In a dissenting opinion, Alito takes a potshot at Bush’s signature racial justice program.
The Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it will not hear Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, a lawsuit attacking a school admissions program that was considered a cutting-edge conservative idea a quarter century ago — and whose most prominent champion was Republican former President George W. Bush.
Two justices dissented, with Justice Samuel Alito writing an angry opinion attacking a school admissions policy that closely mirrors Bush’s signature racial justice program.
In the late 1990s, when Bush was governor of Texas, he signed legislation creating that state’s “top 10 percent” law for university admissions. As the name implies, Bush’s law guaranteed that Texas high school students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their class would be admitted to state-run universities. The program is still in effect, although the state’s flagship school, the University of Texas at Austin, only accepts the top 6 percent or so of students due to increased applications.
There are so many dead canaries in his here mine that I feel like we should all be panicking way more than we are.
Did anyone see Jon Stewart’s return to the daily show last week? And see how democrats were upset with him for “both sides’ing?” Like…Jesus Christ. How sycophantic do you have to be to refuse to acknowledge shortcomings in people you support? We’ve lost all capacity for nuance, and with all the dangerous trends humanity has been exhibiting, I think the death of nuance is right up there with the climate crisis.
They go hand-in-hand, actually. People and en political allegiances. It’s either 0 or 100. There is no middle ground.
Now, I’m not a liberal, I’m not conservative. Idealistically, I’m an anarchist. But I’m also a realist. That means we have to discuss how to operate in this current world, under these current (horribly, fatally flawed) systems. A lot of leftists fall into this trap as well. Most of them, actually. Most people, period. Your beliefs can’t be so purist that you refuse to operate on this plane of existence. Things aren’t black or white. The entire world is a mish mosh of grays and people can only seem to discuss things in terms of absolute black or absolute white. It’s completely hampered our ability to band together to fight our unjust system. Not to mention, it’s really goddamn frustrating.
A big part of it is how the media portrays the divide. Even the conservatives I talk to have a bit of nuance in their views; they’re not Alex Jones screeching about psychic vampire pedophiles.
But the nuance is secondary to herd mentality. They’ll support calling frozen embryos babies because it helps their cause of banning abortion.
So, the core issue is still tribalism, and that’s not ever going away, given the media landscape we live in now.