Hearing a national struggle over trust, sexual politics and consensus

Brett Kavanaugh defends himself during yesterday s hearing. Photo / AP

The subject was supposed to be the selection of a new justice on the Supreme Court. Instead yesterday's showdown on Capitol Hill was a raw, scorched-earth confrontation across the United States' most emotionally wrenching divides. This was men against women, right against left, a cascade of recriminations, explosions of anger, hours of tears and sobs.

A hearing that was supposed to bring clarity instead erupted in thunderclaps from the nation's built-up tensions over how the sexes are supposed to behave with each other.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh and the woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her came before the Senate Judiciary Committee in "the wrong town at the wrong time", as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham put it.

The result was affirmation that Washington is as broken as it has ever been. Based on what the senators in the room said, the result was, once again, people hearing mostly what they were inclined to believe. The result, far from clarity, was a complex rush of emotions adding up to two families left in wreckage and a political system without even a pathway to co-operation.

The day ended with discord bordering on dark visions of a hopeless future. Graham heatedly declared that "this is not a job interview. This is hell".

Yet as much as Graham saw the hearing as a sign that the nation would descend into further dysfunction, with qualified people increasingly unwilling to serve their country, it's also true that the nation has been here before. Like this confirmation process, which led to accusations of sordid debauchery and unseemly discussions of Kavanaugh's sexual behaviour, the 1991 confrontation between then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and his accuser, law professor Anita Hill, similarly appalled and fascinated the nation as senators and witnesses argued over pornographic films and pubic hair.

Now, as then, the country is painfully divided. Now, as then, people lament the establishment of new lows.

Now, as then, viewers could hear what they wanted to. Graham said Christine Blasey Ford was "a nice lady who's come forward with a hard story that's not corroborated", while Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said she was a hero who instantly "inspired and enlightened America", unleashing a torrent of stories of sexual assault. Kavanaugh was cast as both a serial sex criminal and an innocent public servant whose family and reputation were shattered by scurrilous accusations.

But in that small Senate hearing room, reality insisted on its complex, contradictory nature. A woman who wanted dearly to remain anonymous became instead a historic figure, a new symbol of the culture's anguished struggle over trust, identity and sexual politics. A man who devoted his accomplished career to reaching the highest rung on the professional ladder instead became a mark of a sullied democracy and a deeply mistrustful citizenry, a nominee for the highest court in the land reduced to speaking on national television about when he lost his virginity and when, if ever, he had blacked out from drinking too much beer.

Ostensibly, the nine-hour hearing before the Judiciary Committee was the penultimate step in the confirmation of a justice who would assure President Donald Trump's legacy as the leader who solidified the conservative majority on the Supreme Court for decades to come.

But in recent decades, the battleground of Supreme Court confirmation has assumed a different purpose, morphing into a field upon which the nation plays out its most basic and emotional divisions, faceoffs over race, civil rights and the most intimate matters of childbirth, mating and relations between the sexes.

"It's not possible to separate what we're going through in this hearing from the cultural moment we're in, as women come forward with stories they've never told before," said Carolyn Shapiro, director of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. "There have been ideological battles about the Supreme Court since the beginning. They just didn't take place on national TV."