Coming to a Head?

Church Militant has a video out suggesting that, with the scandals in the Catholic Church and the Kavanaugh hearings, something apocalyptic seems about to happen: either some great new evil is being born, or some great current evil is about to explode in a cloud of debris.

That sounds overblown. Catholics are not supposed to worry about the End Times.

But I think it is basically right. Even if these current crises are both centred in America, the world culture is also centred in America.

Things are going mad in the US. Everything about the current Kavanaugh process is unprecedented. People are living in separate realities. This I believe is because the current Kavanaugh confirmation gets close to the fundamental issue causing the current evils and the culture wars that we have seen grow over the past few decades; initially in the US, but now elsewhere. For both the “left” and the “right,” this confirmation has become the hill to die on. And one of them may die on it.

The real issue has always been abortion. Everything else in American life and tradition has been warped, twisted, or outright sacrificed, bit by bit, for unrestricted abortion. This includes the integrity of the Catholic Church; general respect for the Catholic Church went decades ago. It all traces back to that scarlet letter A. It all traces back to Pope Paul VI standing up and loudly saying no to abortion.

The left now feels it must do anything and everything, fair, foul, or flatly mad, to keep Kavanaugh off the court. Because they calculate that, once a case inevitably comes up, he will be the swing vote to repeal Roe v. Wade, which declared any restrictions on abortion unconstitutional. This would not by itself make abortion illegal, but it would allow states to do so.

I do believe that, if this happened, the culture wars would indeed be over. It would not doubt take some time for shooting to stop; the battle would continue state by state. But the victory would not be in doubt, and the healing would begin. So long as half the population considers the other half guilty of ongoing mass murder, it is hard for folks to get along. Leaving aside the actual morality of abortion, for American life to continue, abortion needs therefore to be illegal. The issue is similar to slavery: the nation cannot long continue half-slave and half-free, but once slavery was abolished, there seemed suprisingly little acrimony left between North and South. Essential patriotism, at least, was no longer in doubt. There was never any second movement for secession.

If, on the other hand, Kavanaugh is not confirmed, it would indeed be the birth of a new and great evil: the end of due process. Any man could be destroyed at any time by any woman by a mere accusation. Another absolutely critical element of shared tradition destroyed, along with so many others now before it, for the sake of abortion. Any new nominee or hire for any prominent position would be vulnerable to the same attack, and many would simply refuse to put their names forward. It is hard to see how either government, industry, or civil society generally could survive. Let alone the chaos in individual lives. It simply would not pay anyone ever to be prominent. And even being obscure would be no real protection.

As an aside, everyone is blaming Senator Feinstein for releasing Blasey Ford's confidential letter to the judiciary committee claiming that Kavanaugh had assaulted her. After all, only three parties had the letter: Blasey Ford and her people, her congresswoman and hers, and Feinstein and her office. And Blasy Ford had demanded anonymity. So it must have been Feinstein's office who sent it to the papers.

If I am right that we are dealing, in Blasey Ford, with a narcissist, this logic is wrong. Yes, she seems to be sincere; but narcissists have a knack for convincing themselves at some level of any lie they tell. Their view of reality is clouded. Whatever they want to be true, they are able to convince themselves to be true.

It would be entirely typical of narcissism for Ford to publicly insist she wanted anonymity, while releasing the letter to the newspapers herself. That way, she gets the attention she craves, but deflects all blame. Which is a critical issue for a narcissist--the same issue that could motivate her to blame her own sexual awakening, however it happened, on Kavanaugh.

One day we will better understand such things. I do wish someone would take up Lindsay Graham's suggestion that this issue should be investigated, of who actually leaked the letter. A better understanding of narcissism could be the great new good this process helped to birth, a possibility Church Militant's video also sensed.