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9/28/2018

What is credible?


Watching the Kavanaugh/Ford show including the entire testimony of both parties one thing has become clear, some definition of credible needs to be determined.

Throughout all of this the Democrats have consistently used the term credible allegation, so what is credible?
able to be believed; convincing.
Which also means that if something is not convincing or able to be believed it is not credible. Simple really.

Listening to Dr. Ford and her recounting of her story sounds credible, but nearly any story without context is believable especially if you have no reason to doubt the story.

Let's begin with the very real fact that anyone's memory of an event thirty-six years old is going to be a bit hazy at best. So she should not be held responsible to remember every single detail of the events in question.

On the other hand she does say the event has been a traumatic event in her life so it is not like she is being asked to recall some mundane event but rather something tremendously important in her life.

As a personal example, without help from someone else present I cannot remember my eighth birthday party, or that birthday at all. But I do remember a great deal about the day my father died, which happened shortly after.

Something which deeply affects you is bound to be more memorable than a normal day, simply because you will think about it more, and for a longer period of time. I have revisited the day my father died many times in my mind and have hardly, if ever, discussed it with others.

That is why we call such things, memorable.

Trying to determine what someone should or should not remember is impossible though. People hold onto some things and discard others and that is just the way the human mind works. By the way the human mind also replaces memories as well, especially painful ones.

So if memories are not to be a basis for credibility what is? How about the memories you do have and how they stack up against other peoples and common sense?

With that standard, Dr. Ford's accusation is not credible at all. She originally identified four other people as being at the scene of the alleged attack. They have all said they were not there and have no recollection of the event. This includes one person who was just an attendee, two people who would be in jeopardy if true and one person who is her life long friend.

She has now, at the last minute, added a fifth "unknown" attendee, more on that shortly.

Actually in a lot of ways this should end the matter straight out. But there is more.

She does not recall how she ended up at the house, she did not drive yet.  Credible?

She does not remember where the party was, when it was and importantly whose house it was. Credible?

 Perhaps this is why at the last official "telling" of her story she added another person who is "unknown." This new person was not in her previous statements. There is a very good reason for adding someone you cannot identify to the story at the last minute.

 At the very least these kids were at someones house. The new person added to Ford's story was a must. Simply because, besides the people identified denying any knowledge, they also all lived in houses. Houses which could be compared to her description. Without an "unknown other" all the houses would be known and one better match her description.

Then there is the locked door that she seems to remember then promptly forgets.

 From her testimony:

Brett and Mark came into the bedroom and locked the door behind them......
...... I was able to get up and run out of the room. Directly across from the bedroom was a small bathroom. I ran inside the bathroom and locked the door.
It is of course possible that she simply forgot or did not mention that she stopped to unlock the door. But to be credible we must explain why the "attackers" allowed her to so easily escape. After all they locked the door to keep her in right? They turned up the music to drown out her calls for help and Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth to keep her from calling for help. Then after taking all these precautions to ensure the success of their scheme, they just let her go.

But she did not flee the house, she did not call for help, she did not run downstairs to be with others who could protect her, she locked herself in a bathroom right across the hall from her assailants. Credible?

We also know that her "lifelong" friend says she not only does not remember the party she does not know Brett Kavanaugh. But for the sake of argument let's say her friend just forgot about the party.

Lets say that since Ford claims not to have told anyone and she left the house without saying goodbye, her friend just does not remember the get together.

She left the house and her friend without telling her.  She did not warn the other girl present, a friend, that there were two drunk "older boys" who had tried to rape her. She just went out the front door without warning her friend? Credible?

She said she was relieved that they did not follow her outside, that's nice, what about the girl she left behind? And the girl she left behind never asked her why? "Why did you leave me in the house with those older boys alone?"  "Where did you go?" Never asked? Credible?

If that happened is it credible that two fifteen year old girls would never discuss the events that she claims to have just occurred....ever? Not after they happened, not in the next three years of high school together, not in the remainder of their "life long" friendship? Credible?

Then she goes home.

How did she get there? She doesn't remember. She did not live near the country club where she thinks she came from on that day before the "get together" so who drove her home?

How did she call for a ride? This is pre-cell phone America. If she did not call from the house, Where did she go to find a pay phone? Even in those days pay phones were not on every corner, you had to go to commercial area to find one. Certainly if she called someone to pick her up, an older person who could drive that she knew, they might remember. Or did she return to the club? She does not remember? Credible?

She was there, Kavanaugh attacked her, she was gone. Everything else is forgotten.

I came in to my house from playing baseball with Gary and Ernie B. to house full of Aunts on the day my father died fifty five years ago when I was eight.

I could go on but in evaluating two compelling testimonies, two totally conflicting accounts how do you decide? You decide based on the best evidence available to you. In this case the best evidence available is the memory of Dr. Ford. But not her memory taken as fact, but her memory judged against known facts and common sense.

What is credible? Not the memory of Dr. Ford.

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