We're fucked.

I can'r even, as the kids say, with this whole Brett Kavanaugh thing. It's just so grotesque. It's hard to say who is more sickening, Kavanaugh, or his many defenders. And amongst his defenders, who is more sickening, the smug, smirking men or the women who have actually taken to the nation's airwaves to posit the idea that being forcibly groped is just one of those things that happen and how can you possibly hold it against this fine man?

Why has the GOP chosen this hill on which to die? Surely every other judge on the Federalist Society's list is just as right-wing, just as theocratic, just as awful as Kavanaugh. Why insist on him? I had heard that Hair Furor insisted on Kavanaugh because Brett was the only judge to state unequivocally that a sitting president can not be indicted or even subpoenad. But there is no way that the list of ghouls doesn't include plenty of judges who will happily insist that a sitting president may only be indicted if there is a "D" after his name. Hell, Kavanaugh was one of Ken Starr's hatchet men. Clearly he doesn't actually hold to any judicial principles. He's just a right-wing hack. Gotta think that the rest of the rogues' gallery Cheeto Mussolini was given to choose from are just as hacky as Brett.

So why keep fighting for this guy? They can't possibly think this doesn't hurt them politically. Publicly declaring that you believe these women are all lying about surviving sexual assault and that even if they are telling the truth you really don't care has to cost you some votes, right? It certainly can't gain you any.

Maybe it's just that this is the guy President Cartman picked and they will be damned if some woman is going to derail this nomination. Or some god damn liberals who would side with the victim of assault over the rich, entitled white man who went to the "right" schools and comes from a "good family" and should be allowed to molest as many middle-class girls as he likes. Maybe this is just them putting their collective foot down and saying "we have all the power, we're going to do whatever we want and there's nothing you can do about it."

This does seem to be the mentality of people like tRump and Kavannaugh and all these disgusting East Coast prep-school entitled rich boys. It's not enough that I have the money and the power, I need to be able to dominate and humiliate those without it. These people love hierarchies. They love pecking orders.

And apparently, it's not just the prep school boys. Until now, I never understood why rank and file Republican voters love Trump so much. They supposedly can't stand "elitists," whether it's the "liberal elite," the "Hollywood elite," the "Academic elite," or whatever. They supposedly hate the "Coastal elites" who look down their noses at the rubes in flyover country. But who is more of a coastal elite than a Manhattan billionaire (alleged) with an Ivy League education and a gold-plated toilet?

I think they love the security of a rigid hierarchical structure. They want to be in the pecking order, even if they aren't at the top and never will be, as long as there are others below them. And they would prefer that those below them not have the opportunity to rise. As long as everyone knows their place, and as long as that means they have someone to look down upon, they feel safe and secure. They're pack animals. Insecure dogs looking for an "alpha" to lead them. And rule them. And protect them from the threat of the other pack.

Maybe that's why so many Republican women are totally fine with a sexual predator president nominating a sexual predator judge to the highest court. They know they are not at the top of the conservative pyramid, and they never will be. And they're fine with that so long as they have status as white, Christian women. As long as they can look down on people of color and LGBTs, they're fine submitting to dominant males.

It's like being a small guy in prison. You're better off being some big tough guy's "girlfriend" because no matter how he degrades you, it's better than being left to the tender mercies of the general prison population. If you don't have the big scary guy protecting you, then you're everybody's "bitch." Better to be f'd by one asshole than to be passed around and sold for cigarettes. *

So I don't know whether this sociopathic little creep is going to be confirmed or not. I hate being in the position of hoping that Susan Collins does the right thing, that's a recipe for disappointment. But it seems like even some of the braying jackasses on FOX  are starting to realize they backed the wrong horse, so who knows? We are not in normal times. There are no more rules. And in the end, it probably won't matter, because some fucking mutant demon or other is going to wind up on the court and the process of dismantling everything decent about this country will be kicked into overdrive. We are fucked. Well and truly fucked.


*I don't know if that's really how prison works. I only know what I saw on OZ.