The inquisition that we have witnessed against Judge Brett Kavanaugh last week was a reckless assault on everything that is good about our country – orchestrated by the Democrats and coordinated for the express purpose of destroying Judge Kavanaugh – and by extension – President Trump. It is a frontal attack on our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and on our fundamental tradition of due process under the law. 
This broadside against Judge Kavanaugh has not only irreparably damaged the lives of a good man and his family, it has, virtually overnight, turned America into a banana republic. 
There is no more expectation of trial by jury, no more presumption of innocence, no more right to face one’s accuser, and no more due process. Instead it is trial by mob, guilt by allegation, sentencing by public opinion. 

Unwilling to Learn from History

Forgetting the lessons learned from the Duke University lacrosse team scandal in 2007, the Democrats charged forward in 2018, demanding that America must believe the charges leveled at Judge Kavanaugh by Professor Christine Ford that he had groped her thirty-six years ago when he was seventeen years old. 
In the Duke University scandal, three members of the men’s lacrosse team were accused of raping Crystal Mangum, a black North Carolina Central College coed they had hired as a stripper. 
The media frenzy that followed the allegations ensured that the three young men would not get a fair hearing and would never be able to overcome the stigma from this scandal. A statement signed by 88 professors declared the ‘attack’ a “social disaster,” calling it an egregious example of racist, sexist, and privileged behavior at the the elite Duke University campus. To make matters worse, Jesse Jackson appeared on Campus to rile up emotions of the already angry university population, and the media, representing every major network in the country, descended on the campus to cover the story. They all promoted the same narrative, that a group of wealthy, white men had victimized a poor, black woman.
Only the story was not true. There was no attack. Crystal Mangum changed her story more than half a dozen times, one of the players had a well-documented alibi, and DNA tests were unable to find any match to any member of the team.
The damage, however, was done, and to this day, the three men carry the stigma of what people choose to remember: that these three young white men had raped a helpless young black woman. The fact that they were innocent fell on deaf ears, their exoneration was relegated to back pages and small print, and the stigma will remain for the rest of their lives.

‘First Story Out Wins’

I have long supported a theory that I call “first story out wins”. When it comes to propaganda, the first story to hit the headlines is the one that people remember and believe. As a specialist in counter-terrorism intelligence, I have argued this theory in my analyses of Islamist terrorism, as terrorist groups regularly pre-empt the news cycles with their own self-serving versions of events, and when the real truth comes out, nobody cares. People remember the first headlines, and disregard the retractions and corrections.
The same dynamic is at play here. People will remember the headlines “Judge Kavanaugh Accused of Sexual Assault” and that will overwhelm all other reports to the contrary. The first story out wins. The Democrats co-opted the headline, and played it for all it was worth – which was quite a lot.
This has been, from the beginning, a conspiracy by Democrats to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump and to pre-empt any judicial attack on Roe v. Wade, the case that made abortion legal throughout the U.S. In doing so, the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have turned the rule of law on its head. They have ignored the lapses and inconsistencies in Professor Ford’s story that should have cast reasonable doubt, or the detailed documentation in Judge Kavanaugh’s that should have cleared his name. They have made it abundantly clear from the beginning that their goal is to derail the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Hypocrisy: Full Steam Ahead

Among the most outspoken of Kavanaugh’s critics on the committee, and the most ironic, is Corey Booker, who called the accusations against Kavanaugh “serious, credible, and deeply troubling.” Interestingly, Booker authored a 1992 column in the Stanford Daily about how he was himself guilty of sexual groping of a girl in high school. He also wrote about how in college, the common saying at the time that, “the best thing for that girl would be to be tied down and screwed” was, as he wrote, “barely noticed”. That’s a very chauvinist attitude for a man who now is ready to destroy another man for what he himself did at a similar age.
Has Corey Booker changed? He says he has, and has spent much of his adult life working for women’s causes. So do his indiscretions and anti-woman attitudes in high school and college make him ineligible for his prestigious seat in the U.S. Senate? Should he be impeached? By the standards that he applies to Judge Kavanaugh, the answer should be yes. 

Rethinking Women’s Role in America

In the last few years, Americans have been overwhelmed by words and slogans that slam what they call “white privilege”, “racism”, and “economic inequality”. Our streets have swarmed with violent demonstrations, masses of people opposing the status quo in America. “Black lives matter”, “hands up, don’t shoot”, “safe spaces”, “resistance”, “intersectionality”, are all terms that are used today by men and women protesting what they see as crimes perpetrated on them by “old white men”. The vehemence of their anger and raw hatred has divided our country like nothing we have seen since the Civil War. 
Women have to decide: are we going to be willing victims to mob rule and blame “old white men” for all the bad things that happen in our lives? Are we going to crawl into our “safe spaces” and demand special treatment that goes beyond the protections provided by the Constitution? Are we going to be willing to be unjust and take on faith the accusations of women who claim to have been assaulted, just because they are women and the accused are men? 
Or are we going to take our lives in our hands, be strong, independent adults, and demand justice for all? Are we strong enough to stand behind our beliefs and make our life choices work for us, without hurting the people around us?  
We have the tools, we have Constitutional law behind us, but we need to have the will – not to be victims, not to be attackers, but to stand on our own two feet and take our place beside the men in our world, rather than trying to demean and replace them.
This is a very dark moment for America. The sides have been drawn and the nation is deeply divided. In my view, the inquisition of Judge Kavanaugh is quite possibly the first major salvo in a new civil war in America. It is up to us to decide to turn away from the anger and the hatred that is destroying our nation, and reach out for something better:  to build a nation in which we can listen to each other and learn from each other, benefit from our differences, and – together – build a better nation that benefits us all.