Perhaps some day we will come to see Justice Kavanaugh as the closest thing we have in modern times to the abjectly miserable Winston Smith in Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, who suffered unspeakable forms of torture in “Room 101”, the worst torture chamber of all in Oceania.
Perhaps, in fact, that day is here, as the final day of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings brought us to a new low of ruthless cruelty in an attempt to destroy a man and his family. I would posit that this kind of barbarity and savagery is just one baby step away from the “creative” methods of torture administered to Winston Smith and any of his fellow Oceanians who ran afoul of the dreaded “Thought Police”.
And, what was in Room 101? As O’Brien told Winston as he was being led to the room of so many nightmares on Oceania:
“ “You asked me once,’ said O’Brien, ‘what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.’
“ ‘The worst thing in the world’ said O’Brien, ‘varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths.’
“ ‘In your case’, said O’Brien, ‘the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.’ “
In the novel, recalling an earlier incident when Winston and his (forbidden) paramour were intruded upon by a large rat, surveilled by the “Thought Police” through the all knowing telescreens installed everywhere in the country, the “worst thing in the world” to Winston was a rat. O’Brien goes on to explain the nature of the horrific torture he has planned for Winston, involving an imaginative device which fits onto Winston’s face containing very large, and very hungry, brown rats. The thing, a cage with several chambers which can be opened in sequence allowing the rats to get closer and closer to the face of the “enemy of the State” until he or she either dies of shock or tells the Thought Police what they want to hear. O’Brien describes their demonic reasoning in this passage:
“ ‘ By itself,’ he said, ‘pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable—something that cannot be contemplated. … It is the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wish to. You will do what is required of you.’ “
For those of you who followed this National disgrace as we did, you will know where this is going, because what would be the worst thing in the world for a man like Judge Kavanaugh, a man whose life’s record of accomplishment is simply, there is no other word for it, legendary in the annals of law and jurisprudence? While none of us can claim to know the answer to that question, we may reasonably surmise an answer based upon the intensity and emotion of his responses at the now-iconic speech he gave in answer to the gutter slanders of the despicable creatures on the Democrat side of the committee.
The “worst thing in the world” for this devoted and loving husband of Ashley and father of Margaret and Liza, son of his Mom and Dad, brilliant student and lawyer and closest assistant to a President of the United States, a Judge whose 312 opinions are masterpieces of legal erudition—would be for his honor and integrity to be besmirched before the world—but so much more importantly to this fine man—before his wife and little girls and Mom and Dad.
And so it was in our modern version of Room 101, which contained “the worst thing in the world” for The Honorable Brett Kavanaugh.
And, don’t believe the remnants from Oceania such as Spartacus and the blandly sinister Feinstein and Stolen Valor Blumenthal and their fellow brown rats didn’t know exactly what the “worst thing in the world” was for this truly Honorable man.
To those who may feel I have become just a tad overwrought about this: I have in my family beautiful little girls I absolutely adore, I have a wife who has been my life partner for almost half a century without whom I cannot envision life, I had a Mom and Dad I revered and I have been blessed with some of the most amazing friends, far and wide, anyone could hope to have. I simply cannot imagine what a man of such towering quality must have gone through while having his obviously adoring wife and precious little girls hearing this steady stream of raw sewage being poured all over their Dad and Husband by bottom feeding vermin like those who mounted this dreadful lynching.
Room 101?
Yes!
Complete with a pack of avariciously hungry rats.