Special opinion to the Mirror by Paul Plante.
“I am just a poor boy though my story’s seldom told”
“I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises”
“All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear”
“And disregards the rest, hmmmm”
Image courtesy of Psychology Today
For those too young to remember, those words are from what would be called in the newspaper business the “lede” to the song “The Boxer” written in 1968, when I was in training in the U.S. Army as an infantryman to prepare me for combat in Viet Nam to preserve the right of the then-2 year old Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, born November 1966, now a famous research psychologist in Northern California, to accuse Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of being incoherently drunk and laying on top of her in 1982, when she was fifteen, with one hand over her mouth while the other hand was groping her and trying to rip her clothes off, so that she thought she was going to get raped and killed while Kavanaugh buddy Mark Judge looked on and laughed, a truly traumatic episode, not only for her, but for America and the candid world, as well, and by extension, myself, a fellow trauma survivor who is feeling her pain, however vicariously so, since I wasn’t there, myself, by then-27-year old American songwriter, prophet and modern-day visionary Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941), whose musical career has spanned seven decades, a song which in retrospect was to change the course of America, forever, more than any other event of the 1960’s decade, and there were many of them, as anyone alive back then can tell you.
And thanks to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, and her courage in coming forward as her civic duty to give sworn testimony on how the memory functions to the Judicial Committee of the United States Senate, I now know that I know all of that stuff in the clear and precise detail that I know it because as we all learned from the New York Times story “With Caffeine and Determination, Christine Blasey Ford Relives Her Trauma” by Julie Hirshfeld Davis on 28 September 2018, it is indelible in my hippocampus, to wit:
And when she spoke, she sometimes leaned on her training as a scientist, often resorting to the technical language and concepts of brain function and memory.
Asked how she could be certain in her recollection of what happened with Judge Kavanaugh, she told the prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell: “Just basic memory functions, and also just the level of norepinephrine and the epinephrine in the brain that, you know, encodes that neurotransmitter that codes memories into the hippocampus and so the trauma-related experience is locked there, whereas other details kind of drift.”
End quotes
That, people, is how I know today what I knew back then – just basic memory functions, and also just the level of norepinephrine and the epinephrine in the brain that, you know, encodes that neurotransmitter that codes memories into the hippocampus.
And that, people, takes us back in time some 50 years to 1968, when none of us, or least those of us who lived out in the countryside, knew none of that stuff, because Christine Blasey Ford had not yet discovered it, and these words from “The Boxer” by American visionary songwriter Paul Simon, to wit:
“In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade”
“And he carries the reminders”
“Of every glove that laid him down or cut him”
“’Til he cried out in his anger and his shame”
“I am leaving, I am leaving, but the fighter still remains”
End quotes
Today, of course, we can say with high degree of confidence, thanks to Dr. Blasey Ford and her courageous sworn testimony to the Senate panel as a scientist resorting to the technical language and concepts of brain function and memory that the boxer in that song, which is said to be autobiographical, carried the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him ’til he cried out in his anger and his shame “I am leaving, I am leaving,” because the level of norepinephrine and the epinephrine in his brain that, you know, encodes that neurotransmitter that codes memories into the hippocampus and so the trauma-related experience of those gloves hitting him is locked there, whereas other details kind of drift because during those fights, the boxer had a typical “fight or flight” reaction so that he was definitely experiencing the surge of cortisol and adrenaline and epinephrine.
If we had known that back then, I think there would have been a lot less doubt here in America, and perhaps the candid world, as well, about the veracity and accuracy of those lyrics, which many simply passed off as the use of poetic license by Paul Simon, with the doubters, and let’s face it, people, they always exist, scoffing and saying that there was no way the boxer in that song could possibly have carried the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him. because the human memory simply didn’t work that way, and thanks to Dr. Ford today, we now know just how wrong they were.
But that was then, in much more primitive times in America, and this is now, where thanks to Dr. Ford, the science about how the memory works is much more advanced, which takes us to the inspirational Washington Post (“Democracy dies in darkness”) story “Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford moved 3,000 miles to reinvent her life. It wasn’t far enough.” By Jessica Contrera, Ian Shapira, Emma Brown, and Steve Hendrix on 22 September 2018, where we hear about her poignant life story that has resulted in this ground-breaking discovery about the hippocampus and the surge of cortisol and adrenaline and epinephrine, as follows:
In Bethesda, Ford’s life was one of cloistered advantage, with her time spent at a private school for girls, at the Columbia Country Club and at parties where she moved easily among the privileged and popular.
But after high school, and after the alleged assault, Ford left the Washington area and never moved back.
She took up surfing.
She dressed in jeans when she wasn’t in a wet suit atop a surfboard.
Colleagues mistook her for a native Californian.
Quietly, she garnered a reputation for her research on depression, anxiety and resilience after trauma — telling almost no one what she herself had endured.
End quotes
Pardon me here, people, but when I was young, this going back in time to when there were no hand-held devices, and before Al Gore, out of the goodness of his heart, had invented the internet that we take for granted today, I used to read the life stories of the American presidents, to see how they, like Christine Blasey Ford, overcame adversity to rise to fame, and so I think these details from her young life are just as important as the boyhood of say, George Washington or James Monroe, so please, bear with me as I relate these essential details of this profile in courage in America today:
“I have lived with that story my whole life,” she said in an interview with The Post before her name became public.
“I’ve moved on.”
“I have done wonderful things and have a great career and a great community, and have done a total reboot living in California.”
End quotes
Now, people, tell me that that is not inspirational to all of us in America and the candid world who like her have suffered grievous trauma in our lives, in my own case being wounded in the head in Viet Nam in 1969, when the future Dr. Ford was 3 years old and left for dead: “I’ve moved on and have done a total reboot living in California.”
Getting back to her life story as told by the Washington Post, we have:
She successfully reinvented herself far from the place where her family is known, where politics reign, where Kavanaugh gained power and prestige — and where next week, she may return to relive it all again.
Growing up, she was just “Chrissy,” and in the way of younger siblings, was often described by her relationship to someone else: sister of Tom and Ralph, daughter of the older Ralph, a golf course regular who would go on to become the president of the exclusive, all-male Burning Tree Club.
Ford’s mother, Paula, was well-liked among the kids at Columbia Country Club because she remembered their names.
“You weren’t just a chaise longue to be walked past to her,” said Stephen Futterer, a Chicago doctor who was on the club’s swim team with Ford.
“There were definitely those families that had a little controversy, like the parent who drinks too much or the son who was caught stealing from the men’s locker room, but that was not the Blasey family.”
“They were just average for the club.”
End quotes
Growing up, I was just Paul, because that was my name, and being poor and living out in the countryside, I didn’t have a country club to go to, but such is life.
As the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said back then, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope,” so following that sage advice, I have endeavored to persevere, and like Dr. Ford, I too have moved on, and rebooted myself, although not as a surfer in California, but again, such is life,
And getting back to her inspirational story from the Washington Post, we have:
Like many affluent families in the area, the Blaseys sent their children to single-gender private schools.
For Ford, that meant six years at Holton-Arms, where students wore blue plaid skirts they would try to convince their mothers to hem shorter.
Her classmates included the daughters of the King of Jordan and members of the J.W. Marriott clan.
Coach purses were the it-bag to carry, and at lunch, the girls were allowed to sit outside, tanning their legs and drinking Tab.
Ford’s inner circle was, “How do you say this?”
“The pretty, popular girls,” explained Andrea Evers, a close friend.
“It wasn’t like we were a bunch of vapid preppies, but God, we were preppy then.”
Weekends were spent shopping at the White Flint mall, flashing fake IDs at Georgetown’s Third Edition club — the drinking age was 18 then — or flocking to the house of whoever’s parents were out of town to drink six-packs of Hamm’s or Schaefer.
Every summer, the “Holton girls” would pack into a rented house for Beach Week, an annual bacchanal of high-schoolers from around the region.
The prep schools that formed Ford’s overlapping social circles usually gathered at a Delaware beach town each year.
End quotes
And it is from those hard-scrabble beginnings that the Dr. Christine Blasey Ford we know and love today was born!
And here, people, I actually find myself tearing up, thinking of how brave and courageous she was to overcome her terror at the thought of doing her civic duty by testifying under oath to the Senate Panel on the fitness of Brett Kavanaugh to be a Supreme Court Justice, so here I will have to take a break to wipe my eyes, because though my tears for her, I can no longer see the keyboard, but don’t fret, people, because when my tears have finally dried, I will be back to finish this story of how this brave woman overcame the adversity of her early life to rise to the station she has achieved in America and the world today.
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There are many reasons, of course, for focusing on the role of memory in this thread, firstly because it plays such a huge role in these recently-concluded Ford hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee starring Dianne Feinstein from California, where Dr. Ford went to re-invent herself as a surfer girl, doing the re-invention so successfully that her colleagues out there actually thought she actually was from California, which is a real testament to the resilience after trauma of a sexual assault survivor like the brave and courageous Dr. Ford, who was forced to have to overcome her fear of flying in order to appear before the Senate Panel to relive this trauma locked in her hippocampus from back in 1982.
With respect to trauma being locked into the hippocampus, while other details remain kind of fuzzy, the best contrast I can think of that has just emerged from these hearings is found in the CBS NEWS story “Hillary Clinton on Brett Kavanaugh: ‘There’s a lot to be concerned about'” by Emily Tillett on October 2, 2018, where we learn about the role of memory, as follows:
Former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says that Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s behavior during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee into allegations of sexual assault was “quite out of bounds” for a Supreme Court nominee.
“For anyone who believes there’s such a thing as judicial temperament and that we want judges, particularly those on our highest court to approach issues, approach plaintiffs and defendants with a sense of fairness, that there’s a lot to be concerned about,” Clinton said in remarks Tuesday at The Atlantic Festival in Washington.
Clinton said she couldn’t remember any nominee during her time in the senate or with the most recent appointment by President Trump of Justice Neil Gorsuch “behaving in such a way” during Senate testimony.
“We have not seen anything quiet like that for a long time…in this case, the performance, the behavior was quite out of bounds.”
“I don’t ever remember anything like that.”
end quotes
See what I am saying here, people – what separates the memories of a trauma survivor like Dr. Ford, versus a politician like Hillary Clinton?
Obviously, Hillary cannot remember because it never got locked into her hippocampus.
And the role of memory comes up once again in the CNN story “Christine Blasey Ford’s friend is not refuting allegation, will cooperate with FBI, lawyer says” by Ariane de Vogue on 30 September 2018, as follows:
Leland Ingham Keyser, a friend of the woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were at a party in high school, does not refute the veracity of the allegation, although she does not remember the alleged incident, her lawyer said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
end quotes
Now, obviously, Ford friend Leland Ingham Keyser does not remember the alleged incident because the levels of norepinephrine and the epinephrine in her brain that, you know, encodes that neurotransmitter that codes memories into the hippocampus never actually got high enough to code those memories in her hippocampus, either because she was never there in the first place, or because it wasn’t happening to her the way it was happening to Dr. Ford, as comes out when we peruse the CNN article just a bit further:
The accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, claims that during a party in the early 1980s at which Keyser and several others were present, Kavanaugh drunkenly pushed her into a bedroom, pinned her down and attempted to remove her clothes before she was able to escape.
“Ms. Keyser does not refute Dr. Ford’s account, and she has already told the press that she believes Dr. Ford’s account,” Keyser’s attorney, Howard Walsh, wrote in the letter, which was sent to the committee overnight Friday.
“However, the simple and unchangeable truth is that she is unable to corroborate it because she has no recollection of the incident in question.”
end quotes
Ah, yes, people, the hippocampus and the role of memory, and as an aside, I wonder why it is that all these people who can’t remember things need to get all lawyered up, like Ford friend Leland Ingham Keyser has done here?
What is up with that?
Getting back to a possible answer to that pertinent question, CNN tells us as follows:
Walsh also said in the letter that Keyser will “cooperate fully” with an FBI investigation into the allegation.
The letter comes after emotional testimony from Ford and Kavanaugh about the allegation at a committee hearing Thursday.
Keyser felt the need for the letter, Walsh wrote, to clarify a previous statement about the allegation, which came up at the hearing and which she believed made it sound as if she did not believe the party had occurred.
The previous statement, which Walsh released to CNN and the committee last week, said, “Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.”
end quotes
Ah, okay, I guess, maybe, anyway.
But getting back to the main focus here, which is the role memory played in these hearings, CNN continues as follows:
In her testimony Ford said she remembered that Keyser, a longtime friend, was present at the party, but that it is not surprising Keyser would not recall the party because Ford did not tell her about the alleged assault at the time.
“Oh no, she didn’t know about the event,” Ford told the committee, “She was downstairs during the event and I did not share it with her.”
end quotes
And there it is, people, although I still can’t understand why Ford friend Leland Ingham Keyser needed a lawyer, because it really doesn’t sound like she was guilty of anything, but that is just me, I suppose.
And back to CNN once again, because the role of memory, or really the lack thereof, plays heavily in that story, as we see from the following:
Kavanaugh mentioned Keyser’s statement several times during his testimony to stress that no one who Ford alleges attended the party has come forward to say they remembered being there.
end quotes
And of course they can’t remember, because it is not in their hippocampus the way it is in the hippocampus of Dr. Ford, plain and simple, which takes us back to CNN as follows:
In addition, two others have issued statements saying they don’t remember the party in question.
“I have no memory of this alleged incident,” said Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s friend, who Ford alleged was in the bedroom during the assault.
In a letter he sent to the Judiciary Committee last week, Judge also said he did not recall the party and never saw Kavanaugh act in the matter Ford describes.
Another person Ford claims was at the party, Patrick J. Smyth, has issued a statement in a letter from his lawyer to the committee saying he had no knowledge of the party or the allegation.
“I understand that I have been identified by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as the person she remembers as ‘PJ’ who supposedly was present at the party she described in her statements to the Washington Post,” Smyth said in the statement.
“I am issuing this statement today to make it clear to all involved that I have no knowledge of the party in question; nor do I have any knowledge of the allegations of improper conduct she has leveled against Brett Kavanaugh.”
end quotes
And here we have yet another lawyer involved, which makes me think these Ford hearings were a real boon to the incomes of the lawyer trade, which in turn will be good for the nation’s GDP, which in turn will be a boon for the Trump presidency, given how much the GDP has grown during his presidency, as compared to the miserable GDP growth during the hapless Obama presidency, but that of course, is a different story for a different day, since I am only speculating here on how much these Ford hearings will boost the GDP, which figures have not come out yet, which means we all have to wait to see how true my prediction will turn out to be.
And again, with all of that said, I’m finding myself getting kind of peaked here, wondering why the heck so many lawyers are involved, when all of these people who can’t remember anything because it is not in their hippocampus the way it is in the hippocampus of Dr. Ford, the sexual assault survivor, seem innocent to me, which makes me wonder why they all felt the need to lawyer up, so before my head flops down on my keyboard as I fall asleep here and leaves the impression of the keys all over my face, I am going to take a break, but please, it will be a short nap, I hope, so stay tuned, and I will be back with the rest of this story, and that is a promise!
And lest I get accused of plagiarism in here, let me make it incandescently clear to all concerned that no, I did not originate the words “She is a remarkable profile in courage” with respect to the recent soul-searching sworn testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford before the Senate Judiciary Committee where she had to relive this trauma seared into her hippocampus, where she hears over and over Kavanaugh buddy Mark Judge, who doesn’t remember the event himself, laughing and laughing while Brett Kavanaugh grinds his body on hers while trying to take off her one-piece bathing suit with one hand while holding his other hand over her mouth so she couldn’t scream, so that she thought she was going to get raped and killed.
That statement, which is not mine, I just adopted it because her lawyer said it in The Hill article “Ford’s attorney fires back at Trump: ‘He is a profile in cowardice'” by John Bowden on 3 OCTOBER 2018, so it has to be true, as follows:
An attorney representing Christine Blasey Ford fired back at President Trump on Tuesday after the president mocked Ford’s testimony concerning her allegation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Michael Bromwich, who sat beside Ford and her other attorney at last Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the president a “profile in cowardice” Tuesday night after Trump took aim at Ford during a rally in Mississippi.
“A vicious, vile and soulless attack on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.”
“Is it any wonder that she was terrified to come forward, and that other sexual assault survivors are as well?” Bromwich asked Tuesday.
“She is a remarkable profile in courage.”
end quotes
See what I am saying about her being terrified, people?
There it is, right there in black and white, and if it wasn’t true, the lawyer couldn’t say it, nor could The Hill print it, because it would be fake news.
As to reliving her terror, which I think as a trauma survivor myself, is quite horrible, we have from the Marketwatch article “Ford details alleged Kavanaugh attack as he calls process ‘national disgrace’” by Robert Schroeder published Sept. 27, 2018, as follows:
Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh gave opposing testimonies about an allegation of sexual assault on Thursday, during a highly emotional Senate hearing that could decide the fate of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
Ford, a college psychology professor, told senators she is “100%” certain it was Kavanaugh who attacked her at a high-school party in the 1980s.
“Absolutely not,” she told Sen. Dianne Feinstein when asked if the alleged sexual assault could have been a case of mistaken identity.
Ford began her testimony by saying she believed Kavanaugh was going to rape and accidentally kill her, at times tearing up before the panel.
end quotes
Now, is that evidence or is that evidence?
That, people, is what is permanently locked in her hippocampus because she was having a typical “fight or flight” reaction so that she was definitely experiencing the surge of cortisol and adrenaline and epinephrine, which in turn did something to the level of norepinephrine and the epinephrine in the brain that, you know, encodes that neurotransmitter that codes memories into the hippocampus and so the trauma-related experience is locked there, whereas other details kind of drift, with one of those drifting details being exactly what it was she was wearing when Brett Kavanaugh was laying on top of her, grinding his body against her body while trying to take off her clothes with whatever hand of his that was not covering her mouth after she started screaming, or to keep her from screaming, which is another drifting detail.
I mean, in the CNN story “Christine Blasey Ford’s friend is not refuting allegation, will cooperate with FBI, lawyer says” by Ariane de Vogue on 30 September 2018, this is what we were told then, to wit:
Leland Ingham Keyser, a friend of the woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were at a party in high school, does not refute the veracity of the allegation, although she does not remember the alleged incident, her lawyer said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, claims that during a party in the early 1980s at which Keyser and several others were present, Kavanaugh drunkenly pushed her into a bedroom, pinned her down and attempted to remove her clothes before she was able to escape.
end quotes
And then, in the Time magazine article “Kavanaugh Accuser Deborah Ramirez Says Senate Chose to ‘Look the Other Way’ on Supreme Court Nominee” by Gina Martinez on 6 October 2018, we have this:
Ramirez claims that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party in the 1980s when they were both students at Yale University.
Her allegation came a week after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford claimed that Kavanaugh pinned her down and covered her mouth to conceal her screams as he grinded on her and attempted to remove her one-piece bathing suit.
end quotes
Now, in her defense, and she clearly deserves a defense as much as anybody else here in America, especially when it does look like she might have been perjuring herself with these “drifting details” that are only loosely attached to her hippocampus, in the CNN story “Attorneys: Christine Blasey Ford doesn’t want Kavanaugh impeached, has no regrets” by Sophie Tatum on October 5, 2018, her lawyers make it clear that in her terror, she was confused, which would make the “drift” about exactly what it was she was wearing during the event more understandable, as follows:
Washington (CNN) — As Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh awaits a final Senate confirmation vote, a lawyer representing Christine Blasey Ford says she absolutely does not want him impeached if Democrats take control of Congress.
Ford’s attorney Debra Katz tells CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview that Ford only wanted to tell her story to Senate Judiciary Committee members.
“What she did was to come forward and testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and agree to cooperate with any investigation by the FBI and that’s what she sought to do here,” Katz said.
Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a party more than three decades ago while they were both in high school.
Ford privately shared her story with the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, but the allegation leaked.
As a result, Ford decided to go public.
Her attorney Lisa Banks said Ford doesn’t have any regrets about coming forward.
“I don’t think she has any regrets.”
“I think she feels like she did the right thing,” Banks said.
“And this was what she wanted to do, which was provide this information to the committee so they could make the best decision possible.”
“And I think she still feels that was the right thing to do, so I don’t think she has any regrets.”
Feinstein has denied that her office leaked the letter containing Ford’s accusation, but the senator has faced scrutiny over the optics of the allegation becoming public just as Kavanaugh appeared to be on track for a smooth confirmation.
Katz told Bash that she and Ford thought Feinstein had respected the process involving her constituent.
“What I can speak to is when victims of sexual assault and violence go to their Congress people — when they go to their senators and they ask for their information to be confidential, I think that that’s a request that needs to be respected,” Katz said.
She continued: “Victims get to control when and how and where their allegations get made public.”
end quotes
And let me stop there for a moment to point out that that is a very important legal principle that is quite sacred to the Democrats, that victims get to control when and how and where their allegations get made public, which more than adequately serves to explain why Dr. Ford waited all these years until just before Brett Kavanaugh was to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice to tell Democrat Dianne Feinstein, and the Washington Post (“democracy dies in darkness”), of course, about something that happened back in 1982.
Getting back to her confusion which has caused these details to drift, CNN continues as follows:
Banks also hit out at a Republican talking point following Ford’s testimony last week that she wasn’t aware there was an offer from committee Republicans to fly to California to interview her in her home state.
Banks said Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley’s statements about the offer during the hearing confused Ford.
“We, as her counsel, informed her of all options made available to us by the committee.”
“We showed her all of the correspondence,” Bank said.
“And what they were offering was sending staffers to speak to her.”
“Dr. Ford wanted to speak to the committee members herself.”
“And I think what you saw in the hearing was that Dr. Ford got a little confused and thought Sen. Grassley was suggesting that he himself would have come to California, which is not what he offered at all.”
end quotes
Okay, people, so that explains it!
She told different versions of the story, not because her hippocampus had a glitch in it, but because Charles Grassley, a Republican, got her confused, and boy, she is not the only one, because these lawyers of hers have me quite confused, as well, which is why people get lawyers in the first place, afterall.
So, was she wearing clothes?
Or was she wearing a one-piece bathing suit?
Or will we ever really know?
Stay tuned, because when I clear up my own confusion here, there is more on this subject of the role of the memory yet to come.
As a survivor of the trauma of being wounded in the head and left for dead in Viet Nam in March of 1969, an event that is definitely as seared in my memory as is Connie Chung’s memory of her first orgasm as reported recently by the Washington Post (“democracy dies in darkness”), and two assaults, one in the summer of 1988 when I was nearly decapitated in an ambush by a back-hoe operator swinging his back-hoe bucket at my head while I was investigating an illegal subdivision as a public health engineer in Rensselaer County in corrupt New York state, and a hit-and-run vehicular assault on December 29, 1989 which was a failed attempt to shut my mouth forever so I could not give testimony about endemic public corruption in Rensselaer County, I am very familiar, two more events that are seared in my memory, I am very familiar how it is that my mind works when recalling those memories, which are like a movie in my head in technicolor, where all the details are quite stark, and not fuzzy at all, as they seem to be in the case of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, and these other accusers, which has me wondering if perhaps my male hippocampus works differently from the hippocampus of a female, which is a subject hopefully modern science can investigate further.
I say that because of what I read Dr. Ford remembering, as told in the New York Times story “With Caffeine and Determination, Christine Blasey Ford Relives Her Trauma” by Julie Hirschfeld Davis on 28 September 2018, as follows:
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter — the uproarious laughter — between the two, and their having fun at my expense,” said Dr. Blasey, a research psychologist, using the clinical language of neuroscience to describe a horrifying recollection of Judge Kavanaugh and the friend, in essence acting as both victim and expert witness in her own story.
end quotes
I find the subject of the laughter being front and center in her female hippocampus to be of interest, precisely because it is laughter the other two female accusers remember, as well, as we see from the FOX News article “Ex-boyfriend says Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick threatened to kill his unborn child, ‘was exaggerating everything'” by Gregg Re on 3 October 2018, as follows:
Swetnick has told NBC News that she saw Kavanaugh “paw on girls” and “[touch] them in private parts” at parties as a high school student, but stopped short of claiming that he drugged or sexually assaulted her or other women.
Swetnick said she was inspired to come forward after Christine Blasey Ford claimed she was sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh during a party that Ford and Kavanaugh purportedly attended as high school students in the early 1980s.
“I started to think back to … the early ’80s in Montgomery County in Maryland and I thought that I might have some information that might corroborate some of the things that she had stated,” Swetnick said.
She added that she met Kavanaugh when she was in community college and attending house parties that would draw “everybody between an age range of 15, 16 to 25, maybe even more.”
Swetnick said she remembered “specifically being introduced to him” and described him as “very aggressive.”
“Very sloppy drunk, very mean drunk,” she said of the future federal judge.
“I saw him try to shift clothing … I saw him push girls against walls.”
“He would pretend to stumble and stumble into them and knock them into a wall.”
“He’d push his body against theirs.”
“He would grope them.”
However, Swetnick could not say whether she ever saw Kavanaugh or his friend Mark Judge spike the punch at those parties with drugs — seemingly contradicting her prior sworn statement to the Judiciary Committee, in which she definitively said that she “became aware” of efforts by Kavanaugh and Judge to do so in the early 1980s.
“Well, I saw him giving red Solo cups to quite a few girls during that time frame and there was green punch at those parties,” Swetnick said.
“And I would not take one of those glasses from Brett Kavanaugh.”
“I saw him around the punch, I won’t say bowls, or the punch containers … I don’t know what he did, but I saw him by them.”
Swetnick said that Kavanaugh and Judge attended a party where she was drugged and sexually assaulted at the age of 19, but added: “I cannot specifically say that he was one of the ones who assaulted me.”
“But before this happened to me at that party, I saw Brett Kavanaugh there.”
“I saw Mark Judge there and they were hanging about the area where I started to feel disoriented and where the room was and where the other boys were hanging out and laughing.”
“I could hear them laughing and laughing.”
end quotes
Now, when I read that how she could hear them laughing and laughing, being of a scientific bent myself, which has helped my deal with my own diagnosed PTSD, I was struck by how very similar her trauma memories were to those of Dr. Ford, who also remembers the laughter.
And then I came to the Time magazine article “Kavanaugh Accuser Deborah Ramirez Says Senate Chose to ‘Look the Other Way’ on Supreme Court Nominee” by Gina Martinez on 6 October 2018, where again, laughter played a seeming key role, as follows:
Deborah Ramirez, the second woman to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh, has released a statement criticizing the FBI and the Senate’s response to the allegations.
“Thirty-five years ago, the other students in the room chose to laugh and look the other way as sexual violence was perpetrated on me by Brett Kavanaugh,” Ramirez said in a statement on Saturday.
“As I watch many of the senators speak and vote on the floor of the Senate I feel like I’m right back at Yale where half the room is laughing and looking the other way.”
end quotes
And there it is again – the laughter!
So there has to be some kind of scientific connection here, at least to my mind, because you would not have three separate sexual assault survivors all remembering the laughter, if there was not some valid reason why laughter would be what was embedded in their hippocampuses, and one of the good things that could come out of this experience, perhaps the only thing, would be further scientific investigation as to why these female trauma survivors remember the laughter above all else, while my memories of my trauma seem so much more detailed.
It just goes to show that the hippocampus of a male of the species functions differently from the hippocampus of the female of the species, and being of a scientific bent, as well as a trauma survivor myself, I really think more research is warranted here, and let us all hope and pray that it comes as a result.
Boy, oh boy, the Washington Post, (“democracy dies in darkness”) is going to whip and flog this dead horse of the totally bizarre Ford Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last until it is lathered and bloody, and here I am referring to their story “The junk science Republicans used to undermine Ford and help save Kavanaugh” by Avi Selk on 8 October 2018, which really should be titled “The junk science Democrats used to undermine Kavanaugh and help save Ford,” which starts out as follows:
The politically convenient, scientifically baseless theory that sexual assault so traumatized Christine Blasey Ford she mixed up her attacker is now something like common wisdom for many Republicans.
end quotes
As a trauma survivor myself, I think the Washington Post is totally missing the fact that it was Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, an alleged expert on trauma, who undid herself by telling too many different versions of what she says happened, which is why people politely think she is confused, when they well could be saying outright that she is a scheming, manipulating stone cold liar.
The Washington Post, which appears to be very pro-Democrat/anti-Republican here, which is their privilege of course in a country which cherishes freedom of the press to make whatever wild accusations or assertions it wants to with fear of ever being held to account, then continues as follows:
In days leading up to the confirmation vote, the same notion was implicit in the rationale of every senator who attempted to defend Kavanaugh without wholly dismissing Ford’s accusations — her vivid testimony that he pinned her to a bed and tried to rape her when they were teens in the 1980s.
end quotes
Yes, Washington Post, we do hear you – that is her allegation – she thought she was going to be raped and killed.
My goodness, how many times have we heard that already?
The problem is that each time we hear it, it seems to be a slightly different version than what we heard before, and I personally have collected and stored each and every one of these stories, so that I can go back and quote them verbatim, including everything the Washington Post has printed on the matter to date, so that now, instead of being a Ford supporter as I started out in the beginning, being a grandfather of granddaughters who would be appalled if something like was alleged happened to them, I think Ford is a fraud and a con artist who has some real serious issues she needs some good professional help in dealing with, as we were told by the Washington Post itself in their story “Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford moved 3,000 miles to reinvent her life. It wasn’t far enough.” by Jessica Contrera, Ian Shapira, Emma Brown, and Steve Hendrix on 22 September 2018 as follows:
It was her love of surfing that would catch the eye of Russell Ford when he was browsing profiles on Matchmaker.com.
He knew that more than a love of water had brought her West.
“She didn’t always get along with her parents because of differing political views,” Russell said.
“It was a very male-dominated environment.”
“Everyone was interested in what’s going on with the men, and the women are sidelined, and she didn’t get the attention or respect she felt she deserved.”
“That’s why she was in California, to get away from the D.C. scene.”
end quotes
Doesn’t the Washington Post read its own stories?
This is what it had to say about what is in the psyche of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford – a male-dominated environment where Chrissie didn’t get the attention or respect she felt she deserved, and her husband, who she married in 2002, wouldn’t be telling that to the Washington Post in 2018 if it had not stuck in Dr. Ford’s craw all that time, eating away at her like a worm gnawing on her brain.
The woman scorned, indeed.
Getting back to the junk science of The Washington Post, we have:
But for many cognitive researchers who study how memories actually form during traumatic events, the theory (mistaken identity) never stopped sounding ridiculous.
“The person lying on top of you — who she’d previously met — you’re not going to forget that,” said Richard Huganir, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
“There’s a total consensus in the field of memory …”
“If anything, fear and trauma enhances the encoding of the memory at a molecular level.”
end quotes
Yes, yes, yes, blah, blah, blah – except we really do not know that Brett Kavanaugh ever was laying on top of her, because she never told the same story twice, and having been subjected to trauma at least as severe as having Brett Kavanaugh allegedly laying on top of Dr. Ford, I well know how fear and trauma enhances the encoding of the memory at a molecular level, because I personally have to live with that each and every day of my life, which is why I have come to think of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as a world-class bull**** artist.
Getting back to the Washington Post junk science, we have:
As he and several other researchers told The Washington Post, being attacked floods the brain with chemicals, including norepinephrine, which helps people remember whatever they are focused on.
end quotes
Okay.
So?
And back to the junk science once again:
It’s such a basic tenet of psychology and cognitive science that some researchers watched the mistaken-identity theory spread through the Senate this month with a sense of stunned dismay.
“I watched all the hearings that took place last week and was just floored at the number of people who offered that as an explanation,” said Ira Hyman, a cognitive psychologist who specializes in traumatic memories at Western Washington University.
“This story [of mistaken identity] that’s being offered here is a way of both trying to validate sexual assault and not deny it — which is a lovely change — but at the same time create a narrative that Kavanaugh couldn’t have been the person who did it,” he said.
“That’s just not consistent with memory research on misidentification.”
end quotes
Let me say here, based on my own experience with psychologists and so-called cognitive scientists that their observations of trauma survivors are merely that – observations.
They have no idea themselves, unless they too have experienced trauma like being wounded in the head and left for dead on a battlefield, of what really is in the mind of a trauma survivor afterwards – the continuing movie in technicolor with full sight and sound which the survivor recounts to them, since they cannot see it themselves.
Which takes us back to the junk science of the Washington Post as follows:
Lila Davachi, a cognitive neuroscientist at Columbia University, analogized the traumatic memory formation process to cranking up the contrast on a photo — central details get heightened, while those in the background get washed out.
end quotes
To which I say bull**** – that is simply a convenient excuse for Dr. Ford as to why she tells so many different versions of the story – it is a cop-out, and a flimsy one at that.
And back to the story:
“There’s a snapshot of critical features,” she said.
“In this case it was a party with friends and she knew him.”
“It is ridiculous to say she wouldn’t remember who it was.”
end quotes
How tedious this all is, since we don’t know what really happened, if anything, and we never will, which again takes us back to the junk science and the cop-out:
She vividly recalled other details of the night — the single beer she drank at the party, music in the bedroom she was pushed into, boys laughing as she was pinned to a bed — while having no memory of how she arrived or got home.
end quotes
To me, who has to deal with PTSD on a daily basis, this makes a real mockery out of what we have to go through, on our own, those of us who are simply too common to be of notice to the lofty Washington Post, which tells us as follows:
Trump has mocked her story because of these gaps, but it’s perfectly consistent with the science of traumatic memory formation.
Mara Mather, a professor at the University of Southern California, has performed laboratory studies in which volunteers are given electric shocks or subjected to loud noises while they look at a set of symbols — to find out which ones they remember while their brains are flooded with the same chemicals released during trauma.
end quotes
I have had those same tests after being actually subjected to real trauma, and they are a joke, as if getting a shock really can be called trauma, and if getting a shock can be called trauma, then getting jarred awake by your alarm clock is trauma, as well, and hearing a car backfire is trauma, and that, list goes on and on and on to the point of being absurd, which takes us right back to the Washington Post as follows:
“I guess the Republicans have been debating why does she forget getting home, but that sounds very plausible,” she said.
“It focuses the brain on whatever stands out at that moment.”
“The things that are not standing out are even more ignored.”
end quotes
Okay, I surrender, have it your way, because that excuse is as good as any here, as this dead horse gets whipped bloody.
And of course I am not going to just walk away and let this bull**** science from the Washington Post stand unchallenged on the record, and here, let me say that I do not agree with Trump that the press is the enemy of the American people, because it really has never been our friend, except in isolated instances such as the Cape Charles Mirror – the press is simply the press, and what it prints is simply what it prints, and often what it prints is purely partisan horse**** like this Washington Post story above here entitled “The junk science Republicans used to undermine Ford and help save Kavanaugh” by Avi Selk on 8 October 2018, which really should be titled “The junk science the Washington Post used to undermine Kavanaugh and help save Ford,” and you’re damn right I can call them out on it as an American citizen because neither the Washington Post nor Avi Selk are in any way sacred or above reproach, especially when both are so obviously peddling pure horse**** as they are doing mhere, putting forth these theories of these various “scientists” as if they were somehow fact, such as this Mara Mather, a professor at the University of Southern California.
After I read that horse****, being a scientist myself, I went on line and simply did what Avi Selk of the Washington Post should have done if he wasn’t playing a partisan politics himself, and that is to have called up the website of Mara Mather to see how definitive any of her so-called “science” really is, which is the typical, not much at all we need more research, which of course then keeps her employed, which is the name of that game.
According to the USC website, Mara Mather, PhD, is a Professor of Gerontology and Psychology as well as Assistant Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs, where gerontology is the scientific study of old age, the process of aging, and the particular problems of old people, which is what Dr. Christine Blasey Ford seems to be seriously afflicted with – the gradual loss of memory until the past is just a blur.
In the Overview section, Dr. Mather informs us of her work on older people like Christine Blasey Ford, as follows:
At the core of our sense of self and personal history are emotional memories.
Although emotional or stressful experiences tend to be memorable, emotional arousal can also impair various aspects of memory.
In recent years, research into arousal and memory has focused on the key role of the amygdala in enhancing perception and memory of emotionally arousing stimuli.
end quotes
Now it in interesting that Dr. Mather is focusing her work on the amygdala with regard to the memory of traumatic events while Dr. Ford told the Senate that no, it was the hippocampus, a detail I am surprised Avi Selk and the Washington Post missed to be truthful, probably because they know their faithful readers who devour every word they print as the gospel truth would never challenge them.
Could the hippocampus and amygdala really be the same thing with two different names?
Let’s check and see.
According to the dictionary, the hippocampus refers to the elongated ridges on the floor of each lateral ventricle of the brain, thought to be the center of emotion, memory, and the autonomic nervous system, while the amygdala is a roughly almond-shaped mass of gray matter inside each cerebral hemisphere, involved with the experiencing of emotions, so no, they are not the same thing, at all.
So who is right here, Dr. Ford or Dr. Mather?
Let’s go back to Dr. Mather’s overview and see what else she has to tell us there about her “science,” to wit:
But enhanced memory for arousing information is only part of the story—there is also abundant evidence that arousal enhances some aspects of memory while impairing other aspects.
end quotes
Now, that is what Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and the Democrats are hanging their hats on the explain why Christine Blasey Ford tells so many different stories, and can’t really remember a lot of very pertinent details, like why it was she was close enough to Brett Kavanaugh in the first place on the second floor of a drunken house party so that he could end up on top of her and she end up underneath him, if she knew the dude was incoherently drunk and a loser known for pawing girls and shifting their clothing.
But those are the questions today that one simply cannot ask a “survivor” like Christine Blasey Ford, out of politeness and extreme sensitivity for her precarious emotional and mental state, and if she was asked, all she would have to do is to point everyone to what Dr. Mather said above to explain why she has no idea of anything except she knows it was Brett Kavanaugh laying on top of her and she knows it was Mark Judge laughing, end of story – they are guilty, which brings us back to Dr. Mather’s Overview as follows:
In our lab, we are testing the theory that arousal enhances high-priority neural representations but suppresses low-priority neural representations of stimuli.
end quotes
Note the key words there, people – “we are testing the theory!”
That means she has no concrete results either the Democrats, or Christine Blasey Ford or Avi Selk and the Washington Post can hang their hats on as fact, but that doesn’t faze any of them in the least bit, because they are peddling emotions here to get a bunch of Democrat women all steamed up and very angry at Republican women, hence their spew of bull****, which again takes us back to the Mather Overview as follows:
We also are examining how age-related changes in inhibitory processes affect the influence of arousal.
In a related line of work, we are researching how stress influences decisions.
Our work reveals that stress changes how risk-seeking people are in their decisions and how much they are influenced by positive versus negative outcomes.
Our findings also reveal both gender and age differences in how stress influences decision processes.
We are also investigating how connectivity among different brain regions involved in emotion and cognition change with age, using both structural and functional neuroimaging.
end quotes
So to use any of that to justify why Dr. Christine Blasey Ford can’t remember pertinent details, so that she has a whole bunch of different versions of her story to tell is patently absurd, but so too is the Washington Post and the Democrat party.
And it is fairly obvious from the record here that what Ave Selk is trying to do with his quack science above here from Mara Mather, who is listed in USC website as a Professor of Gerontology and Psychology as well as Assistant Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs at USC, where she also seems to be a Democrat, or at least someone who does not like either men or Republicans, or both, with her statement above that “I guess the Republicans have been debating why does she forget getting home, but that sounds very plausible,” which is horse****, is to rehabilitate the Washington Post’s witness, Dr. Christine Blasy Ford, who first came to our notice in detail in the tear-jerker Washington Post story “Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford moved 3,000 miles to reinvent her life. It wasn’t far enough.” by Jessica Contrera, Ian Shapira, Emma Brown, and Steve Hendrix on 22 September 2018, as follows:
In her Post interview, Ford said a group of boys from Georgetown Prep was at one of the beer-drinking sessions in an unsupervised house near Columbia Country Club, possibly in the summer of 1982.
end quotes
POSSIBLY in the summer of 1982?
Hmmmmm, I see, I see – well, could it have been the summer of 1983, then?
“SCREECH, SCREECH, HOLLAR, HOLLAR, I’m a sexual assault survivor, you can’t ask me that, all I need to remember is that it was Brett Kavanaugh!”
There is our new standard of justice here in America, people, as a direct result of this Blasey Ford hearing, where she got to accuse a Supreme Court Justice of raping her so that she thought she was going to die, possibly in the summer of 1982, as she told the Washington Post back in September, that being before she was held to account in the Senate hearing as to what actually did take place, which she could not remember, which takes us back to the Washington Post story as follows:
One of them was Kavanaugh, who she described as an acquaintance.
At the time, she was 15, and he was 17.
Kavanaugh and his classmate Mark Judge had started drinking earlier than others, she said, and the two were “stumbling drunk” when they pushed her into a bedroom.
She alleges that Kavanaugh laid on top of her, fumbling with her clothes and pressing his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming.
Only when Judge jumped on top of them was she able to run from the room and hide until she could flee the house, she said.
Her biggest fear afterward, she recalled 37 years later, was looking as if she had just been attacked.
So she carried herself as if she wasn’t.
Down the stairs.
Out the door.
Onto the rest of her high school years, she said.
end quotes
That was then, before she couldn’t remember all the same details in the Senate hearings, which is why the Washington Post needed to recruit Mara Mather to help rehabilitate her with some bull**** science theory that would serve to explain why the only thing Dr. Ford could really remember was that it was Brett Kavanaugh, which takes us to the Wikipedia site for Mara Mather, where we find as follows:
Mara Mather
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mara Mather is a professor of gerontology and psychology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology.
Her research deals with aging and affective neuroscience, focusing on how emotion and stress affect memory and decisions.
end quotes
Now, let’s be very clear here, people – research into something is simply that, research, which is defined as the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.
She can’t take her research and make specific conclusions about Dr. Ford without doing a detailed study of the psyche of Dr. Ford herself, and it is absurd to think otherwise, just as it is patently absurd of Avi Selk of the Washington Post to try to convince us that such is really the case.
At best Mara Mather is trying to concoct an alibi for Dr. Ford, and a flimsy one it is, indeed, which takes us back to the Wiki page of Mara Mather, as follows:
Mather is best known for her contributions to research on emotion and memory.
Her work with Laura Carstensen and Susan Charles revealed a positivity effect in older adults’ attention and memory, in which older adults favor positive information more and negative information less in their attention and memory than younger adults do.
end quotes
As an older person, I can say that that is generally true, because who wants to spend their days with a bunch of **** from fifty years ago rattling around in their head?
I certainly don’t, anyway, but what does any of that have to do with the fact that Dr. Ford cannot remember pertinent details from her alleged sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh, where she distinctly remembers that he was incoherently drunk, no, wait, different story, stumbling drunk, and he was grinding on her, trying to take off her clothes, or wait, was it her one-piece bathing suit?
And the answer is absolutely nothing.
Those contributions to the research of others by Mara Mather of USAC prove nothing at all about Dr. Ford, which again takes us back to the Wiki page of Mara Mather, as follows:
Perhaps the most intuitive explanation for this effect is that it is related to some sort of age-related decline in neural processes that detect and encode negative information.
However, her research indicates that this is not the case; her findings suggest that older adults’ positivity effect is the result of strategic processes that help maintain well-being.
end quotes
And that is consistent with what I am saying, which still does not serve to explain why Dr. Ford cannot remember anything from the night she says Brett Kavanaugh laid on top of her, except, of course, that she knew it was him, which again takes us back to the Mara Mather Wiki site, as follows:
She has also been investigating how emotional arousal shapes memory.
Mather and her graduate student Matthew Sutherland outlined an arousal-biased competition (ABC) model that they argue can account for a disparate array of emotional memory effects, including some effects that initially appear contradictory (e.g., emotion-induced retrograde amnesia vs. emotion-induced retrograde enhancement).
ABC model posits that arousal leads to both “winner-take-more” and “loser-take-less” effects in memory by biasing competition to enhance high priority information and suppress low priority information.
Priority is determined by both bottom-up salience and top-down goal relevance.
Previous theories fail to account for the broad array of selective emotional memory effects in the literature, and so the ABC model fills a key theoretical hole in the field of emotional memory.
end quotes
A model filling a key theoretical hole in the field of emotional memory is a model – it is not absolute, nor is it all inclusive, and that again takes us back to the Wiki site of Mara Mather as follows:
Mather’s research projects have included work on how older adults interpret positive stimuli as well as how stress influences older adults’ decision making processes and the differences between men and women’s decision-making processes under stress.
end quotes
So, does any of that serve to explain the loss of detail in the memories of Dr. Ford?
In a word, no, it does not, at all.
So what game is Avi Selk of the Washington Post playing at here, trying to convince us otherwise?
And to bring this thread on the Blasey Ford Farce the Democrats and their political ally The Washington Post have tried to foist off on us, mas if we were all a nation of totally witless fools without a shred of discernment, let’s go back to an article in the Daily Mail, a British publication, entitled “‘It’s really terrible to be misrepresented’: Dr Christine Ford’s sister-in-law blasts Trump’s ‘shame campaign’ after the president mocked Senate testimony” published 4 October 2018, where we have as follows, to wit:
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s sister-in-law has revealed how President Donald Trump mocking the college professor’s testimony has affected their family.
Sandra Mendler told CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time on Wednesday night that it was ‘really terrible’ to see Dr. Ford’s testimony misrepresented by Trump.
end quotes
Oh, really?
Misrepresented?
How on earth could it be misrepresented, when there have been so many different versions of it published?
For example, in a New York Daily News article entitled “Kavanaugh’s accuser has been forced to move because of death threats — but President Trump feels ‘terribly’ for Kavanaugh” by Chris Sommerfeldt and Denis Slattery on Sep. 18, 2018, we are told this version:
Ford claims that an intoxicated Kavanaugh forced her into a bedroom at a party in the early 1980s, pinned her on a bed and tried to undress her.
She said that he held his hand over her mouth to prevent her from screaming.
Ford was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend, Mark Judge, jumped on him and the two began roughhousing.
end quotes
And in a Washington Post story entitled “‘100 Kegs or Bust’: Kavanaugh friend, Mark Judge, has spent years writing about high school debauchery” by Marc Fisher and Perry Stein on 22 September 2018, we have this version:
As Christine Blasey Ford tells it, only one person can offer eyewitness confirmation of her account of a sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh: Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Prep.
Ford says Judge watched Kavanaugh attack her at a high school party in the early 1980s and then literally piled on, leaping on top of her and Kavanaugh.
end quotes
But in another version told by the same Washington Post entitled “Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford moved 3,000 miles to reinvent her life. It wasn’t far enough.” by Jessica Contrera, Ian Shapira, Emma Brown and Steve Hendrix on 22 September 2018, we have this:
Every summer, the “Holton girls” would pack into a rented house for Beach Week, an annual bacchanal of high-schoolers from around the region.
The prep schools that formed Ford’s overlapping social circles usually gathered at a Delaware beach town each year.
Like Kavanaugh, Ford was part of that alcohol-fueled culture.
In her Post interview, Ford said a group of boys from Georgetown Prep was at one of the beer-drinking sessions in an unsupervised house near Columbia Country Club, possibly in the summer of 1982.
One of them was Kavanaugh, who she described as an acquaintance.
At the time, she was 15, and he was 17.
Kavanaugh and his classmate Mark Judge had started drinking earlier than others, she said, and the two were “stumbling drunk” when they pushed her into a bedroom.
She alleges that Kavanaugh laid on top of her, fumbling with her clothes and pressing his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming.
Only when Judge jumped on top of them was she able to run from the room and hide until she could flee the house, she said.
Her biggest fear afterward, she recalled 37 years later, was looking as if she had just been attacked.
So she carried herself as if she wasn’t.
Down the stairs.
Out the door.
Onto the rest of her high school years, she said.
end quotes
Now, that is pretty explicit, and that is the story she originally told to the Democrat party ally The Washington Post before Democrat Dianne Feinstein made her story public.
So why then, did the story change so many times, which it did?
Which takes us back to the Daily Mail story, as follows:
The president mocked Dr Ford and her sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during a rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night.
He slammed her story of the alleged attack and imitated her by saying: ‘But I had one beer – that’s the only thing I remember.’
end quotes
Now, let me say that as a human being with compassion, who is a grandfather of granddaughters, I certainly feel for this poor woman who is clearly still beset by numerous demons from her girlhood in upscale Montgomery County in Maryland, which the Washington Post described as follows in the article “Boys will be boys? As Kavanaugh debate rages, teens are saying some adults still don’t get it” by Samantha Schmidt on 21 September 2018, as follows:
Unlike her mother, Brynn has been taught that attempted sexual assault between teens is a crime.
The 16-year-old has learned about affirmative consent in her health class at Walt Whitman High.
But as with many teens coming of age during the #MeToo era, there’s a gap between what she is being taught and her rising awareness, and what still happens around her.
She’s been to parties in the D.C. suburbs.
Parents still turn a blind eye to booze.
The lines still become blurred.
“This is just as much of a problem now as when my mom was in high school,” Brynn said.
Anjali Berdia, 18, went to the same all-girls high school as Ford, Holton-Arms in Bethesda.
When she heard the news about the allegations, she texted one of her friends from Georgetown Prep, the same all-boys high school Kavanaugh attended.
“We were both just like, it must be crazy to be in the DMV now,” she said.
Anjali, who is now studying at the University of Pennsylvania, said she never encountered a situation quite like Ford’s.
“But I do 100 percent think that this type of thing could happen at a party in Montgomery County this Friday,” she said.
The prep school social circle has a pervasive “hookup culture,” she says, “and in many ways I think hookup culture perpetuates rape culture.”
The single-gender nature of many prep schools puts added pressure on parties over the weekends, because it’s the only time guys and girls get to hang out, Anjali said.
“It becomes this mash of hormones, sweat and alcohol in some Montgomery County basement.”
end quotes
And NBC News described as follows in their story entitled “Accuser’s schoolmate says she recalls hearing of alleged Kavanaugh incident” by Ken Dilanian and Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Popken on 19 September 2018, as follows:
Blasey Ford, a research psychologist in Northern California, has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her more than 30 years ago at a drunken high school party.
King’s post described a culture of heavy drinking among the students of the elite male and female private schools of Washington, D.C., including her own Holton-Arms and also Georgetown Preparatory School, which Judge and Kavanaugh attended.
end quotes
But truthfully, after having followed this story as comprehensively as possible, reading from as many different sources as possible, as an American citizen should when confronted with something as serious as this, my conclusion, compassion aside, as a member of the jury in the Court of Public Opinion, is that it was Dr. Ford who made herself mockable and pathetic, something that Trump, right or wrong, then simply commented on, which takes us back to the Daily Mail article as follows:
During the interview, host Chris Cuomo dubbed Trump’s attack on Dr. Ford as a ‘shame campaign,’ adding: ‘I didn’t even see that coming.’
end quotes
Oh, horse****, Chris, and you know it!
A “shame campaign,” indeed, and if Chris Cuomo didn’t see it coming, that is because he must be either as dumb as a fencepost, or blind.
Which takes us back to the Daily Mail, as follows:
Medler replied: ‘Yeah well, it was really terrible and I think that it’s painful to have these difficult experiences shared and processed publicly.’
‘And then it’s really terrible to be challenged and have the key points misrepresented.’
‘I think for everybody who listened, there was a lot of discussion about how memory works in somebody who has experienced trauma.’
She said ‘there is a very strong consensus of how people retain memories after a traumatic event’ and Trump was ‘choosing to not take in that information.’
She added: ‘It’s really a shame and a lost opportunity because this is, really, I think, very disappointing.’
Responding to how Dr Ford and her family have been affected by the whole thing, Medler said: ‘It’s very difficult.’
‘Life has been put on hold and turned upside down.’
‘And I think for a lot of people, too.’
‘People are watching and are reflecting on their own experiences and I think it’s a moment when there’s a lot of disruption.’
end quotes
Yes, indeed, Sandra Mendler, there are people watching and reflecting on their own experiences, and as a survivor of trauma, myself, I happen to be one of them.
So tell your sister-in-law that the next time she wants to trot out these so-called “difficult experiences” of hers for partisan political purposes, she and her family would be much better served if she would stick to the one version, instead of having so many.
My thoughts, anyway, as a trauma survivor, for what they are worth.