Behind Kavanaugh fight, a national struggle over trust, identity and sex roles
By Marc Fisher
September 27 at 8:16 PM
The subject was supposed to be the selection of a new justice on the Supreme Court. Instead Thursday’s showdown on Capitol Hill was a raw, scorched-earth confrontation across the nation’s most emotionally wrenching divides. This was men against women, right against left, a cascade of recriminations, explosions of anger, hours of tears and sobs.
A hearing that was supposed to bring clarity instead erupted in thunderclaps from the nation’s built-up tensions over how the sexes are supposed to behave with each other. Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh and the woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her came before the Senate Judiciary Committee in “the wrong town at the wrong time,” as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) put it.
The result was affirmation that Washington is as broken as it has ever been. Based on what the senators in the room said, the result was, once again, people hearing mostly what they were inclined to believe. The result, far from clarity, was a complex rush of emotions adding up to two families left in wreckage and a political system without even a pathway to cooperation.
The day ended with discord bordering on dark visions of a hopeless future. Graham heatedly declared that “this is not a job interview. This is hell. . . . To my Republican colleagues, if you vote ‘no,’ you’re legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/behind-kavanaugh-fight-a-national-struggle-over-trust-identity-and-sex-roles/2018/09/27/8dbeb4d8-c25b-11e8-b338-a3289f6cb742_story.html
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