Judging Kavanaugh

By Lowell Ponte

“Can it be that it was all so simple then
Or has time rewritten every line?” – lyrics from “The way we were”

Last week, in one of history’s most dramatic days of Senate testimony, accuser Christine Blasey Ford described persuasively her emotional alleged sexual encounter 36 years ago with now-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Then came his passionate denial that any such encounter happened, leaving the nation debating which of them was lying.

Another possibility exists – that both Ford and Kavanaugh were telling what they honestly believe is “the truth” of what happened in 1982, when they were 15 and 17 years old.

Memory is a tricky thing, explains retired University of California Irvine Professor Richard McKenzie in the Wall Street Journal. “My colleague Elizabeth Loftus was able to ‘implant’ false memories” in many people, he wrote, “by showing them an official-looking poster of Disney characters, including Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny.”

Many of these people “later remembered meeting Bugs Bunny on a childhood trip to Disneyland. Some of them even reported that Bugs had touched them inappropriately.”

But this was impossible, he writes. “Bugs Bunny isn’t a Disney character.”

Ford, now a 51-year-old psychology professor, had no clear recollection of what happened one summer night 36 years ago until she sought out professional help to recover her memory.

Researchers believe memory is scattered as fragments in the brain. “In retrieving memories, people reassemble them,” writes McKenzie, and “fill in the blanks in the condensed version. That process is fraught with the risk of error, especially when heavy drinking or drugs are involved.”

“The more remote a memory is in time,” he writes, “the less reliable it tends to be, partly because of decay and partly because recalled memories can be corrupted by new information. New and old memories can be conflated, sometimes emerging as totally false memories.”

Ford began her effort to reconstruct her memory in 2012, at the same time Brett Kavanaugh’s name emerged in the national news as a potential Supreme Court choice of GOP candidate Mitt Romney. Ford was a Democrat partisan and pro-abortion activist paid by a “morning after” abortifacient pill manufacturer. She might have identified Kavanaugh’s name as an ideological opponent.

Republicans have already privately questioned two men who believe Ford’s memory has confused them with Kavanaugh. We know Ford’s accusations are unsupported by any independent corroboration or tangible evidence.

Current scientific research, writes McKenzie, “strongly supports deferring to long-honored legal requirements for judging the truthfulness of accusers and defenders by assessing claims with verifiable evidence. Relying solely on accusations and denials is fraught with potential error.”

The burden of proof, as Western law and logic require, is on the accuser, not on Judge Kavanaugh. Several leftist members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, want to declare him guilty until he “proves” he did nothing wrong; they assert that his beer drinking makes his memory unreliable.

Kavanaugh’s denials of wrongdoing are bolstered by the testimony of many dozens of female witnesses who say that his past and present show no pattern of sexual harassment of women.

Leftist Democrats have been willing and eager to destroy both Kavanaugh and Ford – Kavanaugh because he is a moral Christian and nominee of President Donald Trump; and Ford, a leftist activist, because by betraying her request for anonymity they could exploit her as a weapon to mobilize female votes against Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Trump.

The larger goal of the left, remember, is summed up in their chant: “No Trump, no wall, no USA at all.” They want to bulldoze America and rebuild on its ruins a globalist, socialist dictatorship much like George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” – where the governing motto was: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

These leftists are tearing down the statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and demonizing old-fashioned defenders of American individual liberty such as Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh, the Boy-Scout-transformed-into-villain.

Kavanaugh believes we already live in “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” where language is politically correct, the media spews an unending “two minute hate” against everything American, and history is constantly rewritten to glorify leftist Big Brother.

History – our shared memory – is being reprogrammed to praise rejected Senator Jeff Flake (Rino-Arizona), who will soon-but-briefly receive his 30 pieces of silver from CNN or MSNBC for betraying voters in the Kavanaugh affair.

Forgotten is the wisdom of philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Lowell Ponte is a former Reader’s Digest Roving Editor. His latest book co-authored with Craig R. Smith, “Money, Morality & the Machine,” reveals how bad money drives good morals out of society and how you can protect your family from the future of “Star Trekonomics.” For a free, postpaid copy, call toll-free 800-630-1492.

Lowell Ponte

Lowell Ponte is a former think tank futurist and retired roving editor at Reader's Digest. He is coauthor, with Craig R. Smith, of "Money, Morality & the Machine: Smith's Law in a Lawless, Over-Governed Age." Ponte's articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and major other publications. Read more of Lowell Ponte's articles here.


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