September 25, 2018: Rotten Ruling Class, The Cost of Privilege, Entitlement Into Stone

Michelle Goldberg, in an opinion published in The New York Times, laid bare the culture of privilege that produces the likes of Caesar Disgustus and his understudy Brett Kavanaugh; a culture that produces a “rotten ruling class”. (1)

After detailing the latest allegation, from a second woman to come forward charging sexual assault, Goldberg goes to the heart of the matter. A culture of privilege and entitlement.

“Let's start with Kavanaugh's high school, Georgetown Prep, also the alma mater of Neil Gorsuch, Trump's first Supreme Court pick. There's now a wealth of reporting painting the private school as a bastion of heedless male entitlement. Kavanaugh's high school friend Mark Judge—who Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh's first accuser, says was in the room when Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her—has written aboiut his drunken teenage debauchery. According to The New Yorker, Judge confided in an ex-girlfriend, Elizabeth Rasor, about and incident where he and other boys took turns having sex with a drunken woman (Judge denies this).

“From Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh went to Yale. There he joined the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon, or DKE, which was, according to The Yale Daily News, 'notorious for disrespecting women.' (Long after Kavanaugh graduated, the fraternity was banned from campus after video emerged of pledges chanting 'No Means Yes! Yes Means Anal!) Kavanaugh was also a member of an all male secret society called Truth and Courage, which had an obscene nickname affirming its dedication to womanizing.” (2)

“There's no equivalent culture in which girls reap social capital for misbehaving. You rarely see a woman in politics or law who flaunt college reputations as party girls; the women who make it are expected t sow steely self-control” (3)

When I was young I was constantly reminded by adults that one is judged by the company one keeps. Still, Goldberg questions whether that standard should apply. I suggest that it should.

As Goldberg herself points out, there is little in Kavanaugh's subsequent career to suggest that anything has changed:

“Kavanaugh went on to become a protege of appeals court judge Alex Kozinski, for whom he clerked in the early 1990's. Last year, Kozinski resigned after multiple accusations of sexual harassment by former female clerks and junior staffers; two said he showed them porn in his office. The judge's lewd behavior was, by many accounts, an open secret. Kavanaugh has said he knew nothing...(4)

There may be more. Goldberg alludes to two Yale Law School professors who served as a “gateway” through which students would land jobs working under Kavanaugh, citing his preferences among females. 

There is probably much more. Michael Avellenti, “Stormy Daniels” attorney, has said that he has a witness ready to come forward. 

Whether the Judge stands guilty as charged remains to be seen. But what is certain, and what he stands convicted of is this sense of entitlement, born of privilege, that permeates the “process” fair or not. They nearly all come from comfortable backgrounds, go to the right schools and, when admitted, never fail, receiving at worst the gentleman's “C”. From there they go on the posh jobs and secure careers they all know await them. Study? Why? It's a waste of time. Better to invest the hours in drunken debauchery. 

Yale's response to the crimes and antics is all too revealing. Confronted with outrageous behavior that this time could not be swept under the rug they closed the Fraternity. That was a minimal response. What they should have done was expel every member of the Frat house on grounds of immaturity, if not criminality. But that would have put at risk millions of future donations.

I was admitted to a state college still in its formative years. When I arrived the Frat-rats had yet to descend upon the emerging institution and had not yet taken residence in the holds of the ship. I was saved the experience and, therefore, my populist convictions were not sullied by association.

For the rest of the nation, especially among her so-called 'elite' institutions, the cancer that these organizations represent have long since worked their way to the core of the enterprise. Privilege has long since become entitlement. 

Scum attracts scum. Caesar Disgustus attracts scum like a magnet attracts graphite. And so he goes to the same well from which he scraped Gorsuch, and yet another member of our Supreme Court emerges from the same dank swamps ready and eager to carve entitlement into stone

.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison

__________________

1. Goldberg, Michelle. “Pigs All the Way Down” The New York Times. Tuesday, September 25, 2018. Page A27
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid