@alwaystheself Yeah, it’s one of the confounding things about him. I went through a kick over a decade ago when i read a bunch of biographies of him and came away genuinely surprised at how often I’d heard the exact same views expressed by Black folks of all kinds — it wasn’t illegible at all
@alwaystheself Your point here, about him trauma bonding with white conservatives, is really sharp/important — it’s so much about personal anguish that it ends up not being scalable.
His personal relationship to his grandfather is revealing, too.
His personal relationship to his grandfather is revealing, too.
@alwaystheself His grandfather — who raised him along with his grandmother from a young age — was a mean, cold man who never showed him any love or tenderness. Thomas called him “the best man i have ever known”; his autobiography is literally called “My Grandfather’s Son.”
@alwaystheself His grandfather was unforgiving and detested people who complained — it’s hard not to see Thomas’s own antipathy to fights for policy remedies to racial inequality as downstream from that same ethos that he proudly took from his grandfather.
@alwaystheself He has many, well-nurtured grievances — he likes to tell Black conservative groups during speeches that his Yale Law Schopl degree tucked away in his basement with a discount sale sticker he slapped on it; he said it was cheapened as a result of being admitted due to aff action.
@alwaystheself That’s one thing that’s so maddening: There’s an alternative universe where we might have more robust voting rights/civil rights protections had this one man just gone to a therapist.
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