On Sam Alito, Hunter Thompson and Personal Growth

I named this blog after a John Hiatt song, Slow Turning. It's a simple song about figuring yourself out and how you get there. For most of us, slow is the key phrase. Some people come to it quickly and some never get it, but for the rest, it's a process of forward and back - learning and failing and holding onto the relevant pieces until you come to that ultimate conclusion about who you are, why you're here and what you're supposed to do.

I've been through a lot of this turning (in my case churning is probably a more literal description) over the last couple years. One step forward, two steps back, with the occasional epiphany thrown in to keep in interesting. But there have been specific catalysts that drove the process and allowed me to distill a collection of life lessons into a cohesive idea of who I am.

Sometimes it's a change in jobs or family circumstances that drives it. Hunter Thompson wrote, I believe in "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail1972", about a New York Times writer (Dave Weicker or something like that) or maybe a Washington Bureau Chief who seemed to tilt the coverage towards Nixon and the right pretty consistently. Maybe because of personal beliefs; maybe due to pressure from management; maybe because, as the official representative of the paper in D.C., he thought he needed to show bias to maintain his access. Maybe he was just a prick.

Anyway, at some point in the Nixon administration, Times management jerked him out of the bureau chief job and made him a columnist. Thompson described a remarkable change in outlook, temperment and attitude as he was freed from hard news coverage and granted that high end real estate on the Op-Ed page. His writing shifted from right to left and his outrage at the criminality of the Nixon gang grew measurably.

Or that's the way I remember the story. I can't find the book to look it up, but it's pretty close. And, sometimes that's what it takes to get it figured out. The release of some pressure you may not even be aware of and, boom, you suddenly see things with remarkable clarity. As I said, I can attest to much of this personally.

Which brings us to Sam Alito. Given the support of Arlen Specter and the lack of fight from Diane Feinstein, he seems certain to be confirmed. And like some before him, the elevation to the highest judicial post in the land with almost no possibility of being removed, may be the mind expanding jolt he needs to start thinking clearly. Not in the liberal tradition - I have no such expectations - but perhaps in the centrist way of O'Connor.

But I doubt it. Some people just don't have the capacity for self discovery, or even self examination. I keep going back to that 1985 application to the Reagan Justice Department where Alito pratically begged them to see how conservative he was - I belonged to the women hater's club at Princeton, and all the rest - and I keep thinking he can't change because there's nothing there to begin with.

Some people you know aren't going anywhere. Clarence Thomas lacks the intellectual capacity to grow in any way, and Antonin Scalia is an angry white guy who, I'm fairly certain, lacks a soul. I was no fan of Rehnquist, and I thought the stripes on the robe showed a penchant for juvenile ego that shouldn't really show up in the Chief Justice, but he seemed, at least occasionally, to get it.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so. I have a sense about these things, especially after my own process, and I just see Alito joining up with his right wing homies and letting the rest of us have it.