Is Brett Kavanaugh Out for Revenge?
This article was published online on May 13, 2021.
The suburban gentry of Chevy Chase, Maryland, had some difficulty making sense of Brett Kavanaugh’s descent into villainy that fall. He had always seemed so nice and nonthreatening to his neighbors, so normal—the khaki-clad carpool dad who coached the girls’ basketball team and yammered endlessly about the Nats. It was true that his politics were unusual for the neighborhood, the kind of place where No Justice / No Peace signs stand righteously in front of million-dollar homes. But Brett was not a scary Republican, of the kind who had recently invaded Washington. He was well educated and properly socialized, a friend of the Bushes, a stalwart of the country club. When his nomination to the Supreme Court was first announced, the neighborhood had largely welcomed the news. People gave interviews attesting to his niceness; the owner of the Chevy Chase Lounge said that he would add Brett’s photo to the wall of famous patrons.
But then came the first accusation, and the next accusations, and the cable-news pile-on, and the Donald Trump tweets, and the satellite trucks on Thornapple Street, and the regrettable Senate hearings in which their neighbor appeared on national TV, his face twisted into an aggrieved snarl, his voice torqued up to an unnatural shout, ranting through tears about the political enemies who were trying to destroy his life—and, well, suddenly what to think about Brett wasn’t so clear anymore.
Stories of his shunning circulated among neighbors, accompanied by a mix of pity and schadenfreude: the woman at La Ferme who heckled him after dinner; the taunting message on the diner marquee that he passed each morning on his commute. Even at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, where people were usually so good about setting aside political differences, the Kavanaugh case proved divisive. Poor Father Foley was swamped with letters and emails, while parishioners parsed the details of Brett’s alleged youthful sins—What was a devil’s triangle, anyway?—and grumbled about watching him receive Communion.
Brett was confirmed in the end, of course, becoming the 114th justice to serve on the Supreme Court, but his photo never made it onto the wall at the Chevy Chase Lounge. And maybe it was just their imagination, but some of his neighbors swore that Brett was different now—harder, further away. He wore a baseball cap when he left the house, and started dining out more at the country club, where security was tight and access was limited. He canceled a planned trip to the annual Harvard–Yale game and turned down invitations to lectures and conferences, hosting small groups of students in his chambers instead.
For months, he seemed to float quietly through the neighborhood like a spectral figure, a ghost of culture wars past, condemned to haunt Chevy Chase. Sightings at the grocery store became moments of morbid fascination disguised as friendly concern: How did he look? What was his mood? Does he seem okay—you know, after everything?
Then one day, about six months after he was sworn in, Brett did something strange. It was Easter Sunday, and he had come to Blessed Sacrament for Mass with his family. When the service ended, he made
