Jeff Flake, Republican Senator from Arizona, was once again the man of the moment, as he has often been during the past two years. One of the most persistent Trump critics in the upper chamber, Flake has become a celebrity of sorts, and sometimes a media darling. All that vanished last week when he became the pivotal vote as the Judiciary Committee decided on the SCOTUS nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. Flake had made it clear he was willing to move the matter through the committee and to the floor when, during a break, he was accosted. Two activists, both women, cornered Flake as he attempted to ride an elevator. One of the women, seizing the opportunity, railed at the Senator:

“I was sexually assaulted, and nobody believed me. I didn’t tell anyone, and you’re telling all women that they don’t matter . . . That’s what you’re telling all of these women. That’s what you’re telling me right now. Look at me when I’m talking to you! You are telling me that my assault doesn’t matter . . . Don’t look away from me. Look at me.”

Flake, appearing a bit queasy after the confrontation, voted to move Kavanaugh forward, but he would make his floor vote subsequent to an additional FBI investigation into the nominee’s past.

Lisa Murkowski, the slippery Republican from Alaska, was another target for such influence. A group of Alaskan women met with Sen. Murkowski in her office, and confided in her their own stories of sexual abuse and assault, and, in doing so, begged her to reconsider her support of Kavanaugh’s nomination. She later announced that Kavanaugh was a “good man” but not the right person for the Court at this moment.

Social media has been similarly awash in these methods of persuasion. Alyssa Milano, an actress, took to Twitter to air a video of a young girl, a Joe Manchin (D-WV) constituent, recounting her own sexual assault. Milano implored Senator Manchin to watch and listen as he considered his vote.

Lobbying is a staple of free governments. Lobbying engages the political process to inform elected officials and change outcomes. Senators are grown adults who cast votes for a living. Surely their skins are thick enough to handle these confrontations.

But in what universe are personal narratives relevant to the vote either for or against Kavanaugh? I have no reason to doubt the validity of any claims. I am sure these women, along with too many others, have been traumatized by sexual encounters, assaults, or rape. I cannot imagine what happened to them, and I am sure in their mind that is precisely the point. People like me need to imagine it.

These personal narratives, though, had no bearing on Kavanaugh’s guilt or the factual grounds of Dr. Ford’s claims. They revealed painful and tragic events that still lacked pertinence.

The path behind such thinking is long and winding. There is a belief that personal narrative constitutes the ultimate authoritative claim. There can be no arguing with how one has experienced their own reality, and since no experience is superior or inferior to any other, these stories, though disconnected by definition from the matter at hand–whether or not Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Dr. Ford several decades ago–must matter to those in power. To suggest they don’t matter traumatizes the sufferer all over again.

If nothing transcends the self, the postmodern “I” must be acknowledged as supreme since nothing exists to adjudicate claims against it. In this way, these stories matter simply because those recounting them claim they do.

I am willing to grant some of this. For a particular person, the events may be intertwined. If a woman has experienced this kind of horror, similar events resurrect freshly the past. Experientially, they belong together because that is how they are processed by the sufferer.

This is, obviously, beyond reason and argumentation, and what puts such experiences beyond reason and argument also makes them irrelevant in light of a particular case. Strong evidence is verifiable. Patterns involve multiple accusers. People must be connected to the time and place crimes were alleged to have happened. External sources are brought to bear. At minimum, as in the Kavanaugh affair, a reputation was at stake. At maximum, lives are in the balance, freedom is on the line, and fortunes are at risk. Narratives may help advocates understand themselves and may connect them to others, but their narratives, no matter how painful, are not dispositive as we consider the accuser and accused.

The #BelieveSurvivors movement, an outgrowth of the #MeToo phenomenon, is ultimately an invitation to passion and impulse, a binding together of heat and intensity that seeks to incinerate all in its path. Though it reflects real pain and suffering, the movement is in essence a political message crowding its way into legal and decision-making settings that demand something beyond experience and narrative. Perhaps a thought experiment might help illustrate the dangers of experience as a foundation for this kind of persuasion.

Let’s pretend that as a teenager, I was mugged by three African-Americans.* One held a knife to my neck, threatening to plunge it through my jugular. Another rifled through my pockets and the third was a lookout. After taking my wallet and car keys, they punched me, kicked me in the chest and head, and left me bleeding on the ground. A passerby eventually saw me, the authorities were contacted, and an ambulance was called. Before anyone arrived, I got to my feet and decided I’d rather head home than go through a painful, potentially fruitless, legal proceeding. I was shaken by the encounter. I told as few people as possible and obscured most of the details out of shame and embarrassment.

To what degree should my experience matter? Should I use it to beg judges and juries to condemn other African-Americans accused of similar crimes? Should I hold what happened to me, at the hands of three very real people, over the heads of other African-Americans who share only a race with my assailants? Further, let’s assume a distinguished African-American jurist is being considered for a seat on the Supreme Court. Perhaps this nominee even grew up in a rough neighborhood and skirted the law as a youth. Should my narrative dictate the vote of a Senator who is considering this nominee? After all, I suffered. Shouldn’t that matter? If they ignore me, are those Senators invalidating me? Are they an affront to all people like me? Are they delegitimizing others like me if they politely decline to act based on my experience?**

I am not trying to pretend this fictional account is equivalent to a rape or sexual assault. I am sure it is not, but the argument still holds. Even if those who lobbied Manchin, Murkowski, and Flake were well-intentioned and truthful, we do not want any part of our political or legal system to pay attention to these kinds of appeals as they consider specific cases and accusations. These appeals were emotional, raw, and painful. They were also irrelevant. If they become relevant, we are drifting, dangerously, beyond the essential elements of a rational society, and toward a new kind of reality where evidence matters only to the degree to which it fits into the personal narratives of those in power. That society would be one swayed by passion and politics and devoid of due process and equality before the law.

In Federalist 10, Madison defined a faction succinctly:

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

The #MeToo movement is straying close to the borders of Madison’s definition when it suggests decisions, like Kavanaugh’s nomination, should be made apart from evidence and process and in light of the shared pain of others who have never met Kavanaugh.

There were plenty of reasons to vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Perhaps some believed he was guilty. Some believed his behavior in front of the committee revealed a poor judicial temperament. Some simply disagreed with his approach to the Constitution or precedent. Fine. But to vote against him, or to persuade others to do so, because you, or someone you talked to, suffered at the hands of someone other than Brett Kavanaugh is indefensible.

The United States Senate was designed, famously, as the saucer to cool the hot passions of the People’s House. It was meant to be sober, deliberative, and forward-looking. The Senate was to have a whiff of aristocracy as members considered their actions in light of future generations. The Senate was a placid check on democratic impulses which are prone to demagoguery. At its best, it should refine the people’s desires, sift them for what is best, and convert them into wise policies. The #MeToo movement must be considered and parsed. It should influence the powerful, including the Senate, maybe even as it considers policy to protect women in the workplace or in other realms. But #MeToo should not blind Senators to basic fairness and reason as they consider specific cases or nominees. These instances demand wise judgment informed by evidence relevant to the case at hand.

*I am obviously using African-Americans as an illustration because of the reality that they are often negatively stereotyped and I’m trying to illustrate the wrong of this situation. I am in no way trying to reinforce any negative stereotypes that people may have–just the opposite is the intent. And, I am not suggesting people like Brett Kavanaugh have suffered through similar stereotypes. Clearly, they have not. But the point is to highlight the downside of trauma as the foundation of lobbying and persuasion for particularized cases.

**Notice, please, I am saying nothing of Dr. Ford’s claims. Those were of a different kind than the confrontations at issue here. There is not a question of whether this particular person was an assailant, but the issue is the extent to which my narrative of pain should matter even though I am not alleging the person being considered ever did anything to me.