It’s like my man Pynchon says: “Keep cool, but care.”
You don’t often get to see people lose their shit the way this schmuck Brett Kavanaugh did on national television yesterday. Screaming, crying, jabbing his tongue into his cheek like a shamed alcoholic caught with his pants down on the side of Route 33. He’s a fool and a prep school prick, and it’s embarrassing to have to see someone who so clearly can’t contain their rage be elevated to the brink of a lifetime position on the Supreme Court. No surprise, though. His lot exists everywhere in America; there’s a shitty Kavanaugh on every street corner in this country, because that’s how the whole goddamned thing works: The prospects of shitty Kavanaughs existing and ascending in power are the fundamental operating principles of America. Doesn’t mean they can’t be resisted and overturned by the will of a strong grassroots opposition. I think we’re all seeing that play out over the course of the last few decades; it’s grown more earnest and forceful as the other side, the shitty Kavanaugh brand of personal white-boy braggadocio thuggery and Washington fascism, grows more forceful in its own way.
I believe Christine Blasey Ford. I believe survivors of abuse and systemic oppression, and that should go without saying (but it doesn’t, lately). This is a violent world, and victims don’t need the pile-on of a hundred million jackals screaming and crying into their Twitter feeds. That’s a portrait of insanity, and I don’t tolerate that kind of closed-minded conceit in my life.
This is part of a much deeper cultural virus.
I’m hoping that those with their eyes open don’t take Kavanaugh’s ranting and raving to be emblematic of men in this country. Whatever that was, it didn’t resemble a man to me, the way I’ve learned about how to live from the men in my life. We’d all like to toss him through a fucking wall, but instead we’ll practice quiet kindness and teach others through actions that the good people in this world are strong, helpful, funny, loving. The rest of them? The shitty Kavanaughs of the world? Trolls and unhappy thieves. Violent and banal squares. We oppose them, and we support the voice of oppressed victims. It’s a really simple way to live, and everybody gets to feel good about their friends and loved ones.
Keep cool, but care.
Sandy 