But why would you reconcile each individually when a single explanation reconciles all of them? Particularly when men came forward to the FBI and said they were the boys from Kavanaugh's schools that assaulted Ford.
Andrew Cuomo's implosion
- Thread starter crimson5pheonix
- Start date
It's not really "reconciling them individually". Stuff like how she doesn't remember how she got home from a party 40 years ago, or the notion that there's a contradiction between 1982 and someone using the descriptor "mid-80s" 40 years later, don't even need reconciliation. They're immaterial and meaningless nitpicks, worth ignoring.
Ford's testimony is also bolstered by the fact there are numerous other accounts of him acting in a similar manner at University.
There are accounts of him drinking at University. Not sexually assaulting people.
There are no secondary accounts of Ford's testimony against Kavanaugh, despite multiple named individuals who should have been able to corroborate. You have to ignore a lot of stuff to conclude he did it. All it takes to solve all the contradictions in the case is believing that decades later, a woman misremembered which boy she had potentially never met before or after assaulted her at a drunken party when they were teenagers.
Other men say they did it.
The witnesses deny being at a party with Ford and Kavanaugh.
The timeline shifted between therapy and the public hearing.
She doesn't know how she got home if she was too young to drive.
And you're going to stick with "she's the only person involved who isn't a liar, and she misremembered a couple other things at some points, but definitely not that it was Kavanaugh, that's the only memory that has to be perfect."
Deborah Ramirez's account includes sexual assault, and Julie Swetnick's account includes spiking punch.
Funny, that, given that the FBI failed to follow up offers of testimony, and the Senate Judiciary Committee didn't call any other witnesses.
These are the men whose testimony we know literally nothing about? That's enough to discount the victim's own account?
Witnesses weren't actually properly interviewed or even called at all, with some of them not even hearing back from the FBI after offering information.
Completely immaterial and worth ignoring. If you can remember how you got home from a specific party 35 years ago, and got every detail of the timeline right upon being asked, I would be astounded.
Another lovely reflection on the Republican Party that cropped up while I was hunting for links: the majority of Republican voters polled would want Kavanaugh confirmed regardless of whether he did it or not.
It is impossible to fully accept the victim's own accounts. There are contradictions, and one must believe that at least one aspect of her memories was faulty. You choose to believe the time and place and manner of transportation are irrelevant details she can misremember all she wants, while insisting a simple case of mistaken identity is so impossible that you'll gladly indict the man on it.
I didn't say I'd gladly indict the man. I don't know for certain if he did it or not.
But you're happy to exonerate to the point of raising him to one of the most powerful offices of the land.
And yes, it's less likely that someone is misremembering their own attacker than it is that they're misremembering how they got home from a party 35 years ago. The human memory tends to focus on.... you know, things that are actually important. Doubly so if they're traumatic.
No commentary on the poll showing a majority of your party believe he should be confirmed even if he's guilty?
How many people openly said they would still support Roy Moore if it was confirmed that he raped children?
A rapist could offer a signed confession and as long as he promised to vote for or run for office as a Republican, conservatives would still support him. Modern American conservatism is focused on one thing only: power.
There's nothing to indicate she had ever met her assailant before that night. They were at a party drinking. I don't think he gave her a business card.
Nope. I don't agree with them in this case specifically, but think it's within reason to overlook teenage missteps.
Like getting drunk and raping people or pursuing teenage girls in your 30's and 40's to the point where you get banned from a shopping mall. You know, those sort of little indiscretions.
And deciding it's not that big a deal to murder someone like George Floyd for being "no angel". Funny how a certain class of people shouldn't have crimes held against them when running for office but another can have past crimes used to justify their murder in completely unrelated circumstances.
I think this is a persistent issue with how courts and many lay people treat memory.
For cognitive scientists and psychologists who deal with memory professionally, a person remembering being sexually assaulted at a party (decades ago!) but not how they got home should be considered uncontroversial. And yet suddenly step into a courtroom and people suck air through their teeth and mutter "Ooh, that's suspicious".
But this is all by design. Court cases do not assess memories based on realistic concepts of how minds actually work, it's an adversarial court system designed to induce jurors (and to an extent everyone else) into trusting or distrusting testimony. The badgering is really about picking on something unclear or inconsistent and hammering it for all that it is worth. It doesn't matter what that thing is - anything will do. The point is merely to emphasise that something is not remembered - and if that thing is not remembered, then by association everything else might be deemed dubious, too.
Of course the other thing about badgering someone is to unsettle someone. In reality, this can actually work to make a truthful testimony artificially appear less reliable. The witness can have a good memory of the event, but if their composure can be damaged so they seem less credible, this is a win for the cross-examining lawyer. Again, it is the process of a court case, and not genuine truth-seeking. There are other things of course common to sexual assault cases. A classic might be "Why not report it at the time?" There are usually perfectly good and understandable reasons why not, that experts who work on these things know are normal: but it has long been weaponised to spread doubt about accusations in the minds of laypeople.
Right, and without a business card, nobody would remember someone who perpetrated a traumatic assault on them. Especially if they then became famous in the political sphere. And let's not forget, Ford didn't just name Kavanaugh once he was nominated; her husband confirmed she named him 9 years ago.
Sexual assault is a "misstep"?
What the poll indicated to me was that a scarily large number of Republican voters simply don't take sexual assault and rape seriously, or don't give a shit about it. Far from challenging that characterisation, you've quite adequately illustrated it instead.
Fucking hell, a "misstep". Grotesque.
There is a zero percent chance you would hold some whose politics you agree with to the "you touched a boob over clothes as a drunken teenager, so you're not allowed to be a successful adult" standard. No chance whatsoever.
You're now equating holding somebody down, with a hand over their mouth to stop screams, grinding against them and attempting to forcibly undress them with "touching a boob over clothes".