Perhaps this is just the way the world works: a long-standing institution, full of history and tradition, suddenly seems to break up right before our eyes.
The U.S. Supreme Court has self-destructed, though lots of forces have produced the rapid descent into squalor. It is happening quickly, but it seems likely that there has been a long period of norms and traditions breaking down. We just kept assuming the ship would right itself.
Clarence Thomas certainly rose from abject poverty to become a successful lawyer and judge on the highest court in the country. Got to give him that. But there is no cause and effect existing between "boy grew up poor and Black" and "man demonstrates strong morality, ethics, and judgment."
In fact, there might be all sorts of motivators for someone desperate for money, fame, recognition, power, etc., to go off the rails, so to speak.
Thomas has now crossed into being a generally immoral or unethical man, along with his wife (who grew up among John Birchers in Nebraska, not that that should be an excuse).
I assume he was guilty of most of the things Anita Hill (and other women) accused him of 30 years ago or more. But I also assumed that his close call might have been a wake up, and that he would at least keep his misogyny and overt sexism under wraps. Maybe that did happen.
But, at an even more fundamental level, Thomas's absolute power has produced a small, angry, and entitled man. Learning that he pals around with a billionaire who lavished Thomas and family with money and expensive trips and gifts may simply mean that our second Black justice is just like so many politicians and public figures. Greedy. Scornful of the general citizenry.
But the latest revelations about him reaping a profit from selling that billionaire a home he inherited, and then having his mother continue to live there at no cost to Thomas... well, that is clearly breaking the law and clearly leveraging his position.
He's no Trump, but the difference between Thomas and Trump is more one of scale than content or quality.
Both are ugly blots on the nation. Both need to go away.
They can bathe in their wealth, but could they please do it privately?
"Have you no sense of decency?" is the question from attorney Joseph Welch asked Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954. McCarthy had no answer other than descending into alcoholism and dying in 1957.
Where is the person with power on the Supreme Court who can ask Thomas a similar question? Until it is asked and answered, the court remains a travesty that few Americans can respect.
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