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Comment by gotoeleven | Hacker News Reader

The Clarence Thomas nomination hearings are I think a better marker for the beginning of our modern era of "hyperpoliticization" of everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas_Supreme_Court_...

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I would opine it was Robert Bork a few years earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork_Supreme_Court_nomi...

One of the pieces of history I didn’t appreciate at the time, because I was just a kid: Bork was Solicitor General in the Nixon administration. When Nixon ordered that his AG fire the Special Prosecutor investigating Watergate, Nixon’s appointed AG and deputy (very ethically) resigned instead. This left Bork as acting AG, and unlike his superiors, Bork was very happy to fire the Special Prosecutor at his boss’s request. In other words, almost everyone in the Nixon administration had more ethics than Bork.

What was so disgusting and surprising about the Bork nomination is that it was clearly a reward for that behavior, one that persisted across multiple presidential terms. It sent a message that “no matter how damaging your lack of ethics might seem in the short term, there is a reward for loyalty and willingness to short-circuit the criminal process” that would have felt at home in an organized crime family. The stuff we see today is just a further development of the metastasizing cancer that began right there.

>...there is a reward for loyalty and willingness to short-circuit the criminal process” that would have felt at home in an organized crime family.

"Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don't have men killed!"

I disagree. For one, Bork had already been refused a seat on the Supreme Court. Secondly, it's the first time that a mainstream political party ever succeeded in "othering" another group of straight white capitalists purely with propaganda.

Everyone forgets that the DNC forced out FDR's two-time VP for being too buddy-buddy with socialism, giving us Truman and a half century of the ultimate in hyperpartisanship (the kind with Nukes of Damocles hanging over everyone's heads).

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