Trial by tears
I keep reading that Christine Blasey Ford was highly sympathetic on Thursday and that her emotionally intense rendition of her story made her testimony especially “credible.” But long before Kavanaugh was even nominated, I had already written about the relative meaninglessness of the word “credible” when deciding if an accusation is in fact true or false. The context of this discussion was the Roy Moore brouhaha:
All “credible” means is that the story might be true—that it’s not incredible.
For example, if I said “John Smith sexually abused me when we were drifting in outer space while flying to Mars under our own power,” that would be an incredible story. Not believable. Literally impossible. But to craft a credible story, all I’d have to do is have a history that involves some proximity to the accused, and do a bit of research as to where he worked, etc.. Stuff that would be easy to find out.
Even better if I’d had some connection to him.
People who are out to get a politician in trouble through false accusations have a lot of information to work with. It also helps if it was long enough ago that there is no way to fact check…
…]P]roof doesn’t have to rise to the level of courtroom proof to believe someone is probably guilty. But credible accusations doesn’t cut it and shouldn’t cut it. Persuasive accusations would be better. What “persuades” you sure doesn’t persuade me…
Nor does any of this mean I think the women [who have accused Moore] are liars. As I’ve also said many times, they may indeed be telling the truth. But women and men lie at times, for many reasons, and it’s not even all that unusual. Sometimes they lie very credibly. Sometimes they lie while demonstrating a lot of emotion. I’ve seen it many times; so have you. Sometimes they even believe their own lies—or come to believe their own lies [or errors]. I think we should be very very careful about coming to conclusions unless the evidence for something is very powerful.
I wrote that in December of 2017, but it could apply just as well to the present situation and in particular to people’s reactions to the hearing on Thursday.
I’ve written quite a bit on this blog about Brett Kavnaugh’s emotional state of outrage during his testimony, an affect that is extremely consistent with his being an innocent man falsely accused. But, just as Christine Blasey Ford’s apparent upset and emotional fragility while telling her own harrowing tale tells us next to nothing about whether Brett Kavanaugh did it, and only slightly more about whether it happened at all, so Kavanaugh’s affect during his testimony hardly rules out the possibility that he’s either lying or simply doesn’t remember the incident.
(There’s also the issue of whether an unsuccessful groping incident at the age of 17, which would have amounted to a misdemeanor even if he had somewhow been found guilty at the time, would matter at this point anyway in light of his later life. But I’ll put that question aside for the purposes of this particular post).
Demeanor isn’t nothing; it tells us something about a person. But it tells us much less than we think, unfortunately, and it cannot tell us whether that person’s story is true. That’s what the other evidence is about.
Why would I care how much Ford’s voice quavered when she testified, or that other women watching cried along with her? On a human level, sure, it’s of interest. But on a true/false level, it is one of the least important parts of the episode for me. As Ammo Grrrll wrote at Powerline:
I think the #MeToo “Movement” is the most dangerous movement since the KKK, which it resembles with its mob mentality. And, I speak with total moral authority because I am a woman, whose every squeak and whine is, therefore, “credible.” I can credibly accuse any male from my kindergarten, high school, college, or long-ago workplaces, of the most lurid crimes, with no corroboration or even dates of occurrence…
Even after Tawana Brawley, and Mattress Girl, the Duke LaCrosse team accusers, and the fraternity gang rape that never happened, after every poop swastika and banana peel in a tree, all men and most women feel they HAVE to give an obligatory genuflection to “but, of course, the #MeToo movement is an important and wonderful thing.” No. It is not.
It is a deadly cocktail of Professional Victimhood, Neo-Victorianism, the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials and the certainty of being found guilty of the Stalinist Show Trials.
I will add that the #MeToo movement was also the warm-up act for the Kavanaugh accusations. It involves the norming of the “believe the women” mantra that is not only one of the most dangerous ideas I’ve ever heard but also one of the most profoundly stupid.
Have you ever watched the TV show Forensic Files? I went through a period of fascination with it, because it showed true stories of criminal investigations with many twists and turnings and much real documentary footage. But one of the side effects of watching so many episodes of the series was that I saw, over and over, video that showed how convincingly people can lie, and how intensely liars (even criminals) can pull on the heartstrings. Their motives are varied, but their ability to dissemble convincingly knows almost no bounds.
The grieving husband who later is proven to have murdered his wife to be with his mistress. The tearful wife who later is proven to have murdered her husband for the insurance money. It’s a humbling experience to view their testimony, so very convincing, and then see the denouement. Wow. I can be fooled, the watcher has to admit. Wow, that person was so convincing about being an innocent victim, and he or she is guilty! It’s a stark lesson one doesn’t forget.
And then of course there are people who are simply mistaken. They are probably the most consistently convincing of all in the emotional sense, because they’re not lying. The fact that Christine Blasey Ford may have been riveting in her testimony and her emotions right on point has no bearing—absolutely none—on whether Brett Kavanaugh was the perpetrator. Her affect tells us, quite literally, nothing about that. Only other evidence can, and so far not a single scrap of other evidence exists to back her up. And I’m sure the Democrats and her lawyers tried very hard to get corroborating evidence. They completely failed.
It was Kavanaugh who provided whatever evidence we have, and it was exculpatory evidence about himself.
There is also the little matter of Blasey Ford’s known lies. We know she lied about her fear of flying—or her lawyers did it for her, and she refrained from correcting them. That has come out in the hearing, as well, and it casts doubt on her veracity. And what about her lack of knowledge of one of the Committee’s offers regarding her interview? Did her lawyers not tell her? Does she not read the news? We also know someone scrubbed her entire social media history before this all came out, which could certainly indicate a desire to hide evidence. Why was that done? These are things that she might be able to explain in some innocuous way, but they are all red flags, flags that her sympathetic affect while telling her story cannot eradicate.
We know little about her history except what she has chosen to tell us; we know a lot more about Brett Kavanaugh, and the vast and overwhelming majority of it is good. But for many people, knowing little about Ford has no bearing on their decision because they know the only facts they deem important: she’s a woman who convincingly described a trauma with appropriate emotion.
This isn’t the American way. It’s the mob rule way. Western civilization struggled long and hard against the forces of irrational hatred to replace them with the rule of law that protects us all, and that’s a rare achievement that runs counter to some of our natural propensities for evil and tyranny and must be guarded for the precious thing it is (as Sarah Hoyt has so eloquently described here). But there are many who would throw it out in their race for power, and/or their race to validate and install their own feelings as the standard instead.
That is why what we face what now is perilous.
Trial by tears is not much better than trial by ordeal, except that the latter caused the death of those who failed to pass it. We fought to become better than that, and to maintain the new standards, and now we stand at the very brink of throwing it away.
was there someone in the old testament who was falsely accused of rape?
True story.
When I was 7 years old, there was an incident in which I nearly killed my father. My mistake was close to fatal for him but his injuries were moderate. The details are tattooed on my memory and I have told this to others over the years.
One time several years ago, my family was telling stories and I told this one, about my mistake. My father spoke up and said he was the one who made the mistake.
Even today, if given a polygraph or in court, I would be totally believable as I know my mistake was the cause. If my father was in the same position, so would he.
No one else was around so no one else could testify. I have told my story to others throughout the years and they could say that I have been consistent in it and am credible.
But with the inconsistent views we both believe, where can the truth be? And this is about an incident that really happened, we both know he was injured.
This is why no one now can determine what happened years ago. I have doubts about someone who didn’t tell anyone for 30 years to accurately remember the event, including the perpetrator.
One Forensic Files episode is about a wife who was beaten and raped who identified her husband of the deed and he was convicted despite his proclamation of innocence. He was not paroled since he wouldn’t admit to the crime.
When DNA testing became more widespread, he was able to have the evidence tested and it pointed to another. He was finally released and the correct person convicted.
An incident can happen and a totally innocent person convicted.
Well, well, well.
According to an article out today**, it turns out that “Research Psychologist” “Doctor” Ford was misrepresenting her credentials (starting with the first sentence of her prepared testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, no less), that she is not a licensed psychologist in the state of California, nor has she ever been, and, that, in fact in the ten days before her testimony the folks at Stanford made some seven revisions to her bio on their “Stanford Profiles” website, culminating with their changing her title:
From: “Research Psychologist, Psych/General Psychiatry and Psychology (Adult)”
To: “Affiliate, Psychiatry and Behavioral Science”
** https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/09/holy-crap-christine-fords-stanford-bio-page-was-altered-updated-10-days-before-hearing/
I don’t know much about the Innocence Project, but their website claims 362 exonerations by DNA evidence, and 158 alternative perpetrators identified.
Instead of believing the woman, and the subsequent investigation, this organization is working to release men convicted of rape and other crimes! I think somebody should report them to the SPLC.
https://www.innocenceproject.org/
Many, many times I have read about cases in which a woman who was assaulted and/or raped identified the wrong man, unintentionally. DNA evidence has saved many innocent men from prison.
To echo eeyore’s thoughts, I’ve been considering lately how I would respond if someone asked me about a party in high school.
I was no big partier, and I usually only went when I was dragged. Still, if you asked me who was at any given party, I couldn’t tell you. No lawyer would have to coach me to say “I don’t recall,” as all I could recall would be that the party wasn’t on Mars and there were no mountain lions present. If you asked me merely to remember any given party, I couldn’t tell you. Whose house was it? Dunno. How did I get there? Dunno. What did you do? Dunno. It’s all a complete blur (and not because I was drinking – I’m a teetotaler and always have been).
I’m younger than Ford and Kavanaugh; high school was “only” twenty years ago for me. I remember about five things from the entire four years. My sense of time from my youth is a complete mess. For example, my brother and I were mugged and beaten by some trailer-trash dope gang in Washington state at some point, but I couldn’t tell you if I was 15 or 18 when it happened. Don’t remember. If I had to recall any of my assailants faces, I couldn’t do it.
Outside of all of this, I have another observation that will make me sound callous. When did we become a nation of simpering pansies? I read a very good article at Quillette on the subject yesterday, wherein the author suggested roots in teachings that cut against depth psychology.
https://quillette.com/2017/12/27/collision-reality-depth-psychology-can-tell-us-victimhood-culture/
I think the author makes a salient point when she notes that somehow the unspoken, eternal scapegoat of our popular culture has become the idea of “suffering.” The problems stem from dissonance: there is no escape from suffering, and there is no living without facing it and accepting it as part of the struggle, but we treat it as somehow optional. The consequence is a constant banging of our heads against the wall of reality, which ironically only increases suffering unnecessarily.
Many interesting theories have been put forth to account for how we worked ourselves into such an untenable state, but I have a suspicion that it relates to the enlightenment project hitting a plateau. We’ve reached the limits, more or less, of what science can do to alleviate suffering across the board (physical, mental, socioeconomic), and the next big “breakthroughs” in these areas – curing cancer, some version of a “happy pill” or advanced VR or AI, etc. – are stalled out on the problem of complexity.
Now we’re stuck grinding our gears with new problems created as side effects of new advancements, in addition to the timeless problems of life – such as economic scarcity and the biological plinths of the sexual marketplace – and we’re used to saying, “Hey, this is problem – invent something!”
The problems pile up, our sensitivities finer than ever in human history, and combine with ideals of progress that shade into the utopian proportionate to our sense of internal degradation – and boom goes the dynamite.
This is, at least, one way in which to account for the perverse teachings pointed out in the article above as central to victimhood culture. Half of our society, not coincidentally the working half pretty much left to their own devices, has assimilated, more or less, the notion of suffering into their world-picture. The other half sees that as evil, as condoning it, promoting it, or taking a kind of sadistic glee in it (I’m trying to charitably interpret them as sincere). But when we go off publicly and some actor says Republicans love rape, we’re not really talking about what we’re really talking about.
They’re angry at a view of life that does not reject suffering or view it as entirely negative, from Satan. I’d go so far as to say it’s incomprehensible to them. And likewise, their view, the view that suffering is superfluous and must be avoided at all costs, is incomprehensible to us on the right side of things.
And to use the word “irony” again – the irony here is that the right is sincerely concerned with minimizing the unnecessary suffering caused by fleeing from suffering, both to oneself and to others, while the left is completely heedless to the trail of destruction they leave in their wake.
Which leads to my final observation. Might this not be a big reason why so many good-hearted, earnest people find it difficult to move to the right? I dare say it seems self-evident to a lot of people that a view of life so (apparently) comfortable with suffering must, ipso facto, be on dangerously friendly terms with it.
Snow on Pine on September 29, 2018 at 5:10 pm at 5:10 pm said:
Well, well, well.
* * *
That was interesting.
I wonder if the FBI will be as diligent and effective as the crowd-sourced-forensics of the internet (although you can’t trust everything you read on the webs).
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/fake_news_american_bar_association_did_not_call_on_senate_to_delay_confirmation_vote_for_another_fbi_investigation_of_kavanaugh.html
You would think that, if you were making serious accusations that would most likely ruin a person’s life, destroy his reputation, and derail a Supreme Curt nomination, you would strive to be as accurate as possible in the facts you presented to bolster your case against him.
According to another story out today,** Ford also apparently lied about another key aspect of her testimony, and that was the date when she remembered and disclosed the details of the supposed attack.
She testified that it was during a couples counseling session in 2012, when she was explaining that the reason she had insisted on adding a just finished second floor to their house and a second front door, was because of the trauma she had just recalled from almost 40 years ago, and how she needed another escape route.
Trouble is, the real estate records seem to indicate that that remodel was done in 2007-08 and certainly was done, according to pictures of her house–2nd door and all–by 2011, not 2012.
Why would she claim to have recalled and told people the details of her supposed attack in 2012 and how it was tied to the just finished 2012 remodel of her house, when that remodel was actually completed in 2007-2008 or, at the latest, 2011?
** https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/09/breaking-christine-ford-caught-in-major-lie-photos-prove-house-updates-occurred-much-earlier-than-senate-testimony/
The Democrats have become the Party of Evil, the new Nazis. They insist on an inversion of all that we hold dear.
They must be put down like the rabid dogs they are, and I say this in conviction that such a moment will arise, most likely provoked by them. We have been living with these dirty dogs for over a century, why? All presidential assassinations since Lincoln in 1865 have been by Leftists.
Leftists have incrementally taken over the Federal bureaucracy, where most have tenure equal to a Supreme Court justice until they choose to retire on obscenely fat benefits. See James O’Keefe’s recent Project Veritas revelations.
America is in a fight for its survival. If we lose, the best country ever created will sink into the morass occupied by all the others. That includes the disgusting, morally relative Euros and Canada, and the UN member countries (all minus one-the USA, and perhaps Japan), most of which are dictator-run. Then we will have globalism (all bow down) run by the ChiComms.
This development may be only be a sidetrack, but two men have contacted the Senate Judicial Committee staff and told them they were the boys who were involved in the incident with Dr. Ford.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/27/two-men-claim-responsibility-christine-blasey-ford/
This certainly bears further investigation and I hope it will be part of the FBI’s probe. The men may be delusional, or trying to confess to something they have felt guilty about for decades, or trying to seed the trail with confusing information. Since Blasey Ford seemed so credible, it may be a case of mistaken identity. Stranger things have happened.
If it these unidentified men’s claims seem credible, could it be that Blasey Ford has forgotten or that for some reason she felt a need to bring down Judge Kavanaugh for some long ago incident in which she felt he humiliated her. He became a well known Republican lawyer and judge, just the opposite of her ideology, and she saw a chance to humiliate him. So, she named him as the boy who assaulted her. Far fetched I know, but this case is an enigma and requires thinking outside the box.
Another item of interest is that Dr. Ford’s parents and siblings have been strangely silent and have not openly supported their daughter/sibling. There was an indication, though slight that Blasey Ford is somewhat distant from her parents. Then there is this: “Paula and Ralph Blasey are registered Republicans. Not only is their party taking Kavanaugh’s side; many of their neighbors are, too.” Then there’s this: ““She didn’t always get along with her parents because of differing political views,” Russell Ford said. “It was a very male-dominated environment. Everyone was interested in what’s going on with the men, and the women are sidelined, and she didn’t get the attention or respect she felt she deserved.””
You can read more about it here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/christine-blasey-fords-own-family-has-been-nearly-silent-amid-outpouring-of-support/2018/09/26/49a3f4a6-c0d6-11e8-be77-516336a26305_story.html?utm_term=.609640b83ab9
Dave on September 29, 2018 at 3:03 pm at 3:03 pm said:
was there someone in the old testament who was falsely accused of rape?
* * *
This kind of got left behind – not exactly what Dave remembers, but close.
“Susanna and the Elders” is a chapter in Daniel; is in some canons but not all (Jewish and Christian), and is sometimes labelled as “Apocrypha”. It is very likely the first detective story in ancient literature, as well as being an example of unbiased jurisprudence, and is certainly topical today, although some of the roles are reversed in an ironical way.
It has long been one of my favorites.
There are a couple of other stories of women accused of sexual sin, who are either exculpated (OT) or forgiven (NT), which makes the Bible pretty much unique in ancient and even not-so-ancient history.
Wikipedia:
As the story goes, a fair Hebrew wife named Susanna was falsely accused by lecherous voyeurs. As she bathes in her garden, having sent her attendants away, two lustful elders secretly observe the lovely Susanna. When she makes her way back to her house, they accost her, threatening to claim that she was meeting a young man in the garden unless she agrees to have sex with them.
She refuses to be blackmailed and is arrested and about to be put to death for promiscuity when the young Daniel interrupts the proceedings, shouting that the elders should be questioned to prevent the death of an innocent. After being separated, the two men are cross-examined about details of what they saw but disagree about the tree under which Susanna supposedly met her lover.
In the Greek text, the names of the trees cited by the elders form puns with the sentence given by Daniel. The first says they were under a mastic tree (??? ??????, hypo schinon), and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to cut (??????, schisei) him in two. The second says they were under an evergreen oak tree (??? ??????, hypo prinon), and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to saw (??????, prisai) him in two. The great difference in size between a mastic and an oak makes the elders’ lie plain to all the observers. The false accusers are put to death, and virtue triumphs.
????? stuff is all Greek
Dave on September 29, 2018 at 3:03 pm at 3:03 pm said:
was there someone in the old testament who was falsely accused of rape?
* * *
Joseph (at age 17!), by Potiphar’s wife. Genesis ch. 39.
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