Friday, May 14, 2010

Day 134: Old Vine Zin and Elena Kagan...


A walk around a vineyard after work. It is hot today and I'm sweating. I stop to admire what will be this year's old vine Zinfandel. A good day all in all, but my legs are tired from a good, hectic day at work.

My thoughts turn to the oil spill in the Gulf. Of course, it is much worse than expected and Millions of gallons of oil are being dumped into the Gulf everyday. Time to get BP out of the picture and get every pointy headed intellectual/engineer working on stopping this thing. Time to bring in the Navy. Time to demand action.

And all this buzz about Elena Kagan. Yet another East Coast Intellectual appointed to the court. These creatures are all cut from the same cloth. And although Kagan's track record isn't well known, what is known is that she is friendly to genetically modified grain sponsored by Monsanto.

That isn't what I want in a Supreme Court Justice!

What I want in a Supreme Court Justice is someone who doesn't live in a city. Someone who didn't go to an Ivy League School. Someone who isn't affiliated with Harvard in any manner whatsoever.

What I want is a Justice who has visited almost every National Park and Monument in the United States. I want a Justice who has friends that earn less than Twenty Grand a year (and still maintains that friendship). I want a Justice who rides their bike once and awhile. I want a Justice who straps on a backpack and takes a fifty miler to some remote location in the back woods of Wyoming, the Sierra, Colorado. I want a justice who uses Snickers as an energy bar.

I want a Justice who rubs elbows with Doug Peacock, not Monsanto executives. I want a Justice who hasn't gone to Church in thirty years. I want a Justice who has a small clothes closet. I want a Justice who wears flannel shirts and blue jeans to the office. I want a Justice who buys her clothes and knick knacks at garage sales. I want a Justice who has read Muir, Abbey, Leopold and Krutch. I want a justice who has had a rattlesnake shake its tail at her. I want a Justice who cries over a 400 hundred year old tree being cut down. I want a Justice who thinks that property has rights over economic development. I want a Justice who has spent at least one summer living in a cabin and had to haul his/her own water from a spring.

I want a Justice who has actually seen a mountain lion.

That sort of person doesn't get educated at Harvard. They get indoctrinated to the ways of the ruling class at that Institution. To find a real person, who will deliver real Justice---one has to look much farther away. I know such a person doesn't exist at Harvard.

2 comments:

Jackijo said...

Well said. I especially like the part about visiting the National Parks and using Snickers as an energy bar!

I do think going to church is not such a bad thing, as long as you supplement reading the bible with reading Muir, Abbey, and Leopold and other such writers. That speaks of an open-minded person to me.

I think having a lady judge who owns (and uses) hiking boots and heels would be very refreshing.

You seem to have created a bucket list of things that I need to do. I have had the rattlesnake shake his tail at me, but my only predator sightings have been coyotes and hawks. And does living in a house on a farm where I had running water, but I had to haul in the coal and wood for the stove and milk the cows, count toward living in a cabin?

I am working on the National Parks, though!

Going to garage sales and thrift stores is such a great way to recycle!

Thanks for such a great post! It made me think a lot about how I grew up and how glad I am of that experience.

Allan Stellar said...

Thanks Jackijo...

If Elena Kagan is put on the court, that will mean that every single justice will have gone to law school at either Yale or Harvard. Seems that in trying to find diversity on the court (blacks, women, latina) we actually end up with people who went to the same school.

Perhaps someone who enjoys wilderness on the court might not be such a bad thing?

And I'd say your farm experience counts. Just 3 percent of US citizens have such experience nowadays...which is sad...

allan