Thread by @SethCotlar

1. This story about Kavanaugh's "buddy" Mark Judge has reminded me of important lessons I learned about the American plutocracy in the late 80s when I moved from a small town to attend an Ivy League college. washingtonpost.com/local/100-kegs…

2. Brown Univ had recently dropped "need blind" admissions right before I attended. This meant that I, as a middle class son of small business owners in rural PA, was one of "the poor kids" at the school. I was quite privileged in my hometown, now I was the salt of the earth.

3. My classmates at Brown were Princesses, children of rock stars, Kennedy descendants, children of CEOs and big time corporate lawyers, children of New Yorker writers, graduates of "the best prep schools" in the land. I had never met people from this social world before.

4. Many of them were generous, curious, hard-working people who wanted to use their unearned privilege to make the world better for others who hadn't been so fortunate. None of these people became Republicans, even though many came from established @gop families.

5. And then there were the male plutocrats who joined fraternities like the one Kavanaugh was a part of at Yale. At a time when the AIDS crisis was building awareness of gay rights amongst straight people, these dudes were unapologetic homophobes.

6. One thing I learned early on at Brown was why one shouldn't use the term "f*ggot." Such language was of a piece w/ a culture that devalued the lives of LGBTQ pepole. The plutocrats in those frats, however, were more concerned abo the Orwellian threat of the "language police."

7. Another lesson I learned was to refer to my female classmates as "women," never "girls." Like a good, individualistic American boy, I initially thought "well that's a silly PC rule. It's just a word. I could care less if someone calls me a boy or a man."

8. Once I got used to using the word "woman," however, I saw why it mattered. It made me see things I hadn't previously. It enabled me to understand why my boss referred to the underpaid 40 yr old women in my workplace as "girls" but referred to me & other teen boys as "men."

9. I also noticed that my classmates who refused to use the word "woman" tended to be the rapey-er ones. They joined the sorts of frats Brett K was a part of. They made "jokes" like the one in Mark Judge's yearbook. If not rapists themselves, they were rapist-adjacent & complicit

10. The plutocrats in the frats took clear sides in the culture/PC wars of the 80s. They believed in the freedom to use whatever damn words they wanted to, and those f*ggots, n*ggers, and girls should just "grow a pair," like they had. Toughen up! You're at Brown for G-d's sake!

11. While the plutocrats in the frats built an identity around being aggrieved by the PC language police, I came to realize that shifting my language a bit--honoring a simple request that others made of me--taught me a lot about the world. I didn't feel policed, I felt informed.

12. This lesson was driven home when a friend of mine confided in me that she had been raped by a man who lived in her dorm. She went to the administration and they basically did nothing. "He said, she said. Nothing can be done."

13. Like most victims of sexual assault, my friend struggled with depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation for years. That one moment of "boys will be boys indiscretion," or whatever the hell rape's defenders call it, profoundly altered the trajectory of my friend's life.

14. Meanwhile her attacker went on as if nothing had happened, unscathed by the whole thing and unrepentant. I suspect he may have even forgotten about it after a while. Who knows what he'd say about it now, 36 years later.

15. This experience shaped the way I responded to one of the marquee moments in the PC battles of the late 80s--the list of rapists that women at Brown wrote on the bathroom stalls in the library. nytimes.com/1990/11/18/us/…

16. Having watched my friend suffer the echoing trauma of her sexual assault & having seen our supposedly "liberal" institution do almost nothing to support her or punish her attacker, I totally got the anger that drove those women to write those names on the bathroom stalls.

17. The media, of course, went absolutely ballistic with concern about those poor men who had been falsely accused. Conservatives lost no time playing up the Stalinist gulags that awaited us if such women were to ever gain power. PC run amok! Show trials coming soon!

18. As far as I know, not a single man whose name appeared on those stalls suffered in any way from having their name listed. Meanwhile, scores, likely more, of my classmates were left to struggle with the consequences of sexual violence with no institutional support.

19. The people most concerned about whose names were on those stalls? The plutocrats in the frats, like the one Brett Kavanaugh joined at Yale in the 80s. Places where the motto was "No means yes, yes means anal."

20. So when Dinesh D'Souza, Bill Bennett, and Allan Bloom complained about the immorality of America's liberal elite in the early 90's...all I could think about were the nasty conservative elites I met at my Ivy League school--the plutocrats in the frats.

21. These plutocrats in the frats cleaned up nice--they could put on a suit & tie and come across as "such a nice guy from a nice family who went to the best schools," but when presented with an opportunity to reconsider their sexism, their racism, their homophobia, they balked.

22. Even worse, they went on the attack against the PC police, as if the people trying to do something about racism, sexism, and homophobia were the REAL threat to liberty and equality in America. This messaging lay at the heart of the post-Reagan @gop, and evolved into Trumpism.

23. Were the liberal plutocrats I met at Brown perfect people and should THEY be running the country? No way. Plutocracy in general is a shitty, undemocratic thing. I benefited from it, but have tried to do what I can to try to push against it.

24. But I think it's worth distinguishing between two paths out of the largely white plutocratic circles of the 80s that now currently sit atop the nation's power structure (whether we like it or not).

25. One path was the Buchanan-esque culture war path chosen by Reagan Youths like Cruz and Kavanaugh. One must defend "western civilization" against the totalitarians on the left advocating for racial justice, feminism, greater income equality.

26. The other path led into the world of "multiculturalism" which then evolved into today's talk of diversity, equity, & inclusivity. It started from the premise that men benefitted when they listened to women, that white people benefitted when they listened to people of color.

27. The conservatives in the audience will now immediately say "so you're saying men & white people don't know anything and should just shut up!?!?!" No. That's not what anyone is saying, tho I understand why you hear it that way. It's how those plutocrats in the frats heard it.

28. The point is not that Matthew Shepard was murdered because people used the word "f*ggot." It's because the repeated use of that word as an epithet helped perpetuate a culture that made such violence more likely.

29. It's not that everyone who used that word was a potential murderer. It's that if one wanted to work toward a world where such violence was less likely, shifting one's language was one small way to get there. Who wouldn't want to do that?

30. Mark Judge, Kavanaugh's friend...that's who.

31. These plutocrats learned that homophobia, racism, and sexism played with the white working class. It was a point where they could find agreement (once they took off the prep school tie). It was a way they could get poor folks to vote for a plutocratic, trickle-down agenda.

32. But here's the thing...a lot of those plutocrats also believed that stuff. They weren't just cynically playing the rubes for votes...they truly thought THEY were the ones defending "western civilization" from the PC barbarians.

33. And now they've got the perfect amalgam of fratty plutocrat and Archie Bunker rube at the head of their party. And yet they still want us to look upon people like Kavanaugh as "good, decent, kind people." Sorry, not buying it.

34. Whether or not Kavanaugh committed the assault of which he is accused, given what I know about his politics and the social worlds from which he came...he is a dinosaur, a creature of a culture war the right lost a long time ago but which is the only message they have left.