The Patriot Post® · #MeToo's Contempt for Due Process

“Since when do those accusing others of crimes become ‘survivors’ rather than ‘accusers’? … The shift in language is to message that accusers must always be believed.” —columnist Clarice Feldman

Ms. Feldman has succinctly described the antithesis of one of our nation’s most treasured founding principles. Unfortunately, she also described the essence of a rapidly metastasizing #MeToo movement. One where the “presumption of innocence” and “misogyny” have become interchangeable concepts.

A recent incident at the University of Southern California is indicative. Professor James Moore responded to a reply-all email circulated by student Audrey Mechling, who asserted the necessity to “BELIEVE SURVIVORS” (capitals in the original). “If the day comes you are accused of some crime or tort of which you are not guilty, and you find your peers automatically believing your accuser, I expect you find yourself a stronger proponent of due process than you are now,” Moore wrote in a reply-all email of his own.

Not quite. Nearly 100 students staged a demonstration demanding Moore’s termination.

It gets worse. “What [Professor Moore] sent was extremely inappropriate, hurtful, [and] insensitive,” declared school dean Jack Knott. “We are going to try to do everything we can to try to create a better school, to educate the faculty.” Knott further insisted USC would have a faculty meeting to address “implicit bias,” and that what Moore said is “not what our school represents.”

That advocating for due process would be considered “implicit bias” is utterly Orwellian. Yet like so many other citadels of progressive indoctrination, USC has co-opted the #MeToo movement in its effort to impose a “superior” standard of social justice upon an “irredeemably flawed” nation. Victor Davis Hanson illuminates the Left’s ultimate agenda — in no uncertain terms:

The idea of a statute of limitations is ossified; hearsay is legitimate testimony; inexact and contradictory recall is proof of trauma, and therefore of validity; the burden of proof is on the accused, not the accuser; detail and evidence are subordinated to assumed sincerity; proof that one later relates an allegation to another is considered proof that the assault actually occurred in the manner alleged; motive is largely irrelevant; the accuser establishes the guidelines of the state’s investigation of the allegations; and the individual allegation gains credence by cosmic resonance with all other such similar allegations.

For the useful-idiot foot soldiers of the #MeToo revolution, cosmic resonance has supplanted the Constitution.

Moreover, like every totalitarian-based movement, some victims are “more equal” than others. “The needs of those women living in trailer parks, trapped in crime-ridden and drug-infested urban neighborhoods, or languishing in our foster care or prison systems will continue to be ignored by #MeToo,” insists columnist Robert L. Woodson Sr. “These women reside in the #NotYou isolated areas of this country … out of sight and out of mind.”

Woodson has a valid point, but it’s only half of the equation. Does anyone still remember that Hillary Clinton — who insisted her loss to Donald Trump “accelerated” the #MeToo movement — routinely dismissed credible allegations against her husband as “bimbo eruptions”? Or the parade of Brett Kavanaugh accusers plopped in front of cameras, utterly irrespective of credibility, that stand in stark contrast to NBC sitting on its interview with Bill Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick for 35 days — until after the Senate voted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges against him? How about current “gender equity” champion and Newsweek National Politics Correspondent Nina Burleigh once insisting she’d be happy to give Bill Clinton oral sex “just to thank him for keeping abortion legal?”

A publicized Twitter exchange reveals the contemptible dynamic that allows the Jenny-Come-Lately types, who countenanced sexual harassment for decades, to seamlessly transition from accomplices to paragons of virtue. After watching Sen. Lindsay Graham vociferously berate his fellow senators for eviscerating the nomination process (possibly permanently), feminist champion Maria Shriver couldn’t contain herself. “Oh my god. This is every woman’s nightmare,” she tweeted.

Commentator Ben Shapiro offered some much needed perspective. “Every woman’s nightmare is being trapped in the back of a sinking car, gasping for air, I’d imagine,” he tweeted. “Did you ever ask your uncle about it?"
 That would be uncle Ted Kennedy, who still maintains "Lion of the Senate” status among the very same Democrats who speak in reverent tones about the victimization of women.

At the circus masquerading as a hearing, Sen. Cory “Spartacus” Booker — who now insists Kavanaugh shouldn’t be appointed irrespective of his innocence or guilt — inadvertently provided great insight into the progressive worldview, praising Christine Blasey Ford for coming “to tell your truth.”

Subjective truth is an oxymoron. It’s also the bedrock of totalitarian governance. Yet Democrats and the #MeToo movement remain dedicated to an incrementalist strategy, chipping away small bits of objective truth, along with morality, history, and tradition. And they will do so until the entire edifice of American jurisprudence collapses, and reality itself becomes “negotiable.”

Such determinations are evident in a column entitled, “Make My Sexual Assault Count,” by New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay, who offers up a rather curious definition of “rape” while recounting her experience in college. Gay didn’t tell her story until now because it was “so unremarkable, so common.”

How common? “I dated him afterward,” she writes. “Part of the encounter was consensual. We had both been drinking, him far more than me.”

No doubt many women harbor strong feelings of retrospective remorse with regard to some of their sexual encounters. But can a civilized society survive when any encounter can be defined as rape, even when there is an admitted lack of personal responsibility? (Gay never says whether or not she resisted the attempt.) Moreover, in what rational universe should alleged crimes committed by other people at other times “count” against anyone else?

Nonetheless, if the #MeToo movement insists on embracing score-keeping, let’s look at the entire scorecard. Does anyone still remember which side of the ideological divide celebrated the sexual revolution of the ‘60s and the unrestrained hedonism immortalized by the adage “if it feels good do it”? How about the “liberated” woman, part of whose liberation consisted of her being as sexually promiscuous as her male counterparts — and part insisting she was every bit as strong and capable as any man?

How times have “evolved.” “Democrats believe that we women are weak, mewling, helpless creatures who are defined by our interactions with men,” writes Bonnie Ramthun. “If we are touched, insulted, groped, or otherwise not treated as delicate flowers, we’re supposed to react by making our entire lives revolve about that horrible moment that ruined us forever.”

Democrats and the #MeToo movement are far more interested in ruining forever anyone who opposes their agenda. The orchestrated attack against Kavanaugh is above all else about Roe v. Wade. Thus, while the #MeToo movement is about preserving the dignity of women, it simultaneously and vociferously champions abortion that allows those same dignified women to engage in irresponsible sex with no consequences, “give or take” more than 60 million abortions in 45 years — as in 1.3 million abortions per year, 3,653 per day, and 152 per hour.

Not a single one of those victims was a “survivor.”