Alito and Thomas Aren't Really Jurists. They're Theocratic Leninists. [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://newrepublic.com/article/181732/samuel-alito-clarence-thomas-theocratic-leninists?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SF_TNR

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https://archive.li/IUfID

The shock of that upside-down flag at Samuel Alito’s house still hasn’t worn off. Hats off to the amazing Jodi Kantor for one of the great political scoops of our time. So seemingly insignificant, in a way; just a silly little symbol. But what a symbol. It says everything about these treacherous, amoral, and arrogant people.

That last adjective is the most important one. The arrogance is bottomless. Why did the Supreme Court justice do this, or allow “Mrs. Alito”—on whom he pinned the blame—to do it? He knew it was petty. And he surely knew that, by conventional ethical standards, it was wrong. But he didn’t care because he knew that he stands beyond punishment for such acts.

Who exists to mete out such censure? No one. I and people like me are writing pieces like this. Others are fulminating on cable news. The New York Times and others write editorials. Who cares? None of it matters to Alito. This is the great advantage of conservatives’ having built their own media infrastructure and their own echo chamber with its own twisted morality (rule number one: if it helps us stay in power, do it; rule number two: if it infuriates the libs, do it over and over). They can tune us out completely. Ditto the polls. They just don’t care.

There is no such thing as shame anymore with people like Alito and fellow Justice Clarence Thomas. Wasn’t it conservatives who used to lecture the rest of us about shame? How the country was better when people—by which they meant certain kinds of people, like unmarried pregnant women—felt shame for their behavior? That’s what William “Black Jack” Bennett used to tell us. Today, if Bennett were to stage a comeback—yep, he’s alive; old enough to be a Rolling Stone or a president—and write The Book of New Conservative Virtues, chapter one should be about how shamelessness is the greatest virtue of all.

*snip*