Those people all look pretty bad right now. The accusation from Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh tried to rape her when they were both teenagers in the early 80s may not derail his ascension to the highest court in the country, pending a Senate hearing that may or may not include her testimony. But in the days since news of that accusation broke, reporting on the milieu from which Kavanaugh emerged has painted an ugly portrait of elite American society as both bacchanalian and banal, a nepotacracy where connections matter far more than any semblance or strain of morality.

A contemporary of Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Prep told HuffPost the scene there included “14-, 15-, 16-year-olds, 17-year-old kids doing whatever the fuck they wanted to do, with no repercussions. Drugs everywhere. Partying everywhere. Drinking—just whatever we wanted to do. It was unbelievable, off the rails.” At Yale, Kavanaugh belonged to a “secret society” that was basically a bunch of guys getting drunk together. To some extent, that’s normal college nonsense, but after law school, Kavanaugh clerked for Alex Kozinski a federal judge later pushed out in disgrace after being accused of sexually harassing women he supervised, and showing pornography to his subordinates. (Kavanaugh has said he was unaware of this behavior, though Kozinski’s nature doesn’t seem to have been much of a secret; the judge ran an email list where he shared dirty jokes and stories.) When Kavanaugh was a judge himself, Amy Chua, the Yale professor most famous for writing Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, reportedly told her students it was “no accident” his female clerks “looked like models.” (According to the Guardian, a student “reacted with surprise, and quickly pointed out that Chua’s own daughter was due to clerk for Kavanaugh. A source said that Chua quickly responded, saying that her own daughter would not put up with any inappropriate behavior.”)