The irony of losing a battle and winning the war

By Mike Meyer

The Kavanaugh thing looks set to proceed as was desired by the poor souls caught in having to follow orders no matter how disgusting. I rather hope they are celebrating. This has been a wrenching experience that leaves little hidden. Sexual assault is ok for educated, white, males. Elevating a conceited, predatory, misogynist to the Supreme Court makes that very clear.

The fact that this is the final step in destroying the validity of the Supreme Court that has been a critical force for careful change and stability is very hard to ignore. The effects will be quickly visible in ways that we have never previously seen. Kavanaugh has no pretense of being anything other than a political hack for the regressive authoritarians.

In the tradition elevation to the Supreme Court has always brought political disappointment for those seeking to make the court a political weapon. Judges have consistently moved to take more balanced and centrist positions than expected. But these were always people who came expecting to be committed to the ideal of openness with shaping, perhaps, by a judicial and constitutional philosophy.

Kavanaugh has declared himself to be a hack with little sense of what values matter. Hacks are pawns not thinkers.

So what happens? In two years of disaster and accelerating collapse there have been many points of no-return driven by anguish and anger. There will be more of that and, I expect, demonstrations and movements to impeach Kavanaugh as soon as he moves to the court. That will be interesting but not the most important result.

I think that the progressive majority has lost a battle but won the war. This is not a case of the people rising up in a rage and dragging Kavanaugh and most of the Senate kicking and screaming to their ignominious end. There is no way to do that. There is a rising up but it is becoming clearer and more mature as a movement.

The key is that this is most clearly the final fight to end the old dominance of whites and males. Needless to say there is a lot that goes with that. In fact it is most of the history of Western Europe and the Mediterranean and all of the history of America.

The last fifty years and the full civil rights and feminist movements and thier incremental successes were really just the needed warmup for what it happening now. Those movements ended in ceasefires, particularly in America. That could not hold.

Everyone now sees the very clear nature of what must be eliminated and the basic decency that cannot be maintained when the old ideas are allowed to rule.

The minority that sided with Kavanaugh and very obviously with a rapidly disappearing world of the people who control the Republican Party. These are the people who allow someone like Trump to stand for them as the ultimate symbol of sexual predation, misogyny, and racism.

The American majority are now united, not on political issues, but on the foundational issues of humanity in the world of the 21st century. This is above and beyond the corruption of the political system and the Democratic Party. They can be used but they are not the future. They are a tool that, I think, we have a majority willing to now wield in full battle for our futures

That has never happened before.