I’ll charm the air to give a sound,
While you perform your antic round.– MacBeth
I was in the Senate gallery this afternoon when Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed. You would have thought I was at an exorcism in an insane asylum.
Perhaps you were watching on television and heard the disruptions, though you certainly didn’t see them. The attenuated audio probably didn’t catch the frightening, incoherent shrieking – including the lingering screaming and howling as they were being dragged down the hallways outside the gallery.
If there was any doubt that the opposition to Kavanaugh was unhinged, uncivil, disruptive, rude, and borderline nuts, my experience in the gallery made it clear.
The first example came when Senator Cornyn rightfully railed against the mobs who spent the last three weeks assaulting and assailing Kavanaugh supporters.
“Mob rule is necessary,” one shrieking woman shouted before security personnel could settle her down.
At least she was honest. It did not appear that Capitol Police removed her for her crime, unfortunately. That would soon change.
Another crazed woman later screamed, “I will not consent, I will not consent, I will not consent, I will not consent.” She was like a feminist automaton: “I will not consent, I will not consent.” Capitol Police were less forgiving and dragged her out the doors and down the hallway.
I have visited hospitals for the seriously mentally ill, and the shrieks from this woman were as odd and unearthly as anything I ever heard inside a mental hospital. They echoed off the halls and ceilings outside the gallery in decreasing but astonishing amplitude.
Then the roll was called, and it sounded like the gates of hell opened up.
Nearly a dozen women erupted in unison, shouting, howling, screaming, in an unrecognizable venomous wail. They wouldn’t stop. There was fury, rage, hate, poison in the noise.
It wasn’t prose. It wasn’t song. It was a swarming, shrill, swirling noise.
I leaned over to someone and whispered, “Pay attention, that’s what the Left sounds like.”
Nothing they were yelling and howling could be heard. It was the sound of all of them, in discordant, rage-fueled, wild fury, that was so unearthly. I have never heard a sound like it before.
Senator Dick Durbin said a few weeks ago in response to the committee that these were the sounds of democracy.
No they weren’t. They were the sounds of a group of people tinkering with madness. They were the sounds of irrational, unhinged, and unmoored lunatics. These were the people who opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination. They were an embarrassment to themselves.
If the anti-Kavanaugh forces had any sense, they would have put the kibosh on these nuts. But they can’t because they like it. They think criminal disruption of the Senate is part of their political strategy. Absent being disowned by a single Democrat, the loons became the face of the Kavanaugh opposition — even more than Christine Ford.
Unlike with the earlier disruptors, the police swarmed on the howling mob and proceeded to drag them out. There was less mercy this time, with one woman, who might also play professional rugby, being dragged out of the front row, her clothes aiming to come off.
Thankfully that didn’t happen.
But the unhinged weren’t finished.
As various senators were called, the ugly uncivil howled and shrieked. “Coward,” they yelled at Joe Manchin before being dragged out. When Susan Collins cast a ballot, they erupted again in their radical fury. Before Vice President Pence could read the tally, there was one more howl: “This is a stain on our country,” she yelled before being dragged out.
These are not merely insane disruptors. These are people who care nothing for the country’s institutions. Even courtesy in the Senate gallery is an institution these monsters hate.
Trump pounced tonight at a rally in Kansas. “You don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob. The Democrats have become too dangerous and extreme to govern. Republicans believe in the rule of law, not the rule of the mob.”
Outside the Senate, a poorly attended rally was underway. There, women dressed like a wall sobbed and hugged each other, devastated that the country doesn’t see things their way.
As the vice president drove away in his motorcade — and I clapped — Pence flashed a thumbs-up at the curb. The Kavanaugh foes predictably and rudely responded with another digit.
(photo credits: author)
Join the conversation as a VIP Member