by Crimson847 » Tue Oct 16, 2018 8:40 am
It's pretty clear to me that French sees a lot of himself in Kavanaugh. They're both genteel, (normally) soft-spoken, middle-aged Christian conservative elites who went to Yale and then pursued long careers as litigators for conservative causes. Indeed, French is only 2 years younger than Kavanaugh--they might well have been at Yale together. I'd be surprised if they don't know each other in some fashion, and even if they don't there's certainly a lot of overlap in their social and professional circles. In short, they're not just members of the same political party, but of the same specific social tribe.
That kind of instinctive "one of us" reaction no doubt gives him a sharper view of the pain Kavanaugh's experiencing. Empathy is easier for a member of the tribe than for an outsider. This, presumably, is why he applies a noticeably different standard to Kavanaugh than he has applied to others outside his tribe, like Trump supporters, police officers, or student protesters. Kavanaugh's understandable pain at being publicly accused justifies his conduct during the hearing, but of course the pain of the sexual assault victim who confronted Jeff Flake comes with no such free pass. The pain is equally real either way, but French experiences one person's pain in a much more visceral way than the other's, so it affects his judgment more strongly.
The extreme rage on both sides isn't helping matters either. Normally when an issue like this is litigated in the media, there's genuine back and forth discussion--if left media consistently makes a particular point or argument, right media quickly develops a response. It might be a stupid or unconvincing response, but it's a response--a dialogue of some form is occurring. On really emotional issues, though (abortion being the ur-example), people can't stand listening to the other side because what they say is so thoroughly enraging, so that dialogue often shuts down. The Kavanaugh thing has been no exception--just getting answers from the right to basic questions about his testimony was a hassle and a halfle, and it was clearly no easier for conservatives to get straight answers to their questions out of most liberals. Everybody bunkered down to ride out the hailstorm of rage, which makes freely sharing information more difficult and thus aggravates the effect of personal, individual biases.
"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn