I wonder if Jesus would give Clarence Thomas an attaboy for largesse from billionaires Opinion

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Scratching my head, I keep trying to figure out how one gets to the highest court in the land, certainly not an apolitical path, without being able to recognize a bribe. What else to call these not inconsequential contributions to his financial well-being? Down payments comes to mind, but that is only a matter of timing, really. Yet, to simply say the man is dishonest and takes money does not quite seem enough of an understanding. Then there is the totally alien, to me, lingering thought that somehow the donors are victims, like they are being blackmailed, guilted.

Clearly it is simply a case of business as usual, people in power doing each other supposedly harmless favors when it is really just one hand washing the other while all the time getting filthy. Yet, Clarence Thomas seems sincere when he presents himself as a fine upstanding Christian incapable of deceit and dishonesty. Then it occurs to me there is one other thing Clarence Thomas religiously, repeatedly, presents himself as: a victim. A mistreated, misunderstood, persecuted man who is deserving of these things because of how he suffers: he doesn't get paid enough, he has to suffer the swamp of Washington, D.C. ― as if he played no role in its creation or continued style of functioning, people accuse him of things he doesn't do, the left attacks him because of who he is ― not what he does, nobody really appreciates him.

Clarence Thomas famously does not feel he is mistreated because he is Black; such conceptualizations are for people too lazy to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Clarence Thomas feels a victim, victimized simply because he is Clarence Thomas. When one has this stance in life, a bribe isn't a bribe, it's a right, it's a validation of suffering with no payment really big enough to balance the equation. You owe me, because how I suffer is foundational in self-concept. You owe me because sometimes I suffer for you. That's where the sense of blackmail would come in.

With this dynamic, a person can feel moral and self-righteous while engaging in inappropriate behaviors. If you look at it this way, it makes more sense that Clarence Thomas will not be more forthcoming any time soon. Rather than having a epiphany about his own personal corruption, he is likely to double down. The more he is a victim, the more he feels entitled, the more he is owed, and there will never be enough. It sounds pretty lucrative, but what a price to pay.

(snip)

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/opinion/columns/2024/06/27/opinion-is-clarence-thomas-a-victim-a-mistreated-misunderstood-persecuted-man/74207823007/

[3catwoman3]

1. I'm pretty certain that (no)Justice Clarence...

...would have been among those Jesus drove from the temple with his whip.

[Uncle Joe]

2. Well Moses had issues with worshiping a Golden Calf and Jesus believed that a house of worship shouldn't be turned into

a marketplace for merchandise.


(snip)

In the narrative, Jesus is stated to have visited the Temple in Jerusalem, where the courtyard was described as being filled with livestock, merchants, and the tables of the money changers, who changed the standard Greek and Roman money for Jewish and Tyrian shekels.[6] Jerusalem was packed with Jews who had come for Passover, perhaps numbering 300,000 to 400,000 pilgrims.[7][8]

And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house a house of merchandise.

— John 2:15–16, King James Version[9]

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

— Matthew 21:12–13, King James Version[10]

(snip)

Professor David Landry of the University of St. Thomas suggests that "the importance of the episode is signaled by the fact that within a week of this incident, Jesus is dead. Matthew, Mark, and Luke agree that this is the event that functioned as the 'trigger' for Jesus' death."[29]

(snip)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple

We have come a long way since then.