I wish I could offer some reassurance to Blasey (note to TPM: that’s the surname she prefers) but the fact is she will be confronted by a pack of vile, soulless men who will stop at nothing to discredit her. The plus side is that I think there is great benefit for a person to be able to finally speak the truth in public, especially about some long-hidden secret and under such difficult circumstances. It can have a liberating effect.
Meanwhile, here is the attitude that she will be faced with. And this, incredibly, is an attempt to put a best face on that attitude. From an editorial in the WSJ, which also includes some discussion of the Salem Witch Trials (!):
"The thing happened—if it happened—an awfully long time ago, back in Ronald Reagan’s time, when the actors in the drama were minors and (the boys, anyway) under the blurring influence of alcohol and adolescent hormones. No clothes were removed, and no sexual penetration occurred. The sin, if there was one, was not one of those that Catholic theology calls peccata clamantia—sins that cry to heaven for vengeance.
The offense alleged is not nothing, by any means. It is ugly, and stupid more than evil, one might think, but trauma is subjective and hard to parse legally. Common sense is a little hard put to know what to make of the episode, if it happened."