The Fix Was Always In: Isn’t It Always That Way?
By
Leonard Zwelling
No matter how the deliberations and voting go over the fitness of Brett Kavanaugh to sit on the Supreme Court, the outcome was probably never in doubt. From the early reports coming out of Washington on Thursday, it appears as though the FBI did not turn up any smoking guns that would incriminate the judge of either sexual assault or lying to Congress.
It seems from a New Yorker report that the FBI hardly tried.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/will-the-fbi-ignore-testimonies-from-kavanaughs-former-classmates?mbid=nl_Daily%20100418&CNDID=28650707&utm_source=Silverpop&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20100418&utm_content=&spMailingID=14372555&spUserID=MTQxOTMwNTA4OTI5S0&spJobID=1500317149&spReportId=MTUwMDMxNzE0OQS2
This will provide the fence sitters in both parties sufficient cover to vote for his approval and he will probably be on the Court next week. It was always going to be thus. Not only that, but the public will probably never see what the FBI found.
Why?
First, the GOP had the votes, even if only by a small margin. Second, this came down to a he said/she said for a job interview and the man always gets the benefit of the doubt with a tie going to the runner. That would be Kavanaugh. Third, this is still a country that is extremely misogynistic and there are just enough men and women who won’t believe the girl. Fourth, you can bet the White House put strict limits on the FBI’s investigation. They didn’t even re-interview the principals let alone people crying to be heard about Kavanaugh’s college drinking days and his high school days as well. No one wants to hear her. No one wants to hear it. Certainly not Agent Orange.
I am at the Chagrin Documentary Film Fest in Chagrin Falls, Ohio near Cleveland. I was recruited to judge some of the entries and I was so impressed, I thought I would come up and see as many of the ones I hadn’t judged as I could. One marvelous one was “Bad Ass Beauty Queen.” It’s about Anastasia Lin, a native of China who immigrated to Toronto when she was 13 and became a contestant in the Miss World Contest. She is also an outspoken critic of the Chinese government and when the finals of the competition were moved from Australia to China, she was not allowed entry into the country to compete. In fact, the Chinese government persecuted her father who had divorced her mother and remained in China.
Not taking no for an answer, Ms. Lin competed again the next year when the finals would be in Washington, DC. She again gained entry to the finals, but did not make the top 20 cut. Why? It turns out the Miss World Competition is underwritten by—you guessed it—Chinese money. The fix was always in for her although she probably gained more notoriety as a protestor than she ever would have as Miss World.
My point is only that when you run up against an entrenched bureaucracy, something I have done more than once, you will likely lose. When you decide to take on the odds, it is probably best not to be too attached to results, but rather to the fight itself.
Where the Democrats went so wrong with Judge Kavanaugh was when Senator Feinstein did not make the letter Dr. Ford had written about Judge Kavanaugh’s sexual assault of her available to the FBI weeks ago. Once again, even when dealt a potentially winning hand, the Dems can’t help themselves. They mess it up.
Now we have a half-assed investigation that will be utilized by the fence sitters to justify the judge’s innocence.
What I fear is that the press will keep digging. If they find that he perjured himself before Congress after he takes his seat on the Supreme Court, then what happens?
The fix was in and it may stay that way. Then again, it may not.
