Jacobin Radio: Brett Kavanaugh's Banal, Reactionary Mind

Jacobin Radio

Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2018

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Meagan Day, Natalie Shure, and Alissa Quart reflect with Suzi Weissman on the toxicity — and banality — of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation to the Supreme Court. We look at the way the contentious, emotional hearings exposed the fault lines between gender, privilege, class, and politics in the US — and ask why the Democrats have been so meek, diffident, and ineffective in the face of the Republican Party’s disciplined march to impose the future, violating every norm to get an extreme right-wing bloc on the Supreme Court. We also look at what that means for the fightback. Natalie Shure looks at the Federalist Society and their influence and politics that go beyond gender justice to the very defining characteristics of Kavanaugh’s ideology and the political movement that groomed him. Alissa Quart, author of Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America writes about class privilege and the women who are invisible to Kavanaugh and his class. Christine Blasey Ford is heard, but betrays her class by stepping forward, whereas the testimony of Debbie Ramirez, Julie Swetnick, and thousands of other women workers are disregarded.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Susie Weizmann and this is Jacobin Radio.
0:09.0	Megan Day, Natalie Shore. and this is Jacobin Radio.
0:13.0	Megan Day, Natalie Schur, and Alyssa Court reflect on the toxicity and banality of the Brett
0:19.8	Kavanaugh confirmation to the Supreme Court. We now have the least the Supreme Court.
0:22.6	We now have the least popular Supreme Court nominee in memory,
0:26.9	appointed by the most unpopular and corrupt US President
0:30.4	in modern history, finally confirmed by a Senate that is one of the least
0:34.3	representative bodies in any more or less democratic country in the world. We look at
0:39.2	the way the contentious emotional hearings exposed the fault lines between gender, privilege, class, and politics
0:46.1	in the U.S.
0:47.1	And we also look at why the Democrats have been so meek, diffident, and ineffective in the
0:52.2	face of the Republican Party's disciplined
0:54.5	march to impose the future by getting an extreme right-wing block on the
0:59.0	Supreme Court violating every norm to get there and what that means for the fight back.
1:04.4	Megan Day's latest article in Jacobin looks at just how ordinary Brett Kavanaugh is,
1:09.7	juvenile, arrogant, sexist, and unremarkable guy who was born on a conveyor belt to power without
1:15.6	much obligation to distinguish himself from his peers.
1:19.3	His banality is but another data point, she says, in the collapse of the illusion of
1:23.8	meritocracy now clustering with other points that show the legitimacy of the
1:28.4	ruling elite is evaporating faster than ever before. Shattered illusions are a good beginning,
1:34.0	but will do nothing without organizing to win
1:37.0	and change the system that fast tracks the elites
	...

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