Jacobin Radio: Brett Kavanaugh's Banal, Reactionary Mind

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.