In 1983, there was a mass fainting epidemic in schools in the West Bank. Palestinian leadership accused Israel of poisoning the mostly teenage school girls. Israel accused the Palestinians of inducing the faintings to incite demonstrations. What’s truly fascinating about the episode is that it turned out to be mass hysteria. While some kind of gas may have been inhaled in the first cases, the remaining were determined to be psychosomatic.
Mass hysteria is a real thing, and we seem to be living through another outbreak.
The hysteria began almost the second that Judge Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to fill the seat left open on the Supreme Court by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Immediately, the nominee was attacked and predicted to walk back all kinds of rights upheld or decided by the Supreme Court. This, despite him stating that he followed the doctrine of stare decisis, that is, not to overturn decisions already made.
The behavior of some senators on the judiciary committee stoked the hysteria. Now the Hail Mary pass. Because of the timing, the lack of specific details, the blurriness of the entire recollection, the creativity in inventing new delay tactics, the sexual assault claim introduced by Sen. Diane Feinstein against Kavanaugh seems the pinnacle of the mass hysteria epidemic.
A senate committee exists for a reason: to question a nominee to determine his or her fitness for the role of Supreme Court justice. Let thorough questioning take place, and then let each senator vote his or her conscience. But a process — and quite frankly to a large degree a political party — guided by hysteria is unlikely to yield a positive result for any involved. My feeling is that slowly, the American people are tiring of it.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at shana@ijn.com
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