During his years at an elite Catholic high school, Neil Gorsuch founded and led a club called "Fascism Forever," intended (we are told) to protest the liberal tendencies of the Jesuit staffers.
It doesn't take a prophet to predict that a right-wing agitprop campaign will now ceaselessly insist that this club was just a bit of jolly japing. The propagandists will tell us to ignore those liberal SJW snowflakes who want to turn Gorsuch's club into, like, a thing.
My response: Damn right this is a thing.
Some topics -- very few, but some -- are beyond jest. Some errors should haunt one forever, even if those errors were made in youth. Forgiveness should come only after one has made a serious attempt at atonement -- and the time for atonement is well before one is nominated for the Supreme Court.
If a Democratic nominee had spent his school years leading a club named "Kommie Kids for Karl," he would have zero chance of confirmation, no matter what the nominee said by way of apology or explanation. If a nominee of any political persuasion had committed rape or even burglary in high school, he would not be confirmed. Reagan nominated a judge named Doug Ginsburg who had to withdraw when the public learned that he had smoked a few joints in college.
Gorsuch embraced a racist political movement that murdered and enslaved tens of millions. "Just joking around"? Bullshit. It's a deal-breaker.
By the way: I've always "kinda, sorta" admired the Jesuits precisely because the right-wing conspiratards hate them so much. Way I figure it, having the right enemies buys you a pass. But if the Jesuits at Georgetown Prep allowed a "Fascism Forever" club to flourish on campus, one must ask: What the hell...?
Again: You know damn well that the faculty would never have tolerated a "Kommie Kids for Karl" club. "Fascism Forever" was featured in the freakin' yearbook. This wasn't the Dead Poets Society; Gorsuch and his fellow dickheads for Il Duce didn't have to meet secretly in an off-campus cave.
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Liberals On the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown
Dissecting the latest viral Trump conspiracy theories.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/liberals-on-the-edge-of-a-nervous-breakdown-214727
This blog post is hilarious in it's faux, over-the-top stridency. Bravo!
Oh, snap, you were serious?
Yep. Just as you would have been serious if Hillary had won and if she had nominated someone who started a "Kommie Kids for Karl" club in high school.
Of course, being a right-winger, you never will have the honesty to admit it.
That Daily Mail article!
The Fascism Forever club at Georgetown Preparatory, an elite Jesuit part-boarding part-day school for boys aged 14 to 17, is unlikely to have been solely an effort by some of the pupils to protest against the supposedly liberal views of the school administration.
Don't get me wrong. It's not unusual for an elite's school's pupil body to be more conservative than the teachers and administrators.
But setting up a society mentioned in the yearbook and running it all by themselves without the connivance or support of someone in authority - nope. That's not how things work at a school like that. Alana Goodman at the Daily Mail is either pulling our plonkers or just plain naive when she explains to us that this was an "anti-faculty" group.
It could be that the Jesuits, being Jesuits, encourage the boys to set up competing societies. There could also have been factions in the administration, with some teachers or officials supporting FF activities, so as to wind up their enemies in the common room. Petty backstabbing is as much a part of the culture as sybaritism at such institutions. Within elitism, in particular elitist "education", there is always a role for "freedom" of elite members. Most of the leading pupils in such an obnoxious society (and school) would anyway have been reflecting the views of their elite parents.
HOWEVER, there's a sizeable possibility that the club DIDN'T REALLY EXIST and the references to it were just a "joke". Did the "Committee to reform the beast" club exist? Was "Lousy Spanish Student" an official title?
The reference to "boosters" leading their flocks to "greener fields" may denote smoking grass. Since the "intensity" at after-parties was at "fever pitch", perhaps amphetamines were consumed too. The authors would have thought they were so so clever.
This story has a very British feel to it :) If half of what Britain's senior judges and other male elite members did at boarding school were to be revealed, many would be shocked.
The question "Who on earth are these born-to-rule fuckers to judge other people?" comes to mind.
How strange things are in the US! The head of government is allowed to bring his own private security force into the White House to protect him? Against whom?
This is off topic, but well worth a lead and probably helps explain some things:
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win
The Founders chiseled a document and government that would be republican and a union of previously divided colonies. The Roman fasces would become one of America's symbols (united we stand, divided we fall, etc.) until 20th-century fascist dictators altered the symbolism. Nevertheless, fascism remains the U.S. default principle of economics and governance.
It would be nice, however, to amend the Constitution and give to the Supreme Court the power to veto any confirmed SCOTUS nominee.
Someone noticed that in the pussy grabbing video Trump knocks on the bus door to be let off. Then he has to be told how doors work. There doesn't seem to be any footage anywhere of him operating a door on his own recognisance. Some people open doors. Others have door opened for them.
"It would be nice, however, to amend the Constitution and give to the Supreme Court the power to veto any confirmed SCOTUS nominee."
Th problem, Amelie, is that democratic mechanisms -- of any kind whatsoever -- are always imperfectible because the assignment of any locus of power always creates a distortion in the idealized model of delivering equitable democratic outcomes. Think of Jeremy Bentham's principle of "the greatest good for the greatest number." Any attempt to provide perfect justice to all is destined to fail. Push down on a waterbed and it will rise up somewhere else. The best we can hope for is a "minimum damage to core priorities" model and even that's not perfect.
Think for a moment. A Supreme Court of hard Right wingers gets in and vetoes every other nominee except their family members. That's why the choice of the judiciary has to rest ultimately in the legislature as the people's representatives. But even there, without good faith by these representatives, then that model will fail. Case in point: Republican Congresses. Nothing's perfect.
@topaz:
I can't imagine the SCOTUS justices, despite their ideologies, would agree to work and judge alongside a nominee who perjured himself to be confirmed.
So here's a senryu:
the jury is out
weighing their cynicism
against compassion
Eric, if you can employ the word "stridency" you can learn the difference between it's and its. Do better.
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