There are two current incidents and four older ones which, in conjunction with one another, make a mockery of the politics of identity. A thumbnail of the incidents.
Karen Monahan - Charges of domestic abuse against Keith Ellison, Co-Chair of the Democratic National Committee: Iranian-American. Medium/Low social status. Community organizer. Contemporaneous discussions at the time of the alleged incidents. Medical notes. Claimed video but won't release it. Allegations made soon after the alleged incidents.
Christine Blasey Ford - Charges of attempted rape against Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh:
White. High social status (Stanford University). University professor (Stanford University). No contemporaneous discussions. No documentation. No specific claim. No evidence. No testimony. Contradictory statements. Counterclaims by third parties. Claims made 35 years after the alleged incident. Clear political partisan context.
Gennifer Flowers. - Charge of an affair against presidential candidate Bill Clinton: White. Low social status. Documentation. Acknowledgement in later years by perpetrator. Came forward three years after end of the 12 year affair.
Paula Jones - Charge of sexual harassment against President Bill Clinton. White. Low social status. Documentation. Settlement by the perpetrator. Came forward within three years of the incident.
Juanita Broaddrick - Charge of rape against then Governor Bill Clinton. Claims surfaced in the context of other investigations against President Bill Clinton. Multiple contemporaneous conversations and evidence at the time of the attack. Only made public through others, later.
James Carville "Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find." Coordinated campaign of derogation against all the claimants.
Anita Hill - Claims made of sexual harassment against Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas: African American. High social status (Yale Law School). Claims made eight years after. No documentation or supporting evidence. Polarized response - vilified by one side and feted by the other. Clear political partisan context.
The pattern of the Democratic establishment to these six claimants has been:
Karen Monahan - Disbelieved and attacked.
Christine Blasey Ford - Believed and supported.
Gennifer Flowers - Disbelieved and attacked.
Paula Jones - Disbelieved and attacked.
Juanita Broaddrick - Disbelieved and attacked.
Anita Hill - Believed and supported.
Seeing a pattern in a data set of six is, of course, suspect.
However, it is notable that there are patterns in the response of establishment Democrats. Regardless of race (Hill being black and Ford being white), and regardless of the lack of specificity of claims, antiquity of the claims, absence of contemporaneous conversations or third party corroboration, if you are high social status, you will be believed (by establishment Democrats).
If, on the other hand, you have no social status (Monahan, Broaddrick, Flowers, Jones), then no matter how many contemporaneous conversations there were, how timely the accusation, or how much supporting evidence there might be, then you will not be believed. Not only not believed, but will be the target of a campaign of vilification and personal denigration.
Race is irrelevant to whether you are believed or not. Monahan as a woman of color (Iranian) is ignored, while Ford (white) is believed.
Party affiliation is irrelevant to whether you are believed or not. Monahan is a Democrat as is Ford. One is believed and one is not.
Breadth and depth of evidence is irrelevant to whether you are believed or not. Monahan, Broaddrick, Jones, and Flowers had lots of circumstantial and contemporaneous evidence. The claims by Hill and Ford are personal claims with no evidence to support the claim.
Timeliness of the accusation is irrelevant to whether you are believed or not. Monahan, Broaddrick, Jones, and Flowers all made their claims privately at the time of the incidents and went public soon afterwards. Hill and Ford made their claims (whether private or public) only after eight and thirty-five years respectively.
I am no fan of the simple-minded admonition to "Believe the women." It ranks right up there with the 1980s admonition to "Believe the children." We know that that is an invitation to miscarriages of justice. Don't believe a person because of their age or gender or race or religion. I reject believing because of identities. I support evaluating the evidence and judging the probabilities.
The above pattern of behavior by Democrats establishes the plausibility that what is important to Democrats is the social status of the accuser, not their gender or race. No matter what the Democrats
say about race and gender and religion as identities, those are unimportant. It is social class which matters to them.
Ann Althouse touches on this in
Do liberal media notice the elitism oozing from their discussion of the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford?
I'm overhearing the television, so I'm not going to link to anything, but I keep hearing the indicia of elite status — notably, that Blasey is a college professor.
I'm trying to think of how her allegations should be handled, and I want like cases to be treated alike. When will one allegation from long ago justify delaying the Senate confirmation process and the opening of new investigations?
The answer cannot be: when the accuser has elite status!
I agree except that these are not the elite. These are the
establishment. These are the people the media (and academia) turn to when trying to represent reality. These are the people who they turn to when they turn away from regular citizens who should have equal rights, regard, and respect. The media fail to recognize just how much they disrespect everyone else when they privilege the establishment over everyone else.
I claim that Democrats have a pattern of privileging social class over all other identities and therefore all the happy-clappy talk about intersectionality and race and gender identity is just so much balderdash. Misleading pablum for the masses.
The alternative explanation for the patterns identified above is simply that Democrats have no consistent principles and that their moral judgment is always dictated by political expediency. All actions necessary to defend their power are
ipso facto, for them, moral actions.
I am happy to concede that both explanations might be simultaneously true. The evidence and patterns of behavior make it plausible that the establishment Democrats will do anything, no matter how unprincipled, to protect their power, AND that establishment Democrats care nothing about gender or race and will always privilege social class as the most important factor in considering relevance.
Or at least that is what it looks like from observing the froth at the top of the political ocean.
Posts
