Open thread for night owls: Torture and sexual predation have a Kavanaugh connection

Peter Dimock at Common Dreams writes—The Symmetry of the Torture and Sexual Misconduct Testimony of Brett Kavanaugh:

What is in the 85 percent of the available documents, amounting to more than 100,000 pages, that the White House has refused to release concerning Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s role in the formulation and implementation of U.S. government policy authorizing the use of torture against detainees and prisoners in America’s war against terror after 9/11?

How many times do you suppose Brett Kavanaugh’s wife and daughters have cowered before that face in the center photo on the left?

What we do know suggests the likelihood that Kavanaugh, both as Associate White House Counsel under George Bush from 2001 to 2003 and then as his White House Staff Secretary from 2003 to 2006, had significant involvement in the Bush Administration’s torture policies. We need to continue to demand to see Bush White House files to “pin down specifics of any Kavanaugh involvement in detainee policy discussions.” (See the Chicago Tribune article by Michael Kranish, “Kavanaugh’s role in Bush-era torture debate now an issue in his Supreme Court nomination,” July 18, 2018.) [...]

The refusal—and mainstream American culture’s complicity in that refusal—of our institutions of  governance and government oversight to have the question of the legalization of torture by the U.S., from 2001 to the present, re-opened, I believe, lies just beneath the surface, and to partially account for, the intensity of the stakes—emotional and psychological as well as political, social and ideological—felt by all Americans in resumed confirmation hearings [...] of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court in response to the accusations of sexual misconduct brought against him by three credible women. 

The questions raised by Americans’ continuing denial of the consequences for the character of the history we are living of our government’s explicit official sanction of torture by all the senior members of the executive branch of the Bush Administration—including those in the Office of Legal Counsel who participated in writing and approving the secret legal findings enabling and justifying torture—and the questions raised by Judge Kavanaugh’s alleged acts of sexual misconduct and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republican members’ refusal to subject his categorial denials to the test of empirical investigation share something fundamental in common. Both confront those charged with making a judgment about them with the question of how long democracy can survive if official power instrumentalizes truth to the point that it successfully uses the unaccountable violence of the force at its disposal to constitute the content of its self-legitimation. [...]

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QUOTATION

“Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.”                ~~Kofi Annan  

TWEET OF THE DAY

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Kavanaugh Statement: 😡😡😡😩😭😫😡😡😡😤😤😡😡😔😡😠😠😢😢😩😞😔😢😭😭😭😭😇😇😇😇😕😇😇😇😇😇😇☹️🙁😩😥😥🤨😥😥😟😧🤥😠😢😕😐😢🤭☹️🤥🤥🤥😇😇😇😥😠😇😥😭😞😇😍😟😫🤥🤥🤥

— PJHUME (@PJHUME) September 27, 2018

BLAST FROM THE PAST

On this date at Daily Kos in 2010—Maureen Dowd needs a mirror:

Dowd referred to Sarah Palin's climate denialism and Sharron Angle's autism denialism and Joe Miller's bizarre brand of Constitutional originalism, and correctly assessed the real goal of Palin, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner and Jim DeMint, which isn't a return to an idealized 1950s but to the 1750s, before the advent of modern science and modern republics and modern democracy. Which, one might add, accords perfectly with the goals of those that seem to want to become the effective monarchy of the future.

So, good for Dowd. Yes. The Republicans are not funny, they are unfettered from reality. And given that they are not the cartoon characters they seem, but a political party that could in the near future gain some semblance of governing power, that makes them dangerous. But Dowd's long-apparent incapacity for self-reflection necessitates an explication of her own role in propagating a national political dialogue that too often lacks any dialogue about actual politics. The modern Republican Party would not be what it is if not for the enabling of people like Maureen Dowd.

LINK TO DAILY KOS STORE

On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: It's hearing day. And what a day. Disaster looms for the Gop. Greg Dworkin rounds up headlines and relevant polls. But what else is there to discuss but Kavanaugh, rape culture, and the perverse vagaries of "performative male bonding?"

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