April 8 was a day to celebrate, on the south lawn of the White House, the confirmation of a U.S. Supreme Court nominee.

“I knew it wouldn’t be easy. But I knew the person I nominated would be put through a painful and difficult confirmation process. But I have to tell you. What Judge Jackson was put through was well beyond that. It was verbal abuse. The anger. The constant interruptions. The most vile, baseless assertions and accusations,” the nominator said.

Paging Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Brent Kavanaugh.

Paging Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Brent Kavanaugh.

Please call your offices.

Please call your offices.

It’s hard to know where to file a statement such as that.

Maybe under: “Do you really believe what you said?”

Maybe under: “Do you really expect us to believe it?”

Maybe under: “If so, do you think we’re not too bright?”

Or maybe under: “What else do you believe or expect us to believe?” Perhaps with this: Speaking in Iowa on April 12, the same person said the surge in energy prices is Russian President Vladimir “Putin’s price hike.”

Yet whatever the effect on energy prices of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it wasn’t he who cut American energy production right after his inauguration on January 20, 2021.

It wasn’t he who later, without undoing that cut, asked other countries to increase their energy production.

Energy prices began rising after January 20, 2021, not after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Shortly after his election to the U.S. Senate from Delaware half a century ago, the same person was invited to speak at an American law school.

Most members of the law-school faculty refused to introduce him, because he wasn’t liberal enough.

One professor, who during his entire tenure at the law school was either the only, or one of the few, Republicans on the faculty – which doesn’t much narrow down the number of American law schools that this one could be – agreed to introduce the senator.

The professor and the senator had breakfast together before the former introduced the latter.

Watching the latter nowadays, the former says the latter “doesn’t have 10 percent of the brain power” that he had half a century ago.

Is that hyperbole? Yes. Is it still, to understate the point, a matter of concern? Yes.

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Back to the statement on the south lawn.

It doesn’t take brilliance to ask questions in response.

Among them might be, first, if what has just happened during Supreme Court nomination hearings went “well beyond” “a painful and difficult process,” then what should one call what happened to Bork, Thomas, and Kavanaugh?

Second, if what has just happened during Supreme Court nomination hearings included either “verbal abuse,” “anger,” or “constant interruptions,” then what should one call what happened to Bork, Thomas, and Kavanaugh?

Third, if what has just happened during Supreme Court nomination hearings amounted to “the most vile, baseless assertions and accusations,” then what should one call what happened to Bork, Thomas, and Kavanaugh?

Where was the denunciation of what happened to Bork, Thomas, and Kavanaugh? Or did that not involve

¯ “a painful and difficult process,”

¯ “verbal abuse,”

¯ “anger,”

¯ “constant interruptions,” or

¯ “the most vile, baseless assertions and accusations”?

If not, why not?

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The statements on the south lawn and in Iowa are – to borrow a phrase – “well beyond” falsehoods.

To the world, they belie the speaker’s candor, the speaker’s ability to analyze, or both.

At base, they reveal weakness.

Those who don’t wish the United States well are watching and taking advantage of such weakness.

Randy Elf joins those who see this as a matter of concern.

COPYRIGHT ç 2022 BY RANDY ELF