Dr. Christine B. Ford’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee is an exercise in how an actually impressive person responds under overwhelming and unjust pressure. The Republican Party’s grotesque and craven rush to confirm the absolutely unimpressive Brett Kavanaugh for a seat on the Supreme Court hinges on finding some kind of doubt in Dr. Ford’s recollections of being held down and sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh while his douchebag friend Mark Judge stood by and laughed. Early in the testimony, Sen. Diane Feinstein of California asked Ford how she could be “so sure that it was he?” Ford’s response pulled from Republicans’ kryptonite: science.
Ford: Basic memory functions and also just the level of norepinephrine and epinephrine in the brain that as you know, sort of encodes that neurotransmitter, encodes memories into the hippocampus so the trauma-related experience then is kind of locked there, whereas the other details sort of drift.
Feinstein: So what you are telling us is that this could not be a case of mistaken identity?
Ford: Absolutely not.
Fuck you, Chuck Grassley. Fuck you, Brett Kavanaugh.