Politics transformed into brutal entertainment

Idefy anyone to watch this week’s Senate committee hearing with psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford and not feel appalled.

There she sat, in as dignified a pose as she could muster, her voice tremulous with nerves, recounting the moment when she, as a 15-year-old girl, was held down on a bed and partially suffocated by a pair of drunk, laughing boys whom she believed were going to rape her.

Then he came along, the accused: pugnacious, strident, sneering, interrupting and pointing his finger, professing it over and over: “I am innocent.”

At every opportunity, the senators filled the air with the sound of their own voices, reciting lengthy statements, condemning one another, scoring political points and venting their fury.

Look, no one can know what did or didn’t happen decades ago in a Bethesda bedroom between teenagers. But what’s at stake is the lifetime appointment of a man to one of the United States’ most important institutions.

Whether Brett Kavanaugh takes one of those hallowed seats or not, the whole humiliating circus has shredded the court’s legitimacy. It is meant to undignified. It might not be fair, but the niggling doubt about whether or not the man is a sex offender, combined with his seemingly overwhelming sense of entitlement and the undisguised fury that his character should even be subject to scrutiny, surely makes him unsuitable for such an illustrious appointment.

There must be dozens of other highly conservative candidates Mr Trump could choose without besmirching the court. Mr Kavanaugh has become a totem, though, a figurehead in the US’S political culture wars. On this battlefield, facts don’t matter. Symbols do.