Yesterday, I spent ten hours sitting on a sofa in the family room watching the entire Senate confirmation hearing with Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford. It will rank up there with other momentous political and social events that have happened in my life – the space shuttle destruction, 9/11, the election of Donald Trump. It was traumatic and horrific and personally scarring.

It should have never happened like that. That inquiry should have happened behind closed doors and been buttressed by an independent investigation. Instead, two individuals, and their families, were publicly destroyed and humiliated.

And everybody has their own experiences that sway their interpretation of events. As a woman who grew up in the 1980s, I had bad experiences with the popular, sporty boys, as well as my own stories of beer filled parties. And a guy tweeted me his own story about how he was falsely accused of a crime when he was in college. Also, I’ve talked with a lot of women who aren’t sympathetic with Blasey Ford. They tell me that guys did this stuff all the time back then and it never stuck with them.

But those experiences cannot sway our interpretation of events.  Everybody has their own stories, and it’s coloring our views of events, which is why none of us should have been involved.

There’s a lot at stake beyond these people. There’s the flagging public trust in our institutions. There’s the ability of a government to function effectively separately from partisanship. There’s the hope — a slim hope admittedly — that the justices of our supreme court can make decisions based on an impartiality examination of the constitution, wisdom, and compassion. All that was trashed along with the reputations of the individuals at the center of this circus.

We could have done better. We should have done better.

And this isn’t over. Republicans are now galvanized behind Lindsay Graham and will show up to vote in November, when they were, maybe, going to stay home. And the Democrats are going to never be quiet about Kavanaugh’s questionable past. When they win in 2020, they will vote to increase the number of justices on the court. Instead, they should put term limits on the justices. This lifetime appointment thing should be over.

This was terrible.

That said, I think that Kavanaugh should step down. It’s impossible to believe that he will be an impartial judge after this experience.

I’ve been stuck on the sofa with an iPad in hand tweeting for the past three hours. Blasey Ford was very believable. Kavanaugh is in trouble.

She put forward all sorts of details that made her story ring true, including the fact that she heard the guys laugh after they messed with her. A group of cool, popular guys laughing after terrorizing a young, fragile girl is very believable. Quick flashback to several incidents in my high school hallway. I think I spent most of the first two years of high school avoiding certain guys, sometimes dodging into the bathroom to hide from them.

Kavanaugh is going to have a very, very hard time digging himself out of this. Someone on Twitter said that Trump is furious and stomping around the White House, because nobody told him that Blasey Ford was so believable.

The GOP’s independent prosecutor is making a hash of things, because there’s really not many holes in Blasey Ford’s story. Yes, she’s a fragile person, who has admittedly struggled with some mental health issues, but she’s a professional and her story is consistent and honest about the issues that she doesn’t remember. I don’t think we’re going to get anymore info by continued questions. I think we should just move to Kavanaugh.

Before we get all pundit-y gleeful about the upcoming Kavanaugh circus at 10, let’s remember that what we are witnessing is most definitely a TRAGEDY. Two people are about to be humiliated and tortured and only one person actually deserves it.

Ford is most likely truthful and accurate, but there is a chance that she’s not. I would feel much, much better if he had been voted out because of his position on Roe v Wade. That’s clean and neat. This isn’t.

You know what his high school calendar tells me, as someone with teenage boys? He’s been planning for greatness since he’s been a kid. Teenage boys almost never keep records like this. They don’t have the executive skills.

And notice how he simply writes “interview for Brown” on his calendar without a time? He isn’t reminding himself about going to the interview. He’s keeping record for future historians. And he saved his calendar.

And he put his exercise routine on his calendar. I’m only doing that in my 50s, and I used to be an athlete. He was a highly, highly, unusual regimented kid who completely exploded on weekends.

And now all those exploded weekends might undo all the careful planning during the rest of the week.

Now, he’ll either never have that history book about himself or he’ll get one with a very fat chapter with lots of horrible information.

And Ford herself seems to have been tortured by this high school experience, even considering moving to New Zealand to get away from hearing about BK.

Two people are about to humiliate themselves in public. This is so sad.