2016, and a sleazy plagiarist sack of shit would get that seat.  Yes, I am a professor.  Plagiarism doesn't work for me.  And the Supreme Court is a partisan institution.

What matters to me?  Truth.  I like truth.  Saying that people shouldn't see the truth?  That doesn't work for me.  Brett knows exactly how he will rule on every major social issue, and a host of economic issues.  He'll lie his lying ass off pretending otherwise, just like every other nominee, and if there were real justice in this particular situation, he'd have his lying ass thrown in jail for contempt of Congress in the process.

And if you say otherwise, let's bet on how he'll rule on abortion.  I say he'll uphold every single restriction on abortion that comes his way.  (Collins-- you're a useless moron).  If you say his mind isn't already made up, what kind of odds do you need to take me on?

Lies.  Lies, bullshit, theater, and Kavanaugh tells everyone to close their eyes and pretend this isn't happening.

I am beyond sick of lies.

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