A Former Prosecutor Is Skeptical Of The Reade Accusations Against Biden

Some of these details I didn't know, some I'd heard but forgotten in the shuffle. When you put them all together, it does sound pretty fishy.
   Honestly, though, the thing I found most astonishing was the author's claim that in 27 years he only dropped charges against two people on grounds of having concluded they were innocent. It seems impossible that he only came across two such cases in more than 25 years...
   Anyway. "Me Too" never made any sense, of course. One of the most notable things about the second decade of the century was that progressives became convinced that no one had ever noticed racism, sexism, etc. before. (Of course "transphobia" was new, on account of having been just made up.) We had, of course, already lived through liberal hysteriae about these things--or, rather, were still living through them--when progressives elected to kick it all up another notch. Sexual harassment--in academia at least--is absolutely a real thing. Though in my experience, even during the first effort to extirpate it, the left's strategy mostly amounted to throwing standards of evidence out the window and accusing a large number of innocent men. The actual harassers were used to dodging detection and punishment. They were hard targets. And much of the goal was simply to retaliate against hated groups and political enemies...all relatively soft targets...nailing the actual perpetrators was just too much work. Also, there never seemed to me to be that many of them. Seemed to be a few hard-core serial offenders, so far as I could tell. Even if you get 'em, it's not going to get you the kind of head count you want. Also, many of them are lefties in good standing. And that really won't do. So anyway, what we ended up with was mostly a spike in false accusations...thus making everything worse. Before I saw the first wave of witch-hunts first hand, I had a natural inclination to give such accusations credence. 30 years later, I've learned better.

   That's the same thing we've seen with racism and accusations thereof. The progressive witch-hunters aren't actually uncovering more of it. (For one thing: there's a lot less of it.) They're mostly just flinging false accusations. Which is why nobody with a brain takes them seriously anymore. I mean: worries that they might be true. Of course people take their destructive potential seriously.
   Perhaps most notable right now is the left's extreme double-standard, in this as in everything. Blasey Ford was rather obviously a kook and a liar, but her kooky lies were treated like the gospel truth, whereas Reade's (also sketchy) accusations took weeks to even be reported-on in some of the MSM.
   These progressive witch-hunts are largely used for political purposes. Their main targets are always, largely, the political enemies of the left. When the weapons were new and hadn't yet ever misfired and blown back on the virtuous, what we got was a relentless drumbeat of "believe all women." It never made a lick of sense, but that didn't matter when it was serving its political purpose. To question Kavanaugh's accuser was, of course, to "blame the victim"...even though she wasn't a victim. In the end, the worst one was permitted to think of her accusations was: someone definitely assaulted her...but maybe not Kavanaugh... Making, once again, almost no sense whatsoever. Now that it's a crucial Democrat being targeted, suddenly everything has changed, and innocent until proven guilty again sounds like a pretty good idea. Honestly, the left usually makes at least some effort to pretend that they care about consistency. I guess Trump has made them desperate, because they aren't even trying this time.
   At any rate: Reade's accusation has some things going for it...but, as Stern points out, there are also reasons to doubt it. Some of his arguments aren't great, but several seem solid. The ratcheting up of the alleged assault from bad neck-touching to digital rape is obviously fishy, to point to just one specific.