Post-Midterm, Republicans Look in the Mirror for Solutions to Their Lacking Performance…They blame SingleWomen For Not Supporting Them But Are Still Frightened of Diversity

  The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old, beginning from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the shapes and directions of American politics and culture, with occasional comments on the potential impact of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted. 

‘Republicans Looking in the Mirror’ (with full-on, myopic admiration of themselves) appears to be a significant political meme for 21st century American politics. What Republicans see reflected are their own images that they approve of mightily with only minor adjustments of eyeliner, hair tint, or toupees. 

How...'Buffo' are the Republican Party (with males playing female parts.) How 'Rabelaisian' in their idiotic and farcical obstinacy. How not enjoyable yet intellectually fascinating, as a natural disaster can be sometimes.

Meanwhile, when not admiring themselves, Republicans expend an unholy effort to remold the reality of the world around them to fit their private, gender-race exclusive view of what the world ‘Should’ look like. (And they genuinely appear puzzled as to why the world does not want to kneel to their view of things.)

Republicans seem not to like the majority of Americans (as evidenced by their losing the popular vote in the last 5 or so POTUS elections, even though they ‘rigged’ 2 presidencies in that period.) 

But those voter signals haven't persuaded the Republican Party to broaden its base with more inclusive appeals and policies, even though they cry and complain why the broad American voters don't like them.

Republicans need to tap into the American voter diversity, but they shy away from diversity of all kinds and instead worship their mirrors. But ‘what the Hell’, political shannigans (and foreign campaign money, thanks to the Roberts Court) can change that, right? ‘Not’, per the last mid-terms.

The latest Republican farce is the complaint that their shockingly ‘less’ mid-term performance was because all those terrible “single women” didn’t show up to vote for a homogeneously white male political party that is singularly patriarchal, ‘retro’, misogynist, and racist (by the preferred absence of skin ‘tint’, except for burnt orange from a tube).

Owing to that ‘betrayal’ (shed a tear) by those single women, Republicans shakily ‘won’ the House but with nowhere near the ‘Red Tsunami’ they expected, and crowed about as they counted chickens that would hatch from rotten eggs.

What are those Republican, white male exclusionists to do? Why 'obviously', find other scapegoats. (Ah, there they are - single women..."that's the ticket" for sure.)

Meanwhile, America’s diverse audience has left the theater, leaving Republicans to creak open faded curtains on Act 2, mascared actors and all.

THE REVERSAL OF ROE v WADE - THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FAILED ITSELF THROUGH POLITICAL NAÏVETÉ AND BICKERING

 The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's first term. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impact of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.                 ____

This post responds to 'Jamess's June 25, 2022, article in the DailyKos  (Simply Amazing! The "Common-law experts" that Alito relies on -- Weren't Even Americans). 

Yes, we know that Alito's twisted-history argument leading to the reversal of Row v Wade is bogus. But the Jamess title implicitly carries two lessons for Democrats  -  become grownups, both politically and sometimes personally, and stop the Democrat Party's inclination to drown itself with ego-centered bickering?’  

The lessons from the Trump debacle are: 

POLITE DISSENT, viz., A SPLINTERED BALLOT LOSES EVERYTHING; and 

STOP INTERNAL BICKERING - UNIFY ON BASIC RIGHTS (COMMON GOOD) 

To repeat: the new reality of American politics for Democrats and progressives is that loyal dissent by ballot-splintering factionalism or by abstaining from voting is just 'patio chest-pounding' and the Dem intra-Party bickering is a self-destructive privilege, so 1950s', of a less complex past when we did not lose sleep over Republican or Democrat election winners. (Dems also have their MAGA aspects, too.) 

The Dems lost the 2016 presidential election, IMO, because of their 'naive' internal splintering. 

Democrat Party Loyal Dissent as expressed in do-or-die factionalism and abstaining from voting weakened the progressive vote and helped bring on a regression in America's cultural tone. Within weeks after his inauguration, Trump veered America from Obama's mid-road tone to a hard right wing direction. 

The sudden sharpness of Trump's  right-hand turn ofAmerican governance stunned and demoralized Democrats. More stunning was the barely hidden grift and greed behind Trump's foreign policy and his regressive use of America's national resources. Under Trump, government operations were hidden behind a personal, transactional style that created and favored policies that yielded financial gains for Trump, his family members, and for his corporate supporters. 

As Trump's government operations became more personally transactional, they also became less transparent, And our foreign policy was made a shambles.

Major examples illustrating Trump's radical shifting of America's foreign policy alliances were his November 2017, approval of Phillipine dictator Rodrigo Duterte's bloody campaign to rid the Phillipines of homosexuals and criminal suspects by murdering them on-site by roving right-wing para-military execution squads . 

Then came Trump's September 2018, declaration of "love" for Kim Jong Un, dictator-for-life of North Korea, a rogue nuclear state. 

This was followed by Trump's 2018 expressing that America should withdraw from NATO ... because NATO is a concept outside America's direct interest (which we now strongly suspect really meant that America's NATO membership offended Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, thus interfering with Trump's negotiations with Putin to construct a Moscow Trump Tower... with huge financial gains for Trump and his family.

This was the cess-pit where Trump had quickly, with a near-savant's nose for money, had lowered America.

America's regression under the Trump presidency could have been avoided if Hillary Clinton had won the Electoral College. Hillary won the popular vote, but lost the election because of Democratic Party vote-splitting factionalism .... and additionally, as is now known, because of Russian intelligence's proxy operations that exploited America's addiction and vulnerability to its world of extremely profitable internet social media platforms. Facebook was front and center among Russian intelligence's social media targets leading up to the 2016 election.  (Russian interference in the 2016 election was known perhaps shortly before and then after the election...but this knowledge quickly was buried under Trump's threats and misinformation  programming.)

Dems must grow up from naive 'do-or-die' idealism ....look around at the pitchfork regressionism that followed Hillary's  2026 'loss' to the Trumpists.  

America's fall into regressionism has been recently capped by the American Supreme Court's June 24, 2022, anti-abortion reversal of its 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had legalized abortion for the past half-century.  

DEMS MUST LEAVE THEIR HIGH SCHOOLISH DREAM STATE AND BECOME ADULTS ABOUT AMERICAN POLITICS  (Yes, Dems feel outraged and disbelief about the Trump camp’s lies and disinformation...and their control of major parts of American governance, e.g., the Supreme Court, which Trump reshaped with the hypocritical support of the Mitch McConnell-led Senate and which is steadily eroding American life.  

But Dem reactions must be within Constitutional (legal) boundaries... because that is a core Dem message.  

Also, Dems can’t do a ‘progressive version of ‘Jan 6’  without becoming what is detested ..along with bloodshed. (MAGA supporters must be ‘itching’ for an excuse to use their automatic weapons on a destructive Dem protest… that is today’s reality). 

A solution to the Democratic Party's current stasis - Dems must first define what lessons have been learned from the 6+ years of the ‘Trump Era’ (his campaign years until Jan 20, 2021 … and in the future).  

LESSON #1: DEMS MUST STOP NAIVE INTERNAL BICKERING...while sustaining their major strengths which are INCLUSIVENESS and PROMOTING THE COMMON GOOD.  

The Dems lost sight of this in the 2016 election which they lost through their own egotistic, (childlike), internal-splintering of Dem voting power by offshoot, dissenting yet liberal Dem candidates who insisted on having their place on the November 2016 election ballot ...regardless of consequences.  

And we saw the consequence: HILLARY CLINTON’S 2016 ELECTION LOSS WAS THE RESULT OF THE DEMS’ OWN FACTIONAL CONTRARINESS ...that splintered the anti-Trump ballot from within the Dem party. 

The era of idealist sincere (but naive) LOYAL DISSENT VOTE, ‘I’ll show them, I just won’t vote’ or ‘I’ll vote for a splinter group, Ha!', ended on the morning after the 2016 national election.

A unified Dem voting bloc would have boosted Hillary’s Electoral College count beyond what was needed to win, but Dem self-centeredness prevented that.

LESSON #2: The Electoral College must be central to the DEM's future political calculus.  The Electoral College is a reality even if it is poisonous and a dinosaur CREATED FROM and sustained by entrenched structures that originate from America’s slavery past.  It seems the Electoral College will live on for a good while under America's two party system.

As stated above, Hillary’s substantial 2016 popular vote win meant nothing because Dems still lived in their own version of the MAGA dream that ‘proper’ America was or should still be life as it was in the 1950’s. 

In summary - ‘when are the Dems going to be adults about American politics and stop the Democratic Party's inclination to internal self-destruction?’ There is so much more to lose by bickering within the Dem bloc. 

WORKPLACE COVID TEST 'EXEMPTIONS' DON'T MAKE SENSE

This blog site is 12+ years old from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic though focusing on national affairs and culture, and occasionally discussing new technologies. Sometimes Perilces21's observations receive a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains honed and unblunted as a sharp eye is always kept on the ways and directions of American politics and culture.

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The Supreme Court will soon hear cases related to whether an employee in a public-interfacing job can be exempted from being vaxxed or tested ...while continuing in that job. This doesn’t make sense — the Covid virus, like any other disease, doesn’t obey road signs and traffic lights… or exemption notices. That just doesn’t work for them.

On-the-job exemptions from Covid vaxing or testing are like a town debating whether a tornado has the right to rip a town apart while the town is flying to pieces. Tornadoes, blizzards, earthquakes, and viruses, can’t read, can’t hear, and follow their own paths.  They are not religious nor are they affiliated with a particular political or personal ideology. They are forces and agents indifferent to human wants unless influenced by engineering or scientific means. Humans have limited options to cope with such forces and all options require agency not debates or committee consensus. Building and going into shelters, or getting out of a storm's way generally works.

In the workplace, in the case of the Covid virus, it seems the rational response to a request for exemption from Covid vax or testing is, if there are means, to permit an employee to transfer to a distanced or otherwise non-infective function, to take a leave of absence, to work at home, or to look for another job. There are so many options to exemptions that ‘firing’ should not happen.  The same arguments and options seem to apply to cases where exemptions are sought for ideological or religious reasons.

ARE WE SEEING AN ‘AMY CONEY BARRETT SCOTUS REGRESSIVE EFFECT’ ON THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY?

Is this a sign of movement toward a conservative regression?

BACKGROUND: 

A November 20, 2020, article cites a Boca Raton, Florida (of course) federal appeals court repeal (2-1) of a ban on gay conversion therapy as a “violation of First Amendment right to free speech”. Both majority judges are Trump appointees.  This repeal struck this blogger as a not-just-coincidental indication that the recent addition of ‘originalist’, Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court might encourage lower court conservative judges to begin to dismantle the gains made by the LGBTQ community. It is very pertinent that the arguments for recognizing gay conversion therapy were robed in religious costume: 

The therapists said their clients typically had "sincerely held religious beliefs conflicting with homosexuality," and sought counseling to conform their identities and behaviors with those beliefs.

TO THE POINT:

This blogger references back the warning of October 19, 2020, (AMY CONEY BARRETT ‘S ‘ORIGINALISM’ WILL PUSH AMERICA BACK TO 1800s VICTORIANISM) noting the potential dangers to social balance and gains made by the American LGBTQ community, from her views expressed in the US Senate hearings on her nomination to the US Supreme Court, the now SCOTUS Associate Justice, Amy Coney Barrett, described the LGBTQ community as essentially a lifestyle of “sexual preference”, a statement which this blogger challenged as being “scientifically invalid”, harmful to members of that community and potentially opening the door to re-activate the  false notions and marketing of so-called “conversion” therapies. This is supported by a brief look at the following excerpts from the Wikipedia article on conversion therapy:

the advancement of conversion therapy may cause social harm by disseminating unscientific views about sexual orientation.^[10] 

And, 

In 2001, United States Surgeon General David Satcher issued a report stating that "there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed".^[15]”

Further, the same article gives examples of some of the torturing, so-called conversion ‘therapies’:

Techniques used in conversion therapy in the United States and Western Europe have included ice-pick lobotomies;^{[3][4][16][17][18][19]} chemical castration with hormonal treatment;^[20] aversive treatments, such as "the application of electric shock to the hands and/or genitals"; "nausea-inducing drugs ...

Currently, the invalid concept of sexuality as a preference or choice ... or at least a reparable state of mind has created a new type of charlatan, the spiritual interventionist and psychoanalytic ‘reconditionist’ - both are newer faces of the same old ‘snake oil’ industry, and still owe their existence to the false description of sexuality as a “preference” (ala Amy Coney Barrett): 

The point being made here is that ‘sexuality as a choice or preference’ is scientifically debunked and harmful.  

But we shall see if Judge Barrett can evolve in breadth and wisdom under her new, national, diversity accountability to a nation of real and broadly diverse  peoples.

AMY CONEY BARRETT ‘S ‘ORIGINALISM’ WILL PUSH AMERICA BACK TO 1800s VICTORIANISM

The recent Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, used the term ”Sexual Preference” to describe the membership of the LGBTQ community. This was both shocking and foreboding. ’Shocking’ because, first, ’Sexual Preference’ as applied to the LBGTQ community is scientifically an obsolete and inaccurate descriptor by at least a couple of decades... as established by genetic studies that.prove human gender is not the 1800s strictly (and strictly ’enforced’) heterosexual picture and therefore variances (LGBTQ) from traditionalist heterosexuality are genetically ’natural and legitimate’ and therefore cannot, should not, be an issue for legal punishment, social ostracizing. employment discrimination ... or any form of gender-disadvantaging..

Second, equally as shocking, Barrett’s use of “sexual preference”, if sincere and not the rote-spouting of an ideologue who knows better, either reveals she is embarrassingly ’out  of touch’ or painfully ignorant about current scientific realism regarding sexuality and is thus unqualified to render a SCOTUS opinion on some of today's most important and sensitive legal protection issues in America. 

(if Barrett was insincerely spouting learned ideology then America is indeed screwed because Barrett comes with a ’preformed, Radical-right agenda’.).  

With Justice Barrett in the lead, will America see a revival of gender conversion therapy that will, in disguise as a ’corrective’ medical treatment, legally pressure LGBTQ persons to recant their ‘flawed’ sexual ‘choice’, i.e., LGBTQ, to miraculously and enthusiastically embrace their new heterosexuality... a genetic lie?  

And then, lastly, Barrett’s use of the ‘sexual preference’ descriptor is foreboding because whether sincere or not, Barrett will be a factor for regressing America by fifty years or more on several critical legal fronts - healthcare, ‘abortion rights, voting rights and protections, women’s equal pay in the workplace, labor rights, minority issues, ...and in other issues that are not strictly in the ’progressive’camp but are vital to the security and quality of American life.

ORIGINALISM!  

(This post is a warning about the dangerous, regressive effect an ultra-conservative ‘Originalism’ interpretation of the American Constitution will likely have on America. And more, will the recent nomination to the Supreme Court of Amy Coney Barrett, a self-described ‘Originalist’ (ala her legal mentor Anthonin Scalia under whom she clerked) bring about a radically imbalanced Supreme Court (6-3 conservative) in favor of ultra-conservatism and consequentially reverse a century of American social progress.

CRITIQUING ORIGINALISM. 

This blogger regards ‘Originalism” as an excuse to avoid putting the extra effort, beyond simply reading, into studying and understanding the deeper meanings of the American Constitution as they relate to an evolved America two hundred years after the Founders, ...and gaining a perspective about future issues that might face the Constitution . This and more would be the benefits of a non-literalist interpretation of the Constitution. Doesn’t it seem that the ‘sacred’ jurisprudence goal of any serious candidate for the Supreme Court would be to present the benefits of such deeper search for meaning ... to show palpable, distinguished evidence in writings and case opinions that the candidate to the court has delved to and outstanding degree into the ‘What’s’,‘Wherefores’, Why’s’ and ‘Hows’ that underpin the deeper philosophical concepts that shaped the Founders’ thoughts and intentions, especially regarding the potential ‘Relevancy’ contained in a ‘Living Constitution’. 

IMHO, Originalists take a permanent lunch break midway in the above sequence of Constitutional interpretayion while others are left to clean up the wreckage caused by ‘mis-application’ from too-narrow interpretations resulting in mis-applicaton.

A quick explanation of legal-world ‘Originalism’ could be by comparison with its opposite’s view of the Constitution. 

For an ‘Originalist’, the Constituion is a static document containing the Founders holy words which should only be read and memorized like a catechism...and not ‘messed with’ by verlaying things and opinions outside its exact historical context. For example, an Originalist ‘studying’ the Constitution as written’ would not see any relation between the written words and the multitude of passing cars (no horses in sight) and especially seeing people of all colors and gender endowmemts walking around blithely and unworried by their ‘differences’ from a so-called norm... as written, or implied in our Constitution, 200 plus years ago.

The apposite legalist, on ther other hand, becomes immersed in the Constituion and attempts to interpret its words relevant to the here and now. 

Given that a majority of the Founders were slave owners, and saw neither slaves nor women as potential voters, it seems highly threatening to current social meaning and stability to take ‘Originalism’ seriously. 

OTHERS’ VIEWS ON ORIGINALISM

Umair Haque’s article (Medium, October 24, 2020) cuts right to the core of his distaste for Originalism in its relation to the Senate Confirmation Hearing on the nominaton of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court:

Umair Haque on Originalism:                                                                                                  “How “Originalism” Prevented America From Becoming Part of the Modern World  (“The ACB Hearings Show How Antiquated, Racist, and Misogynist Trying to Think Like a 18th Century White Man Really Is”)

Haque’s is a fitting social media title that aptly conveys the controversy about judge Barrett’s unsuitability because of her “Originalist” interpretation of the American Constitution. 

America may have a decades-long clean-up ahead if Amy Coney Barrett indeed sits on the Supreme Court. (Of course, there will be many praying that she will ‘grow’ to acknowledge America’s evolution since the Founders and Barrett will adapt her legal and moral perspectives in accord.

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The title of this post summarizes the atmosphere surrounding the potential Supreme Court shift toward a strict (radical, perhaps) conservativist interpretation of the American Constitution in both legal philosophy and applied principles. This shift is anticipated from Donald Trump’s nomination to fill the recently vacant seat of liberal SCOTUS Associate Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg (deceased Sept 18, 2020) with the conservative Amy Coney Barrett (Appelate Justice).  

Judge Bader Ginsberg was ‘with’ us from 1993 to 2020, and played a central role, in her unassuming way, in shaping a modern America .... despite America’s strong counter-tides of tradionalist, even regressionist sentiments and factionism.  Ruth Bader Ginsberg will be more than missed.

  

Donald Trump, in a not unexpected manner, plans to drop on America, a souvenir of his hopefully only term as president.   

Trump’s ‘gift’ to America in this case is the nomination of Amy Conney Barrett to fill the now empty seat of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Justice Ginsberg was a champion of women’s rights and equality, and made every effort to develop and extend the protections of those principles to everyone. Amy Conney Barrett is a stark contrast to Judge Ginsberg. Barrett is a career legal conservative and a somewhat more-than-even-traditional religious conservative - although raised in a strongly Catholic family, Barrett belonged to an ecumenical, charismatic covenant group, the People of Praise centered in Indiana.

Barrett comes with several areas of doubt about her suitability and legal ‘fit’ for the Supreme Court in today’s world, i.e., her ability to understand and relate to how America, and the world, have evolved over the 200 years since the Constitution was created. 

Recent article titles examplify the debate over her suitability to the nation;s highest court.  One such title is the lead-off to this post from ‘David’, Crooks and Liars (October 14, 2020)

 Internet Recoils In Horror Over Barrett's Ruling That Saying N-word Doesn't Make Workplace ‘Hostile’  (A ruling by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett that whitewashed racism in the workplace shocked the Internet this week.)

Umair Haque notes this reservation in blunt manner (agreed with by Pericles21) in the above-mentioned Medium article (October 14, 2020);  

How “Originalism” Prevented America From Becoming Part of the Modern World  (“The ACB Hearings Show How Antiquated, Racist, and Misogynist Trying to Think Like a 18th Century White Man Really Is”)

And finally from  CathyYoung’s article on the Barrett nomination (ArcDigital, October 13, 2020):

The Handmaid and the Feminist                                                                                    Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination raises difficult questions of faith, justice, and gender.                                                                                                                                        “I believe that Barrett’s under-the-wire nomination — especially in conjunction with the Garland fiasco — stinks to high heaven on fair-play grounds. In fact, I would argue that if Barrett has not been confirmed by November 3 and if Trump loses, she should withdraw.”

Most notable from Ms Young’s just quoted ArcDigital article is it disparages the importance the LGBTQA community attaches to Coney Barrett’s “Sexual Preference” descriptor ... about which this blogger ‘Strongly’ takes issue in that “Sexual Preference” is so much a ‘Tell’ about where Coney Barrett’s mental context seems to belong, historically .... perhaps in Victorian England in the 1870s or so when LGBTQ were imprisoned or sent to mental wards). Or, most recently, in the 1950s America ...

“It’s this issue — the compromised moral legitimacy of the nomination itself — that Barrett’s critics should emphasize. Instead, much of the left has chosen ridiculous lines of attack such as Barrett’s use of the term “sexual preference” rather than “sexual orientation.” (Some LBGT activists argue “preference” is offensive because it implies that sexual orientation is a choice — even though the term is still widely used in scientific literature.) 

This blogger is not LGBTQA but “Sexual Preference” is so rmbarrasingly ‘yesterday’! Amy Coney Barrett has a lot of catching up to do to become a positive factor in America’s continued evoltition/

American Racism: Justice Thomas, LGBTQA and Just Stuff

This post is motivated by Mark Kaplan's November 27, 2017, article in 'Alternet.org' (Clarence Thomas Must Resign) where he correlates Anita Hill's 1991 allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas, during his Senate Confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, with the current sexual harassment allegations facing Roy Moore of Alabama who is seeking election as a US Senator from Alabama.


In 1991, the US Senate did confirm Clarence Thomas to the United States Supreme Court where he remains to this day, but as Mark Kaplan points out, in hindsight, there was much to regret and puzzle over in the Senate's confirmation - by what occurred then during the hearings and later from Justice Thomas's often puzzling and enigmatic conduct (seen in his rare writings and verbal bench expresions (a marked lack thereof). One item that remains an egregious feature from the 1991 hearings was that in response to the Senators' fierce challenges to Anita Hill's allegations, she agreed to, and passed, a lie detector test ...that Clarence Thomas refused to take.

Overall, the 1991 Hill-Thomas events appear to define a threshold in American history that presaged a growing pattern of revelations, and counter attacks, of past and current sexual harassment in American institutions, both public and private.

But to Justice Thomas. Since his 1991 confirmation, Justice Thomas has acquired a consistent aura of mystery concerning just whose perspective and cause he represents. although one can glimpse through the fog and mist he throws up around his mumblings (literally) he does not 'voice' a progressive point of view,...nor does he always express a reactionary opinion. At best, Justice Thomas has appeared to have struggled to hedge his bets against all critiques and analyses. He seems to have a fear of expressing himself in any way that might identify him as a proponent of anything, and certainly hide his minority group membership. This 'running from himself' seems to originate from unresolved confusion and hurt, from from early age, from racial prejudice. Thomas's unresolved hurts seemingly restrict and throw a fog over his rare, written opinions and utterings from the bench. (In 2016, Justice Thomas made the news by breaking his 10 year silence from the SCOtUs bench.) Thomas's rare and largely unintelligible 'expressions' on the Supreme court stand out (i.e., are uniquely different from) from his colleagues's and when they do appear, seem awkwardly worded and simply different, from his colleagues's - an exception being Justice Scalia (RIP), his legal compatriot, whose anti-LBGTQA and anti-abortion, anti-progressiceness, ...seems to have lived in the same existential void as Thomas.

IMHO, the reason why Thomas' rare writings and 'sayings (rarely recorded because they are like a hurt child's spurts of confused anger. Thomas presents as a physical-appearing adult who disguises those hurts in empty-sounding phrases stemming from empty-meaning thoughts that even he seems to recognize as not worth speaking, as to speak these mind-farts would jeopardize his standing with the public and his SCOTUS peers...as they do when rarely uttered.

Justice Thomas's rare and unintelligible 'expressions' seem to say he has not confronted the hurt he has from past (and presently felt) discriminatory prejudices from others, and come to accept that those prejudices are based on superficial physical qualities he can not correct...no matter how hard he might try and pray to remove. These targeted natural (God-deemed) qualities are for Thomas focused on skin color. Thomas does not appear to have an adult minority person's reaiization that his and others' qualities such as race, color or LGBTQ are 'God-given' ('natural') and that he/she is morally right (and has the Constitutional right) to challenge those prejudices when they restrict his and others' freedoms to live the same as every majority (white, hetero) American citizen, i.e., to enjoy full color-gender-other blind Constitutional rights and protections, including marriage.

Consequently, imho, Thomas's rare and largely unintelligible SCOTUS opinions often appear to be ramblings to himself and his still-tortured soul. It's as if he wants to say he recognizes racial and gender prejudice and discrimination but fears to seem to acknowledge he is a member of the targeted group. Consequently, his opinions in cases of racial/gender nature are absent or simply disregarded as pro-forma (for him) and of little worth.

Thomas has yet to develop an adult's comprehension of 'what's going on' which would allow him to formulate an 'au courant', 'woke' sense of self, his boundaries, and his probable feeling of hurt from imjustly breached personal boundaries. This evolved but unreached selfhood would have given Justice Thomas a self-respecting defiance of those who breach those Constitutionally assured boundaries and justly define the prejudiced and their causes as unjust!. Instead, Thomas appears to struggle, with inarticulate non-success, to render all points of view, even of the prejudiced, in equal light. Thomas seems to think this middle-road stance is safe but it actually makes him appear empty and useless.

Moreover, from his 'waffling', Thomas seems to want to give racial/gender prejudice an equally valid moral weight as the misguided prejudices of the alt-right oppressor of LGBTQA and racial minorities...which also seems to be a hallmark of the present Trumpian (POTUS) philosophy.

(Pericles21 is certain that Justice Thomas, as an adult African-American male, continues to experience hurtful prejudice.) The point though is when might Justice Thomas wake up?

Election 2016: Brexit and Trumpism - We saw it Coming, Where are they Going? Future Benefits.

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ORIGINAL ESSAYS
White Trash
- over time, America has seen more downward than upward mobility, and migration often substitutes for actual class security.
- Americans continue to tell themselves they believe in social equality, but history tells a different story.

- "White Trash": The language used to describe classes and the poor can be traced back to the forceful imprint left by British colonization. Before it became that fabled "City upon a Hill," America was, in the eyes of 16th-century English adventurers, a foul, weedy wilderness — a "wasteland," they called it, where the Old World could unload the idle poor.
- Among the unheroic transplants were convicts, Irish rebels, known whores, ex-soldiers, adults in debt, and the children of beggars, all of whom either chose exile in place of a prison term (or hanging!) or else sold themselves into indentured servitude.
- The great majority of the early colonists were classified as a surplus population, as expendable "rubbish" — a rude rather than a robust population.
- These were America's "waste people," who, sometime around the 1820s, came to be called "white trash."
by Nancy Isenberg, June 21, 2016 4:44 PM

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Brexit and Trump-ism share common themes and causes focused on the growing disposability of American and European workers. This was a sensed phenomenon Pericles21 posted on this blog site about some time ago (Pericles21' post of February 6, 2009 - "MBA Follies #1: The Public as Labor Pool [Or, MBA wet dreams gone bad)" was a growing but still, at that time, a somewhat contentious question of 'being' for the American worker - what or who exactly, was the American (and western powers) worker in the world of the now truly big, truly powerful multi-national corporations?

Were developed-nations' workers still, foremost, citizens or were they in the process, or well along the way, of becoming just a cost parameter, a cog, in the profit machine...without countervailing powers, losing respect from the national governance systems, and increasingly having their 'being-hood' (ascendancy as living persons) given to, or high-jacked by, the corporations (viz., the American Supreme Court's 2010 decision favoring virtually unlimited corporate election donations, 'Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission'.

Continuing the list of erosions of hard-won benefits and powers suffered by American workers, there has been a ever closer examination by researchers on the decline of unions and real wages since the 1970's. This had resulted in a growing, 'itchy' sense in both researchers and workers that all was not 'ok' in the land of the free, and it's motherland of ideas, Great Britain...and likely including Spain, Greece, and several other nations at this point.

That question about the value and constitutional importance of workers, and the larger worker-middle class (80% of America) could be condensed into a broad question - 'exactly who is the American citizen, what place in American politics does a citizen have in today's America and especially in corporate-globalism, or global-corporatism (the two descriptors are now indistinct since the top-most power element after the 'Elite 1% is the corporate empire which is global and has come to control governments and global electoral processes...until BREXIT and Trump-ism..which caught the pundits, seated politicians and just about everyone else, including BREXIT and Trump supporters by surprise.

On BREXIT and Trump-ism: Not surprisingly, the very democratic principles that the corporate world had cleverly sought (successfully) to manipulate with the result of 'Citizens vs. United', also proved wonderfully robust enough to provide the victims of supposedly all-conquering corporatism with the supreme countervailing power, the referendum and (perhaps) the upcoming vote to elect the American President.

If Trump is not to be the next American President, at least the bells have been rung in this 2016 re-enactment of France's 1790s times of rolling Trumbrils and tumbling heads. Heads may not fall in America, hopefully at least not in reality, but again hopefully we will see balance created in the tug-of-war between the American citizen-worker and the corporate bloc.

Now the question is, 'are there ANY rights left to the worker-citizen?

'Brexit' (and Trumpism) seems to answer for the common folk in both countries, 'Well, one can't be certain where the citizen fits in these days but the common folk have shouted out they do not want to continue to lie in this bed of gross economic inequality.

The ground theme behind Brexit and Trumpism is a combination of lingering, media-romanticized feudalism, dog-whistle racism and habitual knee-bending worship of nobility and its modern equivalent, the corporate and wealthy elites. But why haven't Trumpism and BREXIT exploded before now?

First, Pericles21 challenges the idea that Trumpism and Brexit are original ideas and movements - Trump and Brexit are just terminal signs of a pot that has been building in temperature for several decades and now is exploding its lid.

Pericles21 also proposes that, once again, in America and as well in Great Britain, the roots of citizen passivity-until-eruption derive from the same source - the culturally-engrained, centuries-old, feudalist acceptance by the 'common folk' to be governed by their 'bettors', currently the all-mighty corporate citizens (white collar and those somewhat securely employed under that umbrella) and corporations themselves who in recent years have been given by governments and legal courts astounding recognitions and power in the form of the 'Gift of Beiing' as proferred on bended knee to the corporations by the American Supreme Court in the above-mentioned 'Citizens United' SCOTUS 2010 decision that gifted corporations with personhood.

This class fatalism can still be heard in direct or indirect form among back country, 'White', Scots-Irish-transplanted English folk in the Virginias, Carolinas, Georgia, ...and their generatios later descendants just about anywhere in the south-of-Dixie original states and especially in the family trees of the former Confederate states.

The modern form of this feudal 'inheritance', passivity in the face of corporate excesses, is not a good thing for a modern nation - this passivity is civically unhealthy, but it is ingrained and difficult to get rid of because it is a key theme of American culture that is still programmed into our group think in the iconic symbols of the 'suffering-with-pride', simple-living, uneducated heroes exampled by the Clampett's of television's'Beverly Hillbillys', the 1940's movies' 'Ma and Pa Kettle', ...and many other movie and television creations. These simple folk were held as American memes of truth and quality-of-life, in integrity, while material and social network quality-of life was preserved for their 'bettors', the corporate and upper classes.

This self-delusion had to (must) end and Trump is its voice. If Trump is not eleted President, let's hope that the next President anad Congress will have listened to what Trump's calling out is messaging, deep disatisfaction of the American working class, and implement programs to better the quality of life for the common folk of America (national health care, free college at least at the two-year level, national wage reviews, ...), modernize America's infrastructure to support the businesses of the next century (high-speed rail, national internet, space-resources exploration and mining systems development)