https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/magazine/clarence-thomas-ginni-thomas.html
Yes, I subscribed to the NYT under the "know your enemy" philosophy.
The Times has become the unabashed enemy of any apostates who dare question the religion of of "Progressivism, Secular Humanism, Wokeism, Critical Race Theory, Materialism, etc ", especially if they are Black!
This makes Clarence Thomas their sworn enemy, as well as his wife Gunni. There is nothing more offensive to the left as a Black Conservative, Christian, Constitutional Originalist -- especially one with any sort of power, which a sitting SCOTUS judge certainly has.
It is a long article that shows just how hard the left attacks their enemies, and shows how far we have strayed from Lincoln's 2nd inaugural.
The Times article must be long because it seeks to tear down a man that supports what Lincoln did without declaring it's real purpose. Lincoln sought to unify a nation divided by slavery, but a nation that prayed to the same God, recognizing that man was not the measure of all things.
The NYT firmly believes that man IS the measure, and that "Progressivism, Secular Humanism, Wokeism, Critical Race Theory, Materialism, etc" are "truth". They firmly believe there is no "higher power" than the power of man, so power will define "the just, the good, the wise".
The article begins with:
The call to action was titled “Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?” Shared in the days after the 2020 presidential election, it urged the members of an influential if secretive right-wing group to contact legislators in three of the swing states that tipped the balance for Joe Biden — Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. The aim was audacious: Keep President Donald J. Trump in power.
The group, the Council for National Policy, brings together old-school Republican luminaries, Christian conservatives, Tea Party activists and MAGA operatives, with more than 400 members who include leaders of organizations like the Federalist Society, the National Rifle Association and the Family Research Council. Founded in 1981 as a counterweight to liberalism, the group was hailed by President Ronald Reagan as seeking the “return of righteousness, justice and truth” to America.
Obviously, this "secret group" ("secret" web page here) with stated goals like “the return of righteousness, justice and truth to America" is a clear and present danger -- the fact that Clarence Thomas and his wife would agree with such a group is a threat to the "just" forces like the NYT that have recognized that America is a stain on the planet, founded on slavery, dedicated to white privilege, sexism, destroying the environment, and all that is evil ... like Christianity.
As Hillary Clinton stated (without evidence) in 2019, about if it bothered her that then current Democrat candidates failed to adequately defend her when criticised by Trump supporters.
"No, it doesn’t kill me because he knows he’s an illegitimate president,” she said. “I believe he understands that the many varying tactics they used, from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories — he knows that — there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did.”
2016 was "illegitimate", questioning 2020 is "the big lie" and if you engage in it, you need to be removed from social media if not worse. If you take part in a mostly peaceful demonstration where the only person killed was an unarmed white female military veteran, you can be imprisoned with no legal representation and no trial for over a year.
If one only read the NYT and it's adjuncts in the MSM, it may seem that there is only the "center, correct, progressive" wing in American politics, opposed by the evil forces of the right, and far right.
We all know that affirmative action is a wonderful thing. As MLK said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today".
Here is how that worked out for Clarence Thomas:
Thomas got his law degree from Yale but stuck a 15-cent cigar sticker to the frame of his diploma after failing to get a big law job — such firms, he would write, attributed his academic pedigree to preferential treatment. Instead, he took the only job offer he received and went to work for Missouri’s Republican attorney general, John Danforth, and discovered the writings of the Black conservative Thomas Sowell, who assailed affirmative action as undercutting self-reliance; Thomas wrote that he “felt like a thirsty man gulping down a glass of cool water” to see his own beliefs articulated. A few years later, after he was appointed by Reagan to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he would complain that Black civil rights leaders “bitch, bitch, bitch, moan and moan, whine and whine.”
What standard did big law firms use to judge Clarence Thomas? The standard of preferential treatment for blacks. Later, that problem was "solved" by quotas in business as well as universities. By the time I joined IBM in 1978, Thomas would have been in high demand -- no matter his credentials, it was the color of his skin that mattered, as we see today with "BLACK Lives Matter" ... White, Hispanic, Asian? Not so much, except the ivy league schools discriminate against Asians because if they used merit, our colleges, med schools, etc would approach 100% Asian.
We live in a nation that judges on the basis of color, gender, sexual identity, etc, with the assumption that if you are especially a White male, credentials don't matter because you got them based on "privilege".
As the left labors to create a new Civil War, it is good to review the much shorter 2nd inaugural address by Lincoln, as opposed to the interminable screed from the NYT:
Fellow Countrymen:
At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war – seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.1 The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!
If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
We certainly no longer live in a nation that reads the same Bible ... in fact, very few read the Bible at all.
As the screed from the NYT shows, we are a nation with a lot of malice toward an "uppity Black" that has the audacity to be a SCOTUS Judge, conservative, Christian, and obviously very intelligent ,,, although the left maligned his intelligence with extreme malice when he was first appointed ... from the article:
During his first decade on the court, Thomas was often characterized by his critics as a cipher who almost never asked questions from the bench and was an underwhelming understudy to Justice Antonin Scalia.
"Cipher", a person of very little power used by others.
My my, how times have changed! The NYT now sees this "cipher" as a threat to their progressive dogma worthy of wasting a lot of ink in the attempt to discredit him.
What REALLY matters today is your political persuasion, and the reaction of the left to a Black Republican proves that Democrats have never allowed Blacks to leave the plantation ... it is just a political plantation now, and they really want to lynch those that escape!