Reflections on the Kavanaugh Drama

As I write Brett Kavanaugh is President Trump's nominee to join the Supreme Court as Justice Kennedy's replacement. We are learning an elaborate backstory, an ongoing narrative with many moving parts is in progress and we don't know the outcome. Every day brings more details about his days in an elite prep school, stirred together with a closely watched political slurry. I have linked his name to the Wikipedia article which will update readers to whatever happens next, but this blog post is to record personal musings at this moment as we wait to find out what happens next.

I have a feeling we are hearing too many of Kavanaugh's high-school and prep-school peers, both men and women but especially women, reacting quickly to speak in his defense, denying the antics being described. Drunken parties including both men and women were and continue to be the social currency of extracurricular life. Dormitory social groups have always been part of a transitional stage to adulthood, especially important for those destined to become the power-brokers, movers and shakers of society -- business and politics especially. Keg parties and hazing rituals are so ordinary that occasional casualties are barely mentioned in local papers.

Students continuing in academia, research, technology and research don't need tough leadership skills thanks to specialization. But those destined for political, corporate and executive leadership roles need a tougher skill set. They are the peer group from which Brett Kavanaugh and others in his milieu are cut. The "old boys club" consisting of virtually all white males has become more diverse over the last few years. It now includes minority men and women who fit the profile and exhibit the same level of group identity. They can be counted on to close ranks whenever necessary to "protect their interests" which have more to do with maintaining power and control than embracing ethics simply for the sake of doing what is right.

Kavanaugh's year book page doesn't read like that of a
dull, sober academic type. He was clearly someone who
enjoyed those days at the edge of propriety.

When this whole matter broke sixty or more women came to Brother Kavanaugh's defense almost overnight. I couldn't help wondering if they had prepared in advance -- in case someone spilled the beans about what their social life was way back when. Kavanaugh's year book page doesn't read like that of a dull, sober academic type. He was clearly someone who lived at the edge of propriety. It would not be out of character to slip over the edge from time to time -- not just for him, but for some of his peers as well. I haven't read it, but I hear one of them even enshrined some of those experiences in something like a novel.

My impressions are informed not only by personal observations but by an excellent snapshot I heard on the radio last week, 'Incredible' Privilege At Elite Prep Schools Like Those Kavanaugh And His Accuser Attended.  (I recommend the audio at the link, less than ten minutes.)

I was never in a position to attend an elite prep school, but I have known more than my share of people who have. Most of those I know turned out impressively well and became exceptional role models. I don't agree with the politics of Kavanaugh and many his peers it's fair to say they, too, have become impressive, influential role models as well. They are the movers and shakers of our society and political ecosystem. But I sense they, too, have passed through a kind of social "hazing" to become the adults they later became.

Schools play an incredibly important role for elites. The core function of elite schools is to make and remake elite status. Parents and families contribute to that. But they need to send their kids off to elite schools in order to make sure that they maintain and hopefully even advance their class position.

And therein lies the rub. Maintaining and remaking an elite status sometimes calls for being tough enough to confront others with whom they disagree, even their social, political and economic peers. What we see playing before us at the moment is a power struggle. Confirmation of this nominee is not the main point. His name happened to be the one that came to the top of a twenty-plus list of others, arch-conservative candidates groomed for powerful positions in the judicial system long before Donald Trump came along.

Addendum...

A few hours after I put this post together a very smart piece by Lili Loofbourow appeared at Slate.
Brett Kavanaugh and the Cruelty of Male Bonding, her forensic look at the various parts to this puzzle, advances a rational explanation for the puzzle that is Brett Kavanaugh. Here is most of the opening paragraph:

I believe Brett Kavanaugh’s claim that he was a virgin through his teens. I believe it in part because it squares with some of the oddities I’ve had a hard time understanding about his alleged behavior: namely, that both allegations are strikingly different from other high-profile stories the past year, most of which feature a man and a woman alone. And yet both the Kavanaugh accusations share certain features: There is no penetrative sex, there are always male onlookers, and, most importantly, there’s laughter. In each case the other men—not the woman—seem to be Kavanaugh’s true intended audience. In each story, the cruel and bizarre act the woman describes—restraining Christine Blasey Ford and attempting to remove her clothes in her allegation, and in Deborah Ramirez’s, putting his penis in front of her face—seems to have been done in the clumsy and even manic pursuit of male approval. Even Kavanaugh’s now-notorious yearbook page, with its references to the “100 kegs or bust” and the like, seems less like an honest reflection of a fun guy than a representation of a try-hard willing to say or do anything as long as his bros think he’s cool. In other words: The awful things Kavanaugh allegedly did only imperfectly correlate to the familiar frame of sexual desire run amok; they appear to more easily fit into a different category—a toxic homosociality—that involves males wooing other males over the comedy of being cruel to women.

Pay particular attention to that word homosociality. It was a new term for me but it brings an important load of meaning. Those not familiar with the term will find it carries a surprising list of characteristics of a non-sexual nature.

There follows a meticulous accounting of the many distortions and denials on the part of Kavanaugh and others that give this story a near-Gothic quality. She cites the term Omertà, derived from extra-legal codes of Mafia origin. Wikipedia has this:

The basic principle of omertà is that it is not "manly" to seek aid from legally constituted authorities to settle personal grievances. The suspicion of being a cascittuni (an informant) constitutes the blackest mark against manhood, according to Cutrera. An individual who has been wronged is obligated to look out for his own interests by avenging that wrong himself or finding a patron but not the state to do the job.[4]

Omertà implies "the categorical prohibition of cooperation with state authorities or reliance on its services, even when one has been victim of a crime."[5] A person should absolutely avoid interfering in the business of others and should not inform the authorities of a crime under any circumstances, but if it is justified, he may personally avenge a physical attack on himself or on his family by vendetta, literally a taking of revenge, a feud. Even if somebody is convicted of a crime that he has not committed, he is supposed to serve the sentence without giving the police any information about the real criminal, even if the criminal has nothing to do with the Mafia. Within Mafia culture, breaking omertà is punishable by death.[5] 

Omertà is an extreme form of loyalty and solidarity in the face of authority. One of its absolute tenets is that it is deeply demeaning and shameful to betray even one's deadliest enemy to the authorities. For that reason, many Mafia-related crimes go unsolved. Observers of the Mafia debate whether omertà should best be understood as an expression of social consensus for the Mafia or whether it is instead a pragmatic response based primarily on fear, as implied by a popular Sicilian proverb Cu è surdu, orbu e taci, campa cent'anni 'mpaci("He who is deaf, blind and silent will live a hundred years in peace").

There is more to this insightful piece than these short excerpts. The rest is recommended reading. She ends with a reference to Omertà.

Brett Kavanaugh is on the record instructing his buds to keep Omertà after a 2001 boat trip to Annapolis, Maryland—even from their wives. “Reminders to everyone to be very, very vigilant w/r/t confidentiality on all issues and all fronts, including with spouses,” he wrote after apologizing for a variety of things, including “growing aggressive after blowing still another game of dice.” By this time he wasn’t in high school. He was in the White House.

Another Addendum...

At this writing, October 10, a couple more links for the Kavanaugh file.

Washington Post link:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has received more than a dozen judicial misconduct complaints in recent weeks against Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice Saturday, but has chosen for the time being not to refer them to a judicial panel for investigation.
(...)
The complaints were handed over as scrutiny of Kavanaugh was intensifying amid allegations that he sexually assaulted a girl when the two were in high school. Kavanaugh has vehemently denied the allegations, as well as two other accusations of improper behavior. 

People familiar with the matter say the allegations made in the complaints — that Kavanaugh was dishonest and lacked judicial temperament during his Senate testimony — had already been widely discussed in the Senate and in the public realm. Roberts did not see an urgent need for them to be resolved by the judicial branch while he continued to review the incoming complaints, they said. 

The situation is highly unusual, said legal experts and several people familiar with the matter. Never before has a Supreme Court nominee been poised to join the court while a fellow judge recommends that misconduct claims against that nominee warrant review.
Roberts’s decision not to immediately refer the cases to another appeals court has caused some concern in the legal community. Now that he has been confirmed, the details of the complaints may not become public and instead may be dismissed, legal experts say. Supreme Court justices are not subject to the misconduct rules governing these claims. 

“If Justice Roberts sits on the complaints, then they will reside in a kind of purgatory and will never be adjudicated,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School and an expert on Supreme Court ethics. “This is not how the rules anticipated the process would work.”
(...)
Most of these complaints center on Kavanaugh’s answers about his work in the Bush administration, according to people familiar with them. They also accuse Kavanaugh of lacking judicial temperament in his partisan comments about Democrats, the people said. 

None of the complaints deal with the allegations made against Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford, who said he had sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. 

It is rare for a misconduct complaint against a judge to get as far as the chief justice. The chief judge of a circuit court normally reviews complaints against judges in his or her circuit. Most are dismissed because they lack a factual basis to make such a claim or are simply disagreeing with a judge’s decision. 

Henderson, whom President George H.W. Bush nominated to the bench, stepped in to review the complaints against Kavanaugh because Chief Judge Merrick Garland — whose nomination to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama was blocked by Senate Republicans — recused himself from the matter. 

The way the complaints against Kavanaugh are being dealt with is unusual, because Henderson concluded that the D.C. Circuit cannot properly handle them, and referred them to the chief justice. This is done only in exceptional circumstances, under the judiciary’s rules on misconduct. 

Kavanaugh is a member of the D.C. Circuit Judicial Council, which normally rules on misconduct allegations in that court.

Very revealing he felt the need to promise to be fair, open-minded, impartial & faithful to the law.
Why would a judge feel the need to do that?
That's like a surgeon promising not to take a smoke break during an operation.
WTF!

— John Ballard (@Hootsbudy) October 9, 2018