Anyone who lives in Washington, D.C., and says they hate it here have almost always, with rare exceptions, never made the actual Washington their home. They have limited themselves to the halls of power, they have spent their years focused on obtaining power, and they only view their experience here through the prism of power.
It is in this context that one must regard Justice Clarence Thomas’s latest attack on the city that has provided him with a federal government job since the late 1970s.
“I think what you are going to find and especially in Washington, people pride themselves on being awful. It is a hideous place as far as I’m concerned,” Thomas told the audience at the Eleventh Circuit Judicial Conference, per the Associated Press, on Friday.
It is, however, a “hideous place” that Thomas has used to amass a fortune and to obtain increasing positions of power over the decades. Ever since he reached his perch on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991, he has used that position to provide others within positions of power with access to the Supreme Court’s building; to establish and build relationships with the rich and powerful; and, finally, to create his own network of power among his former clerks.