September 28, 2018

Trump and Kavanaugh: Sexualized Dominance and Executive Power

http://prospect.org/article/trump-and-kavanaugh-sexualized-dominance-and-executive-power
"It should come as no surprise, I suppose, that a man nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States—a man who would be a justice for another 40 years, perhaps—by the pu**y-grabber-in-chief now stands accused of sexual assault himself. Both Donald Trump and his nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, share that sense of entitlement that tells men of a certain sort that the world is their oyster, as it were—there for the grabbing. It’s quite likely that the reason Trump nominated Kavanaugh went beyond the judge’s box-checking right-wing positions on regulation and reproductive rights, and was an obvious calculation regarding the consequential outcome of a particular criminal investigation. The real potential jackpot in having Kavanaugh on the court lay in his expansive view of executive power and privilege. That kind of investment in the dominance of one individual stems from the same impulse, differently expressed, that can lead a man to set himself upon a woman without her consent. It’s all about power and its exercise. Tomorrow, Christine Blasey Ford, who alleges that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when the two were in high school, is expected to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to tell her story, an exercise the Republican majority seems to regard as a thing simply to get through before the committee votes Friday on whether to send Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote. If listen they must, they’ll do so with their fingers in their ears.  There’s no reason that the committee vote must take place less than a day after Blasey Ford tells her story. That’s the prerogative of Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa."