HILLSBORO, Ohio —
For people in Trump Country locales such as Highland County, Ohio, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation circus has morphed into complete lunacy, while validating presumptions about the media and the D.C. swamp.
If evidence emerges to prove Kavanaugh guilty of sexual assault, everyone agrees he should be disqualified. But for now, the definition of "credible witness" appears to be anyone willing to make a claim against Kavanaugh. And there's general agreement, cynical though it may be, that if Kavanaugh were considered a pro-choice judge, none of these allegations would have surfaced.
The reaction here to Kavanaugh being suddenly accused of sexually predatory behavior — including even gang rape — cannot accurately be described as outrage, because outrage is typically preceded by a surprising or shocking development. Here, what has happened was roundly predicted: Kavanaugh's opponents would stop at nothing to stop him, or, more precisely, to prevent the court from gaining a dependably conservative majority.
If Trump Country was insufficiently motivated to turn out in the midterms, the Kavanaugh accusations were just what the doctor ordered. At the local GOP headquarters, officials report a steady stream of Republicans stopping in to vent their frustration. The sentiment crossed party lines. At a high school football game Friday night, a lifelong Democrat told me he was astounded that accusations against Kavanaugh from decades ago, without evidence or corroborating witnesses, could be taken seriously.
People here are as loving, caring and concerned about victims of sexual assault as people anywhere else. But they shake their heads over what they have witnessed with Kavanaugh.
What you hear most around here, from men and women, is concern over a new standard that the accused are presumed guilty. The presumption of guilt in regard to allegations of sexual assault may be appealing to those who view it as empowering women and correcting the ills of a patriarchal society. But aside from the obvious danger of convicting the innocent in these cases, what happens when we slip down the slope and the principle is expanded to include other allegations?
The biggest casualty of the Kavanaugh debacle is the media, which has abandoned the basics of journalism to publish and broadcast unsubstantiated accusations that would have been verboten in newsrooms just a few years ago. The New York Times, which declined initially to publish claims made by a woman named Deborah Ramirez because it could find no firsthand witnesses to validate them, quickly published them after the New Yorker did, under the guise of explaining why it didn't publish them first. Welcome to journalism today.
