Brett Kavanaugh hearing exposes national struggle over trust and sexual politics

The subject was supposed to be the selection of a new justice on the Supreme Court. Instead Thursday's showdown on Capitol Hill was a raw, scorched-earth confrontation across the nation's most emotionally wrenching divides. This was men against women, right against left, a cascade of recriminations, explosions of anger, hours of tears and sobs.

A hearing that was supposed to bring clarity instead erupted in thunderclaps from the nation's built-up tensions over how the sexes are supposed to behave with each other. Judge Brett Kavanaugh and the woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her came before the Senate Judiciary Committee in "the wrong town at the wrong time", as Republican senator Lindsey Graham put it.