Christine Blasey Ford, with lawyers Debra S. Katz, left, and Michael R. Bromwich, answers questions at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, September 27, 2018 on Capitol Hill. Melina Mara/Pool via REUTERS

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s a beautiful day in the campground on the last day of September. As the calendar turns to October overnight, we are looking at a high of 73 and a low of 60 with a low humidity of 55 percent.

It’s camping weather.

In a safer and more stable world, I would rather be hiking in the woods with my loyal dog Jefferson than sitting inside the camper van writing about the country’s partisan divide and world shattering troubles.

Just south of here, however, a storm is still brewing in the nation’s capital as protesters march and shout their support for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and their opposition to elevating Brett M. Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court.

The midterm elections are just over a month away, and the latest controversy is setting up a record-setting voter showdown on November 6 that will decide the future of American democracy as we know it.

While the temptation is there to repeat the big news of the week and declare that yes, I believe Dr. Ford and say Kavanaugh came off as a belligerent drunk who either forgot his sexual assault of her — or is lying to the country and the world out of blind political ambition — I have already shared every relevant news link and op-ed column about this all over Facebook.

So what new insight might I provide today in the middle of this whirlwind of a partisan political reality show?

You know how I sometimes like to focus on the contradictions before us, so let’s slow down a minute and consider this.

It is an odd moment in history indeed when all of a sudden we are turning to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a so-called non-partisan investigation to clear up this controversy, to help us and the U.S. Senate decide who is telling the truth.

How soon we forget how the Bush-Cheney-Karl Rove Justice Department and the FBI, back when Kavanaugh worked in the White House of George W. Bush, politicized the courts and the entire justice system to win elections. I mean they put our one progressive governor in Alabama history in prison for seven years. Don Siegelman is in an odd spot now, trying to appeal to Donald J. Trump for a presidential pardon. He won’t get it, of course, because he was a Democrat.

It’s true that President Barack H. Obama did his best to right the ship of state and hire qualified lawyers at Justice and run a merit system instead of a partisan spoils system. But he did elevate James B. Comey to head the FBI in September, 2013, and his role in helping Trump win the election (or at least helping Clinton lose it) in 2016 will be debated by historians for decades.

Never mind all the other blunders of the FBI over the decades, including trying to smear Civil Rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on similarly salacious allegations of sexual misconduct and spying on activists in my home town of Birmingham back in the day.

I would like to think that slowing down the Kavanaugh nomination with an FBI investigation might do some good. Maybe it will.

This is not the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover, Bush or Obama. It is an FBI run by a Trump appointee with a boss in Attorney General Jeff Sessions who is clinging to his job like a bug on a cactus in a 50 mile-an-hour wind.

Pretty much everyone in Washington thinks Sessions will be replaced after the election by Lindsey Graham, the Senator from South Carolina who put on the biggest show for Trump on the Judiciary Committee with his furious partisan tirade against the Democrats in the Senate, who he said had been his friends. Presumably they are no more. It’s Kavanaugh on the high court or the highway for him.

The last time we had a show like this, Clarence Thomas ended up on the Supreme Court. I still don’t think he was qualified then. He was a token African American elevated by a Republican president who was angling for a small percentage of the black vote on the next Election Day. Poor Anita Hill came forward with her salacious allegations and told us the truth about his character. The Senate confirmed him anyway.

Will history repeat itself? Or will a couple of Republicans vote down Kavanaugh’s nomination and put off the balance on the court until after the election? When Democrats might very well have a chance to take over a majority in the House and Senate and gain the power to put the brakes on Trump’s crazy, radical agenda and maybe even impeach him and remove him from office before we go even further off the rails?

I honestly don’t see how anyone can vote for Kavanaugh now.

Gut Wrenching Hearing Puts Sexual Assault Charges on Display: Critics Question Whether Judge Kavanaugh Has the Character or Temperament for the Supreme Court

But most if not all of the white male Republicans will, not really because they believe Kavanaugh or don’t believe Dr. Ford. They are afraid of dictator Trump, his fired up voter bass of white males and Christians, and probably the Russian Mob.

The votes of Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins may very well come down to what they fear more: The wrath of Trump or fired up women Democrats, who may never let them eat in peace in a public restaurant ever again if they vote for Kavanaugh.

No matter what the outcome of this hyper controversy over the next week, we are set for a record voter turnout on November 6.

It’s too bad it has taken this zany, dangerous Trump reality show to do it.

But if every woman in the country votes, we might be able to turn this ship of state around and go back to at least trying to do the right thing.

If every women in every red state were to call their Senator, it might stop this partisan hack from taking a seat on the court.

Then if every man who respects women and believes they deserve equal pay and a seat at the table of power votes, we might still have a chance to get this train back on track.

Is the beer keg half full or half empty? I’m not sure. Give it a week.

Hey, I’m not up for a seat on the court, and I like beer as much as the next white guy. But at least according to the best of my recollection, back in the 1970s and early ’80s I don’t think I ever attempted to gang rape any woman, even under the influence of stuff stronger than beer. It simply would not have occurred to me to even think about such a thing.

I did know a few redneck jocks in high school who did think about such things. I was too busy playing the drums and dating women who actually wanted to go out with me for such thoughts to enter my mind.

If that’s what the culture was like for Kavanaugh at Georgetown Prep and Yale, how did he end up where he is anyway?

Oh, right. White male jock class privilege. It’s been the American way. Maybe it’s time we changed all that. Count me in.