Trump had hinted the previous day that he might be open to considering another candidate depending on how the hearings went.
Then Kavanaugh went full raging-entitled-douchebag screaming about false accusations and Democratic witch hunts and now Trump can’t stop gushing about what a wonderful job he did at the hearings. I think this performance was for Trump’s benefit as much as anyone on the Judiciary Committee.
The Washington Post ran a really excellent column on this exact notion. That’s part of why the mob of pasty white GOP fuckers was so upset–the notion that a nobody like Dr. Ford could derail someone of true value like Kavanaugh goes against every fiber of their being.
I can’t answer your question specifically, but you might be interested in this site https://www.bodylanguagesuccess.com/ whose author analyzes non-verbal communication. I find it interesting; though I may not always agree with the author, I often feel I learn something from it.
Looks like the author is going to be discussing more of the Brett Kavanaugh hearing in upcoming posts.
If only there was an organisation that specialised in doing those things…
That was the other great thing that baffled me about this whole farce.
Because the new Republican talking point seems to be that hey, the FBI? Those guys are useless. They do nothing. They dont reach conclusions. So if you want to know the truth, just ask him here. Is not like you are going to have less information, time, and expertise than the top law enforcement agency in the country.
… what is exactly that they want to “conserve” about the US?
I will add another thought. One of my favorite saying (I have no idea who said it first) is:
How do you eat an elephant? - One bite at a time.
We can only win this war if we simply keep chipping away, just as the repukicons have done for the last 40 years.
Edit to correcting spelling
Their control over it.
I hadn’t read or heard of DARVO. Thank you.
DARVO. Hmm. What I usually call “180 degree lying.”
Unfortunately, to me this kind of rhetoric feels like the empty platitudes you’d find on inspirational posters, in the absence of any real mechanism for change. “Vote!” many will say, and I will. As will millions of like-minded people. But when the democratic process ITSELF is hopelessly, irredeemably corrupted by the same evil our votes are attempting to address, there are no options – other than those that I cannot articulate in a public forum.
If this was a criminal trial, Dr. Ford’s testimony would not be enough to convince me beyond a reasonable doubt that Kavanaugh was Guilty. But the testimony of others and his his statements in the year book convinced me that he was a drunken misogynist (at least to SOME women) in High School. And his repeated dissembling on his history of drinking and his repeated mischaracterization of the statement of others that they do not remember this gathering as statements that the gathering never took place.show him to be dishonest. So I can easily picture him doing what he is accused of and then either not-remembering or lying about it afterwards. I would prefer that we appoint supreme court judges that I CAN"T easily imagine committing sexual assault. I would also prefer that we not elect people that I believe are capable of sexual assault, and that includes Bill Clinton as wall as Trump.
At this point it’s kabuki. All we can do is wait until we get to cast another vote… assuming our voting machines aren’t hacked.
Worth keeping in mind that we are in this situation at least in part because 49% of registered voters stayed home in 2016 precisely because of this kind of thinking. Each candidate got ~25% of the eligible vote. That is a pretty damn small number to build an empire on. No, we do not have a perfect system. Far from it. But we have a system where there exists the possibility of having a voice. If we choose to silence ourselves, then we need to take responsibility for the consequences. To once again steal a line, “Not to decide, is to decide.”
Cynicism is understandable, but it’s not a useful tool to advance change and equality.
Not only his dissembling, but his loud anger at being questioned, his projection of entitlement to this position, and his rude and disrespectful behavior towards the Democratic women on the committee asking him questions, was well more than enough to convince me that if he gets this shitty toward women when he’s sober, all bets are off once he’s loaded.
From your linked analysis:
“…this is no simple sniff, rather it’s a classic and very pronounced disgust display camouflaged by sniffing .”
“Although this behavior can be fully conscious, it usually is subconsciously driven or a phenomenon occurring at the edge-of-consciousness.”
“Because it is disguised as a normal and common physiologic behavior, such disgust-sniffing is analogous to flipping someone your middle finger directly in front of their face . It’s hate hiding in plain sight.”
"Hate in plain sight". Sums all this up nicely.
But that’s exactly the point, it wasn’t a trial. It was a job interview. I would never hire this petulant 8 year old, and I would hope that the people we elect to these positions would see what I saw in his lack of character, his embrace of conspiracy theories, his blaming Dems and his mimic of the bully in chief.
