thomas is bad because he has disasterous and selfish opinions, not because he didn’t check off enough resume boxes.
Counterpoint: Every large institutional system needs some level of bureaucracy and experienced bureaucrats provide systematic value that goes beyond their ideological political positions. Sometimes you just need the trains to run on time.
Thomas is awful in a way even Scalia wasn't, because he degrades the constraints that the judiciary is supposed to have on state power. He creates large gray areas that only ever favor far-right groups. His opinions enflame conflict rather than resolving it, and always in a way that facilitates more fascist tendencies in the lower tiers of the bureaucracy.
A big part of that comes from his inability (or disinterest) in the functional role of his appointed position. In a saner world, guys like him would simply be removed from office once they'd laid bare their incompetence and incoherence. But in America, we let leadership serve indefinitely, just so long as they've sufficiently entrenched themselves against the opposition.
Counterpoint: Every large institutional system needs some level of bureaucracy and experienced bureaucrats provide systematic value that goes beyond their ideological political positions. Sometimes you just need the trains to run on time.
Thomas is awful in a way even Scalia wasn't, because he degrades the constraints that the judiciary is supposed to have on state power. He creates large gray areas that only ever favor far-right groups. His opinions enflame conflict rather than resolving it, and always in a way that facilitates more fascist tendencies in the lower tiers of the bureaucracy.
A big part of that comes from his inability (or disinterest) in the functional role of his appointed position. In a saner world, guys like him would simply be removed from office once they'd laid bare their incompetence and incoherence. But in America, we let leadership serve indefinitely, just so long as they've sufficiently entrenched themselves against the opposition.