The legitimacy of the Supreme Court of the United States died on Saturday. In terms of maintaining an impartial stance and avoiding the notoriously long reach of corruption, it’s no longer the highest court in the land.
Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed by the Senate 50-48 and sworn in as the 114th Supreme Court Justice. It was a bitter conclusion of a whirlwind week that will hopefully be condemned by American history books.
Senator Lindsey Graham was right. The proceedings leading up to Kavanaugh’s confirmation were a sham. They were a sham because the Senate is controlled by people immune to change, blind to the suffering of sexual assault victims and deaf to the cries of protesters who denounced the judicial regression happening before their very eyes.
They were a sham because a hasty FBI investigation accomplished nothing, except to delay a final vote in favor of confirmation that seemed hopelessly inevitable.
Did Brett Kavanaugh assault and traumatize Dr. Christine Blasey Ford more than thirty years ago? Chances are we’ll never know for sure.
The FBI could have discovered something tangible if it had the opportunity to conduct a full criminal investigation instead of a presidentially-mandated background check.
A criminal investigation by the FBI is rooted in objectivity as the bureau searches for federal law violations, but in the case of a background check, the FBI becomes a White House phantom limb, following rigid guidelines set by Trump and his administration to see if a candidate is fit for office.
Its purpose during the Kavanaugh fiasco was to find any remotely plausible reasons to approve him, not to uncover the truth. Panicked Republicans asked, and the FBI delivered.
President Trump made sure to praise the investigators for all their hard work. Mind you, this is the same man who’s spent over a year tearing down the FBI and calling a serious investigation a “witch hunt,” an investigation into whether Russian hackers undermined a cornerstone of American democracy to help Trump garner more election votes.
Even if the allegations from Dr. Ford were somehow proven false, the newly-minted Justice Kavanaugh disqualified himself by throwing a glorified temper tantrum during a Senate hearing and tearing up at the thought of lifting weights with his high school friends.
He entered the Senate hearing not as a composed, competent man who can look at the nation’s most pressing issues with an impartial eye, but as a disrespectful teenager with all the entitlement in the world.
As a personal defense of his character, he told stories of his beer-chugging frat boy glory days at Georgetown Prep. When asked if he has ever blacked out from drinking, he threw the question back in Senator Amy Klobuchar’s face, who spent her childhood with an alcoholic father.
Kavanaugh railed against the Democratic party, calling the proceedings a “political hit” and instantly proving that he cannot rule in an unbiased manner.
His Clinton-bashing tirade and suggestion that liberal opposition groups had paid people to protest his nomination instantly won over the alternative fact-loving President.
Kavanaugh should have been dismissed in that instant, for essentially admitting that political opinion would cloud his judgement and prevent him from carrying out the charge of a Supreme Court Justice.
But he wasn’t, because the senators who voiced their support of Kavanaugh painted him as the real victim of the allegations and dismissed throngs of dissidents fighting for their equal voice as “angry mobs.”
They scolded the protestors for ignoring protocols like staying quiet in the Senate chamber and keeping a respectable distance from the Congress building. Meanwhile, the same senators blindly submit to a Commander-in-Chief who scoffs at common decency and makes up his own facts as he goes along.
President Trump did what he does best and went with the playground-bully approach, mocking Dr. Ford in front of a crowd of his most indoctrinated worshippers. They laughed along with him.
Now, Kavanaugh rounds out a newly-conservative Supreme Court majority that can make sure flawed, Trumpish jurisprudence endures for a generation.
A man who has grown up with nothing but the best and spent years as a member of the college fraternity rape culture is the swing vote for a court presiding over a deeply fractured country.
At a time when the national conversation on male-dominated agendas is at fever pitch, last weekend should have been a moment of triumph for those who want representation beyond what privileged white men can offer.
It’s a giant middle finger to the supporters of the #MeToo movement that has sought to bring down men who abuse their power and redefine perceptions of women in American society.
So now America takes a tremendous step backwards towards the 1950’s, when abortion was illegal and women were treated as mere household commodities.
In the coming decades, whenever Kavanaugh makes a ruling that devalues women and reinforces America’s rampant culture of toxic masculinity, remember the day 50 cowardly senators refused to stand up and say no.
Joshua is a senior majoring in Spanish and Communication Studies. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The Voice.
