By David Futrelle
Perhaps the most heartbreaking and enraging moment of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate came after Senator Patrick Leahy asked her to recall her most indelible memory of the night she said that now-Supreme-Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her. Ford replied without hesitation: It was, she said, “the uproarious laughter” of Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge, two aggressive adolescent boys ““having fun at my expense.”
So it is perhaps not surprising that Kavanaugh’s supporters have responded to the accused would-be-rapist’s confirmation to the highest court in the land with their own cruel laughter — and a Twitter hashtag designed to memorialize the fun they are now having at Ford’s expense.
Let’s take a quick tour #BeersForBrett hashtag, celebrating the Supreme Court confirmation of a man facing credible accusations of alcohol-fueled sexual assaults that the GOP was happy to ignore and that the White House blocked from being properly investigated. The hashtag began before the final vote on Kavanaugh, but has picked up steam since his confirmation,
In it, Kavanaugh’s fans are happily gloating over their victory, mocking their opponents, often to their faces.
While many using the hashtag are simply posting pictures of their own alcoholic celebrations (with predictably gloating captions), others are coming with the memes:
There’s much gleeful talk about “triggering” liberals and women.
There are the inevitable jokes about “liberal tears.”
Many of those on the hashtag have revealed themselves to be as vindictive, as eager for retribution, as Kavanaugh himself seems to be.
Some are directing their cruelty at Christine Blasey Ford herself:
As the tweets directed at Ford suggest, the whole hashtag stinks of misogyny, with many tweeters taking special pleasure in the suffering of women.
For even more blatant displays of misogyny, see this horrifying thread.
Still, not all of those posting in the hashtag are overgrown frat boys; there are numerous women as well, reminding us that the overwhelming majority of Republican women supported Kavanaugh. (White supremacy is a hell of a drug, I guess.)
Misogyny isn’t the only form of bigotry on display. (I censored the first image somewhat.)
But the people supporting this hashtag aren’t just internet trolls and alt-right Nazis. Far from it. Not only are a wide spectrum of Trump supporters posting in the hashtag; prominent conservative publications — and politicians — are getting into the action as well, with the Daily Caller going so far as to troll anti-Kavanaugh protesters by trying to give them beer.
Ironically, despite the sneering disingenuousness of the Daily Caller’s tweet, it did manage to get one thing right. All these beers for Brett are intended to bring people together. Just not all people.
In a powerful essay in The Atlantic several days before the Kavanaugh vote, journalist Adam Serwer compared the Trump fans who laughed at the President’s mocking of Ford at a rally in Mississippi last week to the “respectable” white citizens caught on camera in 90-year-old photographs of public lynchings, standing only feet from the bodies of murdered black men, with huge grins on their faces.
“Their names have mostly been lost to time,” Serwer writes,
But these grinning men were someone’s brother, son, husband, father. They were human beings, people who took immense pleasure in the utter cruelty of torturing others to death—and were so proud of doing so that they posed for photographs with their handiwork, jostling to ensure they caught the eye of the lens, so that the world would know they’d been there. Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another.
Trump and his supporters are in many ways the contemporary equivalents of these men. While “[t]he Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track,” Serwer notes, Trump’s cruelty towards Ford, and the mocking laughter of his supporters, is going to remain indelible in the collective hippocampus of rape survivors for a very long time, to paraphrase Dr. Ford.
As the laughter at the rally made clear — and the collective gloating that is the #BeersForBrett hashtag has further underlined — for Trump and his fans, cruelty towards others is bonding experience, just as lynchings were for so many racist white men and women in the early 20th century.
As Server argues,
The cruelty of the Trump administration’s policies, and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets before his supporters, are intimately connected. As Lili Loofbourow wrote of the Kavanaugh incident in Slate, adolescent male cruelty toward women is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt. …
We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border-patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists when he mocked a child with Down syndrome who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting to Senator Jeff Flake, the women who said the president had sexually assaulted them, and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting. There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by the police, the women of the #MeToo movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.
As the headline of Serwer’s piece puts it: “They cruelty is the point.” Indeed, reading through the #BeersForBrett hashtag, it is hard not to conclude that for many of Trump’s most fervent fans, the cruelty — and the privilege it is designed to celebrate and protect — is practically the only point.
Trump’s fans don’t care if his reputation as a self-made business genius is utter bullshit, built on tax fraud and money from daddy (and possibly decades worth of money laundering). They don’t care if he gushes over Kim Jong Un, the brutal boy dictator he once threatened to nuke off the face of the earth. They may not even care if he never builds his infamous wall. They just like to watch him go off on “uppity” women, on people of color, on anyone outside the magic circle of white male supremacy. As long as Trump is “triggering the libs,” many of his fans don’t even care if his policies are screwing them over.
But by making this collective cruelty such a central — and such a public — part of their exercise of power, Trump and the GOP have ignited a righteous fury in the hearts of all of us who oppose him. The cruelty and gloating that accompanied Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Supreme Court is bringing this fury to a head.
We were angry before; for many of us the 625 days since Trump’s inauguration have been a rollercoaster of rage and despair. But I’ve never seen so many people so angry before. The midterms are a month away. We need to win them, to push back against every obstacle that Trump and the GOP put in our way, to take back every seat we can and then some, so we can begin the process of tearing down Trump’s empire of cruelty.
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I hope the MAGAts are so busy dancing and celebrating amd getting hung over that they don’t make it to the polls in November. May they stay home on Nov. 6 marinating smugly in beer fumes, blissfully unaware of the approaching thousand-foot blue tsunami.
They’re beyond vile. Especially the women. They won’t be laughing so loud when it’s their own daughter who encounters one of the thousands of Brett Kavanaughs who now feel sanctioned to abuse teenage girls because it’s their golden ticket to the executive boys’ club. When it’s their own daughter who needs a lifesaving D&C or birth control to regulate her painful periods. When their husbands develop black lung, or are killed by unsafe work environments. When the social safety net gets ripped away, and an illness or accident wipes out their life savings. When all of America is covered with posters of Trump’s orange mug, schoolchildren are made to salute it each morning, and people are arrested and killed if they so much as look sideways. When neighbors start turning each other in for imaginary crimes against the state, and the “tyrannical government” they railed against is replaced by something far, far worse. When the United States turns into Rwanda, and the lady who can’t wait to crow over cat lady obituaries with her grandchildren discovers that her grandchildren loathe and disown her for her role in destroying what was once a great country, and her place on the family tree becomes a dark spot cloaked in shame.
Maybe then it will start to dawn on their tiny pea brains that they screwed up, bigly.
@ moggie
Heh, that was interesting. I’ve had similar run-ins with Getty Images. They do the same thing.
It’s certainly a robust response. Unfortunately Grabbem & Run or whatever, are arguably in the right over the copyright claim (this is the issue that the EU have been dealing with on that Art 13 thing).
However they’re claiming the full licence fees, and whilst they are entitled to claim that, we’ve had luck persuading courts that they should only be entitled to any actual losses they incurred (rather than the loss of the fee). Assessing damages like this is a complex topic. Generally you can only claim for an actual loss. But then there’s all the car park cases. If you don’t pay for a ticket, what have they actually lost? But the courts have said that the costs of enforcement can be averaged out amongst offenders. But anyway, this is all getting a bit rambly.
One thing I must confess I didn’t like, and has sapped any sympathy I otherwise had, is that he takes the piss out of the person’s name. That would be bad enough anyway, it’s a bit childish. It’s made worse though as it appears to be an attack just because the name isn’t a typical white person name.
Alan:
Agreed. I’m not an SA reader, and I have a feeling the guy has proven himself unpleasant in the past, so I’m not exactly cheering him on.
I’m on another continent and I’m furious. I also need a break fromt ehinterne for a few days.
Do they ever ask themselves “are we the baddies?”
They revel in being the baddies.
I just hope, that if the shoe is ever on the other foot, they don’t have the audacity to ask for any quarter in return.
Even though I knew this was going to happen, it still enraged me. These bastards are some sore winners.
OT: My 48 year old little sister passed away a few days ago. She had been batting heart disease for the past 10 years. I’m in a “life is pointless” kinda frame of mind right now.
@Dormousing_it, I’m so sorry, I really am. I hope very much that you have some supportive people around you. I know it’s only internet-stranger words on the screen … 🙁
@Hippodameia
That was PURE AWESOME!
@Moggie
As a former SA reader, I can confirm that Lowtax aims real low when it comes to so-called legal disputes, an attitude that probably got solidified after he got burnt on some ad-revenue deal with some shady Web startup called eFront (I still remember the multiple fake banner ads cussing out its CEO on every page in its aftermath). He truly is an unapologetic asshole.
They actually think they’re the good guys. They think morality is about the genitalia and skin color of the people you have sex with and everything they do to restrict others’ rights is holy and good.
Maybe it’s not a bad idea if they drink themselves into a coma to own the libs.
I would also be really triggered if they ate Tide Pods.
@Knitting Cat Lady
How dare you ?! Planks are great. Planks build houses and boats. They even save lives should those boats happen to sink. They can also be burned to provide heat and comfort.
Kavanaugh doesn’t build homes or boats. He likely ended many more lives then he saved. And I doubt there’s a human alive that Kavanaugh provided comfort or even just heat for. His wife and children included.
He doesn’t deserve to be called a Brett.
I’m so sorry, Dormousing It.
@Alan Robertshaw
They will. Just like Megatron. Just like Freeza.
The question is, will we give it to them, or will we become them?
@Allandrel
Fighting fascists does not make one a fascist. Don’t you dare pull this both sides bullcrap.
@ dormousing_it
As always, words seem so inadequate at times like this; but for what it’s worth I really feel you.
Thank you, everyone. Life goes on, as they say.
@Cindy
I’m not. I did not say that fighting fascists makes one a fascist, or that killing a fascist who is trying to kill people makes one a fascist.
I talked about defeated fascists begging for mercy.
Killing helpless enemies who beg for mercy makes one a fascist. Disdain for mercy is one of their defining features.
If a fascist surrenders, you treat them according to the laws and customs of war, and try them fairly for their crimes.
Now is the time to try and get your state law makers to enshrine proper abortion rights. Since Roe vs Wade passed many states never properly gave abortion rights since those rights were given by the feds.
The future of abortion rights is more in question than ever since the last bulwark against anti-abortionists could very well be overturned.
@Allandrel
You do you, buddy.
@Dormousing_it, I hope you can be around people who can share the burden, for a while. When my mother died, it was that “life goes on” thing which seemed particularly unfair. I thought: why is the world carrying on as if nothing has happened? Three things helped: family, who came together for a while; friends, prepared to just listen while I talked it out; and the knowledge that her suffering was over.
It’s bloody hard for a while, no question, but it does eventually get easier. Hang in there.
Dormousing, I’m so sorry for your loss. May the memories of your sister be a blessing for all who cared about her.
@Alan
This Something Awful lawsuit reminds me a bit of Prenda Law – are you familiar with that mess?
@ Vicky P
I wasn’t, but I like the idea of a legal mess that wasn’t my fault so I looked it up.
We had a similar case here; and now it’s bugging me because there was something particularly interesting about it, and I can’t for the life of me remember what! 🙂