By Stephen Macaulay

“We are living through what feels like the end of America.” -- Virginia Thomas text to Mark Meadows, January 10, 2021

“The law is not a plaything for Presidents or judges to use to remake the world in their preferred image. . . . When our elected and appointed leaders break, twist and fail to enforce our laws in order to achieve their partisan ends, or to accomplish frustrated policy objectives they consider existentially important, they are breaking America.” --Greg Jacob, former Pence lead counsel, to the January 6 Committee

And there you have it in a nutshell.

Anyone who has read Thomas’ unhinged texts to Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows knows that she was doing her utmost to break and twist the laws by ignoring the will of a majority (popular vote and Electoral College) American people.

The concern isn’t just that she happens to be the spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (and let’s not accept the undoubted fiction that Mrs. and Mr. Thomas keep their interest wholly separate like some domestic Iron Curtain: it doesn’t take an Originalist interpretation of the texts to Meadows — oh, and the emails to John Eastman, too — to know that this support of her Dear Leader wasn’t a passing fancy of Mrs. Thomas, that this was bordering on obsession: anyone who is married knows that exchanges of ideas and about activities are simply a way of life and for her not to discuss it shatters credulity). 

Rather, the concern is that she is at a societal strata that most of us will never reach and consequently has influence among others who are at that level with potential untoward consequences for the rest of us. (It also ought to be concerning for the faculty of the Creighton University School of Law, from which she obtained a J.D. in 1983: She is representative of the legal thinking that comes out of that place? Ignoring the Constitution?)

This discussion of Mrs. Thomas is not related to the committee’s decision to call on her to testify regarding the emails with Eastman.

It is to make the point that there were some people associated with the Trump White House who, like Jacob, understood what was going on, particularly after the loss was falsely claimed to be victory by people like Mrs. Thomas.

Jacob also noted, “We should not feign surprise when our citizens treat the law and the Constitution with the same level of respect that our leaders do.”

Consideration and thoughtfulness — characteristics of respect — are, like shame, something that is obviously absent among those who pulled a massive con on the American people.

We’re it just a grift that would have been one thing. But when those who are in what one would imagine are sophisticated salons talking in shrill tones about releasing the “Kraken,” who are coming up with conspiracy theories the likes of which not even a B-hack writer could get away with peddling, then that rips the fabric of the country.

Yes, Mrs. Thomas, it does feel like the end of America.

Thanks to you and your ilk.