It was a tweet reported at Breitbart Hollywood that cleared my thinking on the over-the-top Kavanaugh reaction on this, the morning after his confirmation.  After scrolling through the obscenities that surprisingly manage to remain posted on Facebook, right below a gigantic picture of Amy Schumer rests this comment, or perhaps more of a call to arms: "Susan Collins will spend the rest of her life getting screamed at every single time she steps foot in public."  Linking through to NBC Capitol Hill correspondent's Kasie Hunt's Twitter feed, we get a taste of the vicious mob that Mr. McConnell called a great political gift.  So why am I not feeling Christmas?

At the beginning, I thought the Ford disclosures might trigger private if not painful memories of adolescent indiscretions – the ones we are too embarrassed to pass along to our kids as life lessons.  Perhaps it would be liberating or healing to connect to other flawed humans who once chose poorly but ultimately emerged as decent, caring folks.  Those voices were immediately buried in a tsunami of intolerance and demands that survivors of sexual assault be canonized, with Hunt calling the last two weeks "one long primal scream."  Yet even as the professor's story unfolded, I somehow expected a gentle but unequivocal reality check from the very group Ford felt compelled to defend and energize: the survivors. 

The #MeToo supporters decisively and predictably stepped up with their media megaphones, but what was missing in their rhetoric was perspective about normal consequences and the adaptive mechanisms survivors experience.  Watching Ford's performance, I supposed that for most of us, solidarity with a teenager who showed up to party with four drunk boys and then got fondled but escaped un-raped might be a bit of a stretch.  While we could sympathize that dangerous decisions put nice girls at risk, her PTSD is not our PTSD.  She got away with a bad memory that reportedly ruined her life...but while there are those who never recover, there is also a significant number of us who refused to have our lives ruined.  All assaults are not created equal, and for many of us who have lived with the nightmare of sexual assault, this Palo Alto Ph.D. in Mr. Peabody glasses related a trauma we could only wish might have been ours.

We knew she was being used.  Why did we not speak?

Certainly, sexual assault can ruin the lives of victims and often should ruin the lives of the perpetrators, but an honest view of the events is crucial to healing.  Although articulating a different point from the one we've been hearing from the confirmation circus feels like an invitation to shoot the messenger, revisiting my own experience in the last couple of weeks has been as insightful as it has been unpleasant.

Here's my survivor perspective: I did not let it ruin or intend it to ruin someone else, which may be the only reason it didn't ruin me.  Senator Collins did not betray me.  She thankfully showed restraint and balanced her perspective, and for that she deserves to be hunted down and screamed at for the rest of her life?  Sorry, but I'd rather reserve my primal screaming for the mob who pushed Poor Christine forward as our martyred patron saint.  They did none of us any favors.