Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years ago

What's happening in your world? Discuss it here.
Forum rules
Play nice. We will be watching

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:54 pm

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
  • 0

Image
User avatar
Deathclaw_Puncher
Knight Writer
Knight Writer
 
Posts: 12452
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 9:42 pm
Location: Fair Oaks, CA
Show rep
Title: Queen of the Furrets

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby ghijkmnop » Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:57 pm

Redacted
  • 0

Last edited by ghijkmnop on Thu Mar 14, 2019 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Delete my account
ghijkmnop
Time Waster
Time Waster
 
Posts: 1962
Joined: Thu May 28, 2015 8:22 am
Show rep
Title: Prisoner of TCS

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Absentia » Sat Oct 06, 2018 10:23 pm

DP, I like poetry as much as the next guy, but maybe you could explain what that has to do with the conversation instead of just dropping it with no context.
  • 9

User avatar
Absentia
TCS Moderator
TCS Moderator
 
Posts: 1786
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:46 am
Location: Earth
Show rep

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Aquila89 » Sat Oct 06, 2018 10:44 pm

I won't resort to poetry. I think my feelings are better summarized by this Peanuts strip:

Image
  • 9

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
--Carl Jung
User avatar
Aquila89
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3442
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 1:45 pm
Location: Hungary
Show rep

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Windy » Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:07 pm

Yeeees, now we just need the stars to align and give Trump 3 more supreme court appointments and Crimson's endless optimism will be crushed
  • 1

User avatar
Windy
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3127
Joined: Fri May 29, 2015 11:41 am
Show rep

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:10 pm

Absentia wrote:DP, I like poetry as much as the next guy, but maybe you could explain what that has to do with the conversation instead of just dropping it with no context.

It's about the inevitable fall of empires and kings.
  • 0

Image
User avatar
Deathclaw_Puncher
Knight Writer
Knight Writer
 
Posts: 12452
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 9:42 pm
Location: Fair Oaks, CA
Show rep
Title: Queen of the Furrets

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby cmsellers » Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:48 pm

For a moment I saw "wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command" and thought that that DP had rewritten "Ozymandias" to be about Kavanaugh.
  • 0

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Crimson847 » Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:54 pm

Windy wrote:Yeeees, now we just need the stars to align and give Trump 3 more supreme court appointments and Crimson's endless optimism will be crushed


I'm expecting him to get at least one more if Democrats don't win the Senate this year (which they probably won't), and beyond that it's just running up the score. Not sure there's a practical difference between a court with a 100% reliable 5-seat conservative majority (plus Roberts) and one with a similarly reliable 6-seat majority. Depending on what you think of the Supreme Court's outsized role in American politics, running up the score like that could even be a good thing by driving home that the institution is not in any way neutral. Not to mention it would make the Court extremely susceptible to groupthink and therefore to making grossly unpopular decisions. Hell, maybe then we'd give a try at resolving our political disagreements ourselves rather than appealing to SCOTUS on every damned thing, which would be all sorts of nifty.


Maybe it would be easier to predict what will or won't cause my optimism to collapse in the future if you inquired about what my views are and what they're based on.
  • 8

"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
User avatar
Crimson847
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3195
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2015 5:18 am
Show rep

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Windy » Sun Oct 07, 2018 10:35 pm

Crimson847 wrote:Depending on what you think of the Supreme Court's outsized role in American politics, running up the score like that could even be a good thing by driving home that the institution is not in any way neutral.


Society doesn't want a neutral institution. They want a biased one that acts in their favor.
  • 0

User avatar
Windy
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3127
Joined: Fri May 29, 2015 11:41 am
Show rep

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Oct 07, 2018 10:53 pm

Windy wrote:
Crimson847 wrote:Depending on what you think of the Supreme Court's outsized role in American politics, running up the score like that could even be a good thing by driving home that the institution is not in any way neutral.


Society doesn't want a neutral institution. They want a biased one that acts in their favor.


It may not be their #1 choice, but society will largely settle for a neutral institution, or at least one they can convince themselves is neutral with a minimum of cognitive dissonance. All else being equal, a social system loved by relatively few but accepted by almost everyone is a reasonably stable system which promotes order and thus perpetuates itself. An openly biased institution, meanwhile, will make the group(s) it favors better off than a neutral institution, but the groups it disfavors will rebel against it. All else being equal, a system loved by many and hated by many is an unstable system which promotes chaos, and thus change. Maybe good change (e.g. the civil rights movement), maybe bad change (e.g. the Russian Revolution), but some kind of change.
  • 3

"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
User avatar
Crimson847
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3195
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2015 5:18 am
Show rep

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Windy » Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:17 pm

Crimson847 wrote:It may not be their #1 choice, but society will largely settle for a neutral institution, or at least one they can convince themselves is neutral with a minimum of cognitive dissonance. All else being equal, a social system loved by relatively few but accepted by almost everyone is a reasonably stable system which promotes order and thus perpetuates itself. An openly biased institution, meanwhile, will make the group(s) it favors better off than a neutral institution, but the groups it disfavors will rebel against it. All else being equal, a system loved by many and hated by many is an unstable system which promotes chaos, and thus change. Maybe good change (e.g. the civil rights movement), maybe bad change (e.g. the Russian Revolution), but some kind of change.


I thought we were supposed to call those groups "uneducated nazi rednecks who need to die out and stop getting in the way of the future"???
  • 1

User avatar
Windy
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3127
Joined: Fri May 29, 2015 11:41 am
Show rep

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:53 pm

Windy wrote:
Crimson847 wrote:It may not be their #1 choice, but society will largely settle for a neutral institution, or at least one they can convince themselves is neutral with a minimum of cognitive dissonance. All else being equal, a social system loved by relatively few but accepted by almost everyone is a reasonably stable system which promotes order and thus perpetuates itself. An openly biased institution, meanwhile, will make the group(s) it favors better off than a neutral institution, but the groups it disfavors will rebel against it. All else being equal, a system loved by many and hated by many is an unstable system which promotes chaos, and thus change. Maybe good change (e.g. the civil rights movement), maybe bad change (e.g. the Russian Revolution), but some kind of change.


I thought we were supposed to call those groups "uneducated nazi rednecks who need to die out and stop getting in the way of the future"???


We did, we do, and now we have a conservative Court. We favored some factions over others, promoted chaos, and that chaos prompted change.
  • 3

"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
User avatar
Crimson847
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3195
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2015 5:18 am
Show rep

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby cmsellers » Mon Oct 08, 2018 10:53 pm

The Kavanaugh hearings have me reading The Atlantic again, though I am not sure how long that will last. The Atlantic publishes the sorts of thoughtful, relatively lengthy pieces which are rare in a world of "three minute reads."

Three recent articles, I think are worth pointing out, even though I think that they probably say things most people here have at least always considered.

The first is by former W. speechwriter David Frum. He highlights something which has bothered me about the GOP under Mitch McConnell since they vowed to block Obama at any costs: the GOP has increasingly rejected procedural liberalism (Frum just calls it liberalism): the idea that for a society to thrive, certain norms such as majority rule, minority rights, and the marketplace of ideas must be preserved. I can trace this back to Gingrich with his "majority of the majority" rule and Jeb Bush's purge of the voter rolls, but the decline has accelerated since since the rise of the Tea Party movement led most Republican incumbents to fear primary challenges more than general election ones. Frum's analysis is (unsurprisingly) not as willing to damn the pre-Trump GOP over its illiberalism as I am, but it is still a very interesting read.

Another is by Peter Beinart. He pushes back against the idea that opponents of Kavanaugh opposed him because of tribalism. It's also oddly reassuring, the idea that we've been here before, that what we are seeing is essentially a reaction to #metoo in the same way that the Dixiecrats were a reaction to Civil Rights.

The last piece is by Tom Nichols, on why the Kavanaugh hearings have lead him to abandon the Republican Party. I find this interesting for two reasons. One is that I can relate: I have been a lifelong independent, and the Kavanaugh hearings have pushed me into supporting Democrats at the federal level for the foreseeable future. But the other is that I have been wondering since the Kavanaugh hearings whether there is anything left in the Republican Party, at least at a national level, which Barry Goldwater and William Buckley would recognize as conservative. This article says outright that no, there isn't.
  • 5

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby Crimson847 » Tue Oct 09, 2018 7:13 am

You don't read The Atlantic normally? Why not?
  • 0

"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
User avatar
Crimson847
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3195
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2015 5:18 am
Show rep

Re: Professor says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years

Postby cmsellers » Tue Oct 09, 2018 7:31 am

Crimson847 wrote:You don't read The Atlantic normally? Why not?

Because they removed their comments section and it pissed me off. Even with everything James Fallows did to show that he hated his comment section more than Wong, it was still one of the best comments sections remaining on the internet, and probably the best as far as calling out out inaccuracies in the original article promptly but civilly went.
  • 0

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

PreviousNext

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 30 guests