Thinking Out Loud (Quietly) About Christine Blasey Ford


As the female Marxist dog and pony show called the Democratic Party’s “case” against Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court has finally, thankfully, failed, it is time at last to put this absurd episode of radical activism to bed, and to say a relieved “Good night, folks,” to all its memorably tiresome players. Above all, of course, this means adios to Kavanaugh’s various accusers, most of whom will be forgotten by everyone outside of their own families tomorrow. One accuser, however, is likely to cash in handsomely on all the publicity she engendered from the allegation that started all this nonsense, namely Christine Blasey Ford.

I have no inside knowledge regarding any of the sundry allegations proffered against Brett Kavanaugh — including the desperate, Democrat-manufactured claims that he has a short temper or is “an angry drunk,” which, according to the non-reasoning of logically-challenged leftists, somehow equates to being a likely rapist. I therefore have no way of saying with certainty whether any of his accusers were telling the truth or lying outright. But I will say, now that the sun is setting on all of this, that accusers number two through infinity sounded about as consistent, credible, and sincere as a drunken Hillary. This left only accuser number one, Dr. Ford, as even worth caring about for reasonable people. 

This past week, therefore, I finally plucked up my courage and took some time to watch extended clips of her Senate judiciary committee testimony. I then wrote some observations based on this viewing, but kept them to myself for a few days. Now that the whole story has dried up, I don’t mind taking this exfoliating moment to describe publicly what I gleaned from her performance. Take it for what it’s worth.


Ford specifically delayed her Senate appearance on the grounds that she is afraid of flying, and would therefore need to travel to Washington from California by alternate means. However, during her testimony, the somewhat droll female prosecutor asking questions on behalf of Senate Republicans gently challenged Ford on this claim, forcing her to concede that she flies to Delaware every year to visit family, has flown to and from Hawaii for educational purposes, and boasts online of “surf-travel” as her hobby, which involves flying to exotic Pacific Ocean locations frequently. In other words, the woman’s hobby is traveling around the world in airplanes looking for fun places to surf.

At the end of this exchange, Ford, caught, smirks cutely, looks down, and titteringly observes that it’s easier to get up “the gumption” to fly when it’s for a vacation. Tee-hee. How charming! In other words, her “fear of flying” excuse for delaying her testimony to the United States Senate was a complete crock, i.e., a lie — a lie to the judiciary committee in advance, and a lie under oath at the hearing.

The prosecutor lady also asked her about her meeting with a Washington Post reporter regarding her allegations against Kavanaugh. Specifically, Ford was asked whether she showed the reporter the actual notes from her marriage therapy sessions about the alleged assault, or merely described them. Ford tried to skirt around the question, claiming she didn’t recall whether she showed the actual notes, but that she didn’t think so, unless her attorneys showed them. (Talk about covering all bases!)

Remember, in this instance we are not discussing a thirty-five-year-old traumatic incident or life-altering event; we are talking about a recent meeting with a reporter for a major newspaper — presumably a rare and therefore highly memorable occurrence in Ford’s recent life — to detail an inflammatory charge she is making against a prominent public figure, a charge that might significantly affect national political events; and in fact she talked to the reporter in the hopes of having such an effect. And yet, with at least a full week to prepare with her lawyers for these kinds of questions about her actions, she claims she cannot remember whether or not she provided extremely personal evidence about her alleged traumatic experience to the Post reporter during that meeting. Plausible? She doesn’t remember preparing for that meeting, and thinking about which documents to bring, or what information to provide, to the reporter?

At another moment, the prosecutor asks her whether her polygraph test was administered on the day of her grandmother’s funeral, or a subsequent day, and Ford claims, again, that she cannot remember. How often has Ford undergone a lie detector test, such that this one left her too blasé to recall, just weeks later, whether it occurred on the day of her grandmother’s funeral — another event that is obviously memorable, rare, and unlikely to become blurred in one’s mind immediately — or on another day? And again, this supposed memory lapse comes after a full week of preparation for this testimony, at which she and her lawyers would obviously have had every reason to expect these topics to come up, and every opportunity to pore over schedules and the content of recent encounters to shore up her memory.

As a further note, Ford is also asked by the prosecutor whether she has ever helped anyone prepare for a polygraph test, to which, after fudging as though the question referred to her own test, she finally answers, decisively, “Never.” Nevertheless, an ex-boyfriend, with whom she apparently lived for some time, has since filed a sworn statement claiming that he personally witnessed her helping a friend prepare for a government job-related polygraph test. (The ex-boyfriend also claims in that letter that Ford flew frequently and never expressed any fear of flying or claustrophobic tendencies, and that they eventually broke up due to her unfaithfulness, after which she continued to use the credit card they had shared while living together, ceasing this activity only after the man threatened her with legal action.)

From the portions of her testimony that I have seen (admittedly incomplete), one could easily form the impression that the only event in her entire fifty-plus years of living that she can remember with any degree of certainty is the moment Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her. Or more narrowly, she can remember only the precise physical exchange between them, in isolation from everything else, since she cannot remember where or when the assault occurred, how she got to or from the party, or even who was there, given that the people she names as having been at this very small party with her, including a lifelong friend, have all denied being at any such event. Interestingly, she also claims to remember all the attendees at the party — all but one, which is significant, since this was allegedly a house party, so not remembering one person allows her to get away with not being able to identify whose house it might have been.

She spoke in her testimony about being pushed into a room with a bed and loud music, but she can give absolutely no visual details of the room or what kind of machine was playing the music. She speaks of escaping to an adjacent bathroom and hiding out there until her attackers went downstairs, but she can provide no identifiable visual details about that room either. She speaks of anxiously exiting the house onto “the street” — but of course this specific recollection of “the street” includes absolutely no visual memories of said street that might serve as identifying markers for others who knew the neighborhood at the time. 

That’s a very convenient memory she has there, from the point of view of destroying a man’s life without having to submit one’s account or oneself to any scrutiny as to details, motives, and character. Apart from the attack itself, to which there were no witnesses, there is not a single thing, past or present, that she admits to remembering with any certainty, such that it could be cross-checked with anyone else’s memories or testimony.

And yes, I know memory is a tricky thing, and that details one conjures up after thirty-five years might in fact be falsified composites used to fill in gaps in the story while recounting it for oneself later, or for others. The true details, which of course one did know at the time, might get reconfigured slowly over time, and be subtly replaced by slightly altered versions. But those falsified portions of one’s old memories are nevertheless the way one remembers it; in other words — and this is the point — we do naturally fill in the gaps, especially when repeatedly remembering a significant event of the kind one replays in one’s mind frequently, and that one has recounted to others often. Since there was obviously a full picture in the mind originally, and since that picture is being recalled often, there will presumably never be a time when the frame is simply empty — something will be in that frame, even if parts of what is there have been altered from the original.

For example, Ford would obviously have known, during the first days and weeks after the traumatic experience, at whose house the party took place. And seeing as how this was allegedly a terrifying and life-changing experience, she would presumably recall it often — in fact she is claiming that she has recalled it often, not only in the first months, but throughout all these intervening years. At what point did she suddenly recall this memory one day without any of the basic contextual reference points, such as the specific location, which she had previously known? Is it not more likely that she would never have forgotten such a central detail, given that she never forgot about the event for any extended period of time? At the very least, if the location had begun to fade over time, would she not have instinctively filled in that detail in her recollection with alternative but plausible information (i.e., the wrong location), such that in her own mind, the memory, including the important detail of where it happened, would continue to seem whole and intact from her subjective point of view?

In other words, if you recall a memory often, you must be recalling something, which is to say that where the facts have become fuzzy, you gradually recreate them with your imagination, in a way that seems correct and seamless to you.

Thus, if Ford had said, “I think it was John’s house, but there is a small possibility I am wrong about that,” then at least there would be something to look into, and her story would sound like anyone’s important but distant memories — clear enough to her, subjectively, but perhaps slightly confused in objective fact. Life-altering memories, recollected often, will become corrupted with inaccuracies that the mind inserts to fill in the gaps that naturally develop on the peripheries over time.

Ford’s life-altering memory, by contrast, seems to consist of almost nothing but unfilled gaps, and she has apparently done nothing over time to recreate any of the significant lost details, in spite of supposedly having been haunted by this memory all her life. And the same is apparently true even of recent significant events about which she knew she would be asked to testify before the Senate.

I would also add the following psychological observation — and I note that I am not a trained psychologist, which means that like any ordinary person, but unlike a trained psychologist, I am actually qualified to make psychological observations, because I still naïvely believe in the psyche.

During most of the portions of her testimony that I watched on YouTube, and particularly during her recounting of the alleged assault, Ford was wearing enormous, thick-rimmed, and seemingly dirty glasses that covered half of her face, and obscured her eyes. She also wore her hair pulled down close to her eyes, and rarely looked directly at a non-Democrat questioner for more than half a second; her eyes, as far as one could tell, were usually moving around aimlessly, reading from notes, or fixed on nothing in particular.

In other words, she was “hiding.” I don’t mean that as an accusation; it is a typical feature of people who lack maturity and self-assurance. It is also a typical feature of people who are trying not to face others or themselves honestly — that is, who wish to avoid being confronted, literally or figuratively, with unpleasant, awkward, or embarrassing truths. I have seen this manner in some university students, usually though not exclusively female, who, as one learns through conversing with them, are extremely insecure or display addled emotional development.

The difference, however, between the young women of this sort whom I have known personally and Dr. Ford (as seen in her Senate testimony), is that these awkward, hiding characters never speak with a voice, or in a manner, that suggests they are trying to appear awkward and hidden. That is, they tend to be quite frank and open in their tone of voice and outward willingness to be forthcoming about their lives and problems, including even very uncomfortable problems or painful and embarrassing memories. Their timidity and reserve are involuntary characteristics, i.e., not meant to show, and are revealed more in their unthinking habits and reflexive reticence to recognize certain things about themselves, rather than in any conscious or deliberate behavior.

Stated more positively, such insecure and developmentally stymied types, from my experience, tend to speak and act entirely without assumed airs or artificially-enhanced reticence. Put simply, though they are hiding, they are not trying to hide. That hidden character is simply and naively who they are. Their mask has become their face, as it were.

By contrast, when watching — or especially listening to — Ford’s testimony, one cannot help but be struck by her vocal affectation of feyness, reticence, and mousiness. She always sounds as though she is struggling to choke out the next word, and trying to steady herself from crumbling, and yet she never actually cries or shows any facial symptoms of tearing up. This vocal tone struck me immediately, and even more so upon reflection, as a common mannerism of teenagers trying to appear withdrawn or hurt, or of bad method actors playing “upset.” In short, she seemed very evidently to be putting on a “pitiful little victim” voice and demeanor for the audience. 

But the alleged incident in which she was a victim took place over thirty-five years ago. In the intervening decades, she has lived a full and conventionally successful adult life. She is a professional psychological researcher and college teacher (and specifically a data and statistics specialist, which would presumably make her a stickler for exactly the kinds of details she claimed to be incapable of recalling throughout her testimony), an avid surfer (hardly a stereotypical frightened girl’s hobby), has had multiple seemingly normal relationships with men, is a wife and mother, and also an experienced world traveler. Why all the strained, choking emotionalism about an event (however unpleasant at the time) from her distant past — and one she has discussed with others many times, including to a newspaper reporter? To answer, “That’s trauma,” might be slightly more convincing were she not also exploiting the same mousy, anxious tone when defending her supposed dread of flying, until the moment that narrative got blown out of the water, or when claiming not to remember important facts about her recent meeting with a Washington Post reporter, or her recent polygraph test.

In short, she was playing the weak victim during her whole testimony, in a manner that appeared to this viewer to suggest at least a certain amount of disingenuousness.

My guess, to be clear, is not that she was necessarily lying outright. Rather, I imagine that her psychological immaturity — a characteristic further suggested by her awful teenage girl mannerism of intoning every statement as a question, her voice rising at the end — has caught her in a trap of self-pity and self-aggrandizement about her teenage “suffering” and “trauma,” such that she is now forced to keep up the act to the end, the only alternative being the teenage girl’s worst nightmare, namely the public humiliation of being unmasked as a trivial drama queen.

She may well have had some kind of unpleasant experience as a young person at a party, but — since she has gone public with the allegations on such a prominent public stage, and been confronted with the reality that the event she is describing, even taken on her terms, sounds far less serious and life-altering than she wished it to sound — she now feels obliged, as a matter of pride and to save face, to look and sound as “hurt” as possible, and to justify her current attempt to bend the history of the United States to her teenage feelings, with exaggerated or false claims of the effects of trauma (claustrophobia, fear of flying). Hence the performance style, the affected vocal weakness — and the inability to face her questioners (let alone the accused) squarely, without the obscuring mask and dodging eyes.

In other words, the “girl” is still hiding, probably from herself as much as from anyone else.


If you would like a terse, rough, far less sympathetic review of the above observations, I suggest Michelle Malkin’s brief commentary, which I just discovered last night. (I swear I wrote mine before seeing hers, and I’ll undergo a polygraph test to prove it if necessary!)

 

You may also like...