The Kavanaugh Affair: A Very Short Argument*
by Eli S. Evans
During the weekdays in the summer of 1982 … I spent much of my time working, working out, lifting weights, playing basketball, or hanging out and having some beers with friends as we talked about life, and football, and school and girls.
—Brett Kavanaugh, Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing, Day 5, September 27, 2018
If having engaged in the sorts of homo-social behaviors that aren’t so much a part of as constitute in its very essence the passage into manhood were to disqualify one from occupying positions of great power and influence, then there wouldn’t be any men left to occupy positions of great power and influence.
Needless to say, we’d all be better off.
*Since history has already rendered its verdict as regards the brand of ethno-nationalist authoritarianism being practiced by the current American administration, meaning we all already know what it is and what it does, arguing its ills at length and in detail is not only redundant but futile: those who support it, no less than those who oppose it, know exactly what they’re getting.
About the Author:
Eli S. Evans is a writer no longer living in a barn. He’s been characterized in the press as exemplary of “talented people who go really unrewarded by the system,” and the well-known novelist-turned-Marxist theorist Benjamin Kunkel once described him as “one of the most interesting young writers in America, as well as one of my favorites.” Those who know Eli well know that he is no longer young; he does, however, hold a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, and is employed by a public university.
