A panic has begun. We do so love our panics, and then squeeze everything despicable into the latest crazed narrative. It’s a facile way to make sense of a crazy world, huffing stories for the self-righteous high they give us and the facile way we can distinguish the good from the evil, even if yesterday’s heroes have to be sacrificed to drive home the purity of the story line.

The drunken tirade of now-former Dallas assistant district attorney Jody Warner against a 26-year-old male Uber driver, Shaun Platt, could easily be put to good use as a weapon in the gender war. Had Platt not been thoughtful enough to record the interaction, there’s a good chance he would have ended up as the bad guy in this story. Instead, the ex-prosecutrix found herself jobless.

Platt was polite in response to Warner’s abusive language. Warner was the pretty blonde white woman, which would have been enough to win the day, given that Platt had no victim points to count. But Warner also carried a prosecutor’s shield, which assured that the police would not only believe her, but likely teach Platt how to behave when commanded to act.

But Warner’s post-hoc attempt to twist this into a gender thing, that she “felt unsafe,” could well be the detail that pushes this over the edge of reality to reveal how panic can be just as easily abused as her power as a prosecutor.

You know about power as a prosecutor, right? It’s been on the radar a lot lately, rightfully so.

And as Warner concedes, and the tape makes undeniably clear, Warner was drunk. There is no law against getting drunk, per se, but people who are drunk do drunken things. The disinhibition lets words fly out that they wouldn’t use otherwise. They make poor choices. It’s kind of the hallmark of drunkenness, and should come as no surprise.

You know about drunkenness, right? College students experience it on occasion before engaging in sex. This has been going on for a while. It’s now deemed rape. It used to be normal. And it’s only rape for women, because drunk guys are still guys, even when both parties are equally drunk.

What happened in Platt’s Uber car would be held up as evidence in the gender war.

In what is probably Exhibit A for a one-star passenger rating, a Dallas assistant district attorney was fired after she drunkenly insulted and threatened an Uber driver, then said police officers the driver summoned would believe her side of the story and “f— you up.”

Warner: And I want to go home so badly but you’re so stupid. I want the cops to come so that they can f— you up. That’s what I want. Like you’re such an idiot, I want the cops to come.

Platt: “Ma’am please.”

Warner: (Mocking) “No ma’am please. Dude, everything’s being recorded. I’m an assistant district attorney so shut the f— up.

So much for “women with power are better humans than men with power.” Or maybe it’s got nothing to do with gender at all, but what happens to any person who’s drunk, who chooses to drink more than she should and loses control. Or maybe it’s drunk on power, the authority that empowers one to command others, to speak abusively to others, to believe one can do whatever one wants with impunity.

Just as it’s false and irrational to induce from Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK and even the nefarious Roy Moore, for whom pedophilia is just the latest in a long list of grievances, that all males are evil rapists, it’s false to hold out Jody Warner as proof of the opposite. Warner’s conduct proves only that Warner couldn’t handle her power or her booze.

But what this does show is how Jody Warner sought to shield her personal bad behavior behind a trendy excuse. She claims she felt unsafe, after she sobered up and had the opportunity to go through the list of common excuses for the marginalized.

Warner held a tearful news conference where she apologized on Tuesday. She told reporters she felt uncomfortable when Platt went a different way than she was used to and went into “fight or flight mode.”

“I’m very sorry for the language I used. I’m not proud of it,” she said, occasionally wiping away tears. “I appreciate being given the opportunity to give my side. I’m not trying to make any accusations against that driver. I don’t know what’s in his heart. I can tell you that not everything he said was true. I never touched him.”

At no prior time in history would a woman, a prosecutor, who used her authority to threaten the guy driving her that cops would beat him if he didn’t comply with her drunken commands, utter the words “I don’t know what’s in his heart” or “I never touched him.”

Platt’s “offense” was to be a guy, and even someone as clearly in the wrong as Warner had that card to play in her effort to offset her words. There is no rational twist to Warner’s conduct that gives rise to any wrong by Platt, and yet Warner pushes some fantasy about “what’s in his heart” because the gender wars have provided a weapon to absolve women of responsibility for their actions so long as there is a man around to be blamed.

Jody Warner is no postergirl for feminism. She may be a good argument for temperance, but those days are past us. She is certainly a good example of how people with a little power are inclined to abuse it whenever it serves their drunken interest. And when sober, after having an opportunity to reflect upon the list of lies available to women to appeal to their ilk, Jody Warner is an example of how the panic has distorted reality in the name of feminist fantasy.

Jody Warner was fired from her position as an assistant district attorney, not because she was a woman, not because the evil male Platt made her behave poorly, but because her drunken indiscretion demonstrated that she lacked the integrity to handle her authority.

Even though she has no business being in a position of power she can’t handle, this was a learning opportunity for a young lawyer, and she now has the chance to shake off her mistake and move on to being a better lawyer and person for it. Or, she can become a warrior for her gender, abused by whatever that male Uber driver had in his heart. Or the victim of drunkenness, like so many co-eds claim to be. This is what panic does to reason.