Could Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Ford Both Be Telling the Truth?
MEMORY AND MORALITY
I have asked numerous people what they remember when they look backward on their life. The essential answer is those experiences that are abnormal to their lifestyle – births, deaths, weddings, promotions, dramatic successes, and events that taught them life directing lessons. While we might not be able to remember what we ate for breakfast two days ago we can remember the details of a life-altering experience that took place twenty years ago.
Something as traumatic as a sexual assault will stay with us a life time. The more life altering the more vivid might be the memory. Like being branded, they are forever memories.
On the other hand, those things that are normal to our lifestyle and occur as routine we might not remember an hour later. It is sameness that finds little traction in our memory.
From all that we have heard from those who claim to have experienced or witnessed sexual abuse of women by Brett Kavanaugh, the memories are still vivid. Kavanaugh claims to have no such memory. Could both be right? Given the traumatic nature of sexual abuse the victims and the witnesses may have vivid memories that feel immediate. They may not recall details but the essential experience is as real as yesterday. On the other hand, for the perpetrator, if the event is not abnormal but fits a lifestyle it is possible that with the aid of alcohol and other drugs there could be little or no lasting memory.
Christine Ford could be telling the truth about a branded experience. Brett Kavanaugh could be telling the truth because that was his lifestyle at the time.
Normally, if one has participated in a morally questionable lifestyle and been transformed, there will be no hesitancy to say so as witness to change. There will be a sense of pride in such moral transformation as a critical learning experience. However, Kavanaugh does not admit to either participation in moral transgression or moral transformation. This means both people could be telling the truth as they remember it and this poses the tragedy of a possible new Supreme Court Justice who has no capacity for moral reflection because he has no capacity for memory reflection. And the essence of democracy is morality.
Robert T. Latham
Thank you for this good, though unsettling insight
Sounds right on though I can’t believe Kavanaugh can’t remember anything about his abuse. It sounds as if his accomplice remembered.
I question Kavanaugh’s ability to remember any of the incidents he’s been accused of, but there is of course the possibility that he doesn’t. That is exactly why it is important to investigate what others who may have witnessed one or more of these incidents have experienced of him. Other senators have said they have caught him in lies. Lying may be one of those normal activities of his that you speak of.
Thank you for providing “the mything link” between memory and morality. History is not just pure undiluted fact. As we know from our own story, there is interpretation and the redaction of “whatever was said or done.” We live somewhere between myth and reality, but I believe the truth is anchored in morality.
Thank you for your perceptions about morality and memory. Perhaps Christine was one of many women the teenaged Kavanaugh forced himself upon, OR perhaps he simply found it politically expedient to deny his keen memory of the alleged event. In either case, his angry response at the hearing convinced me he was not a good candidate for the Supreme Court. How brave Christine was to come forth at all. I read recently that she cannot live in her home because of threats and other extremely negative reactions to her testimony. That bothers me a lot. She should be free to lead her own personal life instead of jeopardizing her whole future because of her forthright honesty. What IS this country coming to?!