The Banality of Brett Kavanaugh

The guys like Brett Kavanaugh who run the show have no special qualities or insights that should oblige us to put up with their bullshit. They would hate for us to realize that.

What struck me most about yesterday’s hearing, cutting through Kavanaugh’s tone-deaf retorts and indignant whinging and his frequent professions of love for beer, is how utterly ordinary he is. This guy is juvenile, arrogant, sexist — and very familiar. It pointed to a larger truth: the people running the show are callous and dangerous, but they’re also astonishingly average. They have no irreplaceable qualities or insights that would oblige us to put up with their bullshit. They would hate for us to realize this.

What dawns upon you when you bear witness to Trump — even more so than with Bush, who more closely resembles Kavanaugh in both his fatuous smugness and his more conventional unobstructed path to political power — is that the people at the helm don’t necessarily know anything special. It cannot be deduced from the mere fact of their power that they have access to a higher wisdom, beyond the grasp of commoners. The powerful aren’t sages, you realize. What they know that the rest don’t know is how to appreciate money and influence. And, most importantly, they know each other

One got the impression from Kavanaugh’s hearing that it’s his boyhood friend Tobin, he of the home weight room, whose admiration Kavanaugh covets most of all — then, now, and forever. Many people are like this. It can sometimes be a good thing. But here’s where it differs from other types of loyalty: the reason these guys cling so tight is because they’re each other’s ticket to the top, and each other’s insurance policy once they get there. Their fidelity, their solidarity, is how they run the world in the absence of remarkable personal qualities.

[A]s long as we have a political economic system that floats chumps like Kavanaugh on wings of respectable pedigree and impressive social connections to the highest strata of society, and as long as we continue fostering in people’s hearts — even of liberals, especially liberals — the fantasy of those people’s inherent superiority, these guys will continue to have power they don’t deserve. They will continue to be in charge of monumental decisions like Roe v. Wade or Janus v. AFSCME, or going to war or eliminating social programs, or who’s guilty and who’s innocent.

Edit: Also there's a similar opinion piece in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/opinion/kavanaugh-white-male-privilege.html