Clarence Thomas conundrum. Moscow shoots itself with clot shots. Analysis of hypocrisy.

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I would think that my liberal correspondents would be conflicted over Clarence Thomas. They should love him as a black person, what Thomas Sowell calls a liberal mascot, even though they dislike his stance on constitutional issues.

Wrong! They hate him all around. The two major bogeymen on the email distribution I watch at a distance (when I'm smart enough to bite my tongue) are Donald Trump and Clarence Thomas. These good liberals cannot get over the (contradictory?) facts of how stupid those two are and what a threat they pose to the American way of life.

I find it interesting that almost every prominent black intellectual is conservative. Start with the above mentioned Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas.  Add Larry Elder, Alan Keyes, Condoleezza Rice and Candace Owens. Leading black liberals include the now passé Angela Davis and Herbert Marcuse, whose fame impresses me as owing more to their radicalism than the depth of their thinking.  Nobody takes Ta-Nehisi Coates seriously. He no longer appears among The Atlantic's list of writers.  Robin Diangelo isn't even black.

Thomas seems to have a purer judicial philosophy than the other Supremes. As a Catholic seminarian he had exposure to Thomas Aquinas and others who would favor more direct, less flexible systems of ethics and morality.  His background is different from the other eight, who grew up in relative comfort. Thomas came from the poor and pure black Geechee community on the Georgia coastal islands. Entering white society, he even had to swallow his pride and accept instruction on speaking standard English so he could be understood.

Growing up as a conservative in the middle income flatlands close to Berkeley, then attending college at The Little Red Schoolhouse (i.e., Reed College) whose archetypical student was Faye Stendler, and then Berkeley itself I encountered condescension and developed a fairly thick skin. Though Clarence Thomas' experience entering lily white St. John Vianney school in 1964 was surely more bracing, reading his memories still gave me a chuckle of recognition. The people who claim to despise prejudice certainly maintained a healthy one against conservatives and “rednecks” like me. Challenging that prejudice has given me a wicked pleasure all my life.

It is amazing how oblivious liberals can be. The MIT guy I mentioned recently made a post about how much he loved the authenticity of Woody Guthrie’s speaking for the common man in “This Land is My Land.” He particularly lamented what a racist Donald Trump’s father was and how he abused the poor. In fact, Trump Sr. had young Donald lie about his German background in order not to offend his many Jewish business associates. Prejudice? My man is absolutely blind to the irony.

When Guthrie wrote (my quote, not Mr. MIT’s) “Some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen” he was not talking about people of German descent such as me and Donald Trump. While the bankers may have had German names that would translate as “bold,” “love,” “ship” and “red shield”, they were not German but in fact more closely related to Mr. MIT.

Hypocrites like this are often said to love humanity but hate human beings. I will bet that if Mr. MIT met Woody Guthrie’s farmer in person he would dislike everything about him. The shotgun rack in his pickup. The Trump sticker on his bumper. The fact that his wife went to the PTA to protest against the drag queen story hour.

The people on the distribution to which I refer are concerned about the shift of power they foresee in the midterm elections in November. As they should be. Whether or not it swayed the result, the American people are fed up with the chicanery in the 2020 elections. They have had it with liberal city governments allowing favored mobs to trash their towns and shoot people with impunity. They are frightened by the inflation baked into the Federal Reserve system from its inception in 1913 (midwifed by the above mentioned Bold and Love) and stoked red hot by the cluelessness of chairpeople Bernanke and Yellen. And they are totally fed up with the condescension of Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer and their ilk.

As a counterpoint I should remind you of those I recently credited as leading the fight against the Covid nonsense, and mention that that I am working on a totally sincere article entitled “Ukraine’s good fortune in having a Jewish president.” Drop me a note and I will send a draft for your comment.  It is not a simple question.

Should we be cheered that Russia is killing itself with clot shots.  Or by the fact that Putin has started taking halfhearted measures to rein in his own pharmaceutical hucksters? Whatever the case, reading how these grifters operate in Russia gives us a better understanding of what’s going on in the United States. It makes me appreciate all the more that Ukraine’s corruption does not embrace such murderous programs.

That’s the opinion and prejudice from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man is thankful that Ukraine affords no topic about which to give a John Derbyshire-like “The Talk,” the good-looking woman doesn’t understand it when I discuss the topic, and the children are delightfully oblivious.

Graham