Some of the justices seem to care somewhat about what people think of them. Some don't seem to care much at all. In general I don't agree that the court puts that much effort into appearing legitimate.

If the Supreme Court cared at all about appearing legitimate, they would have made the effort to remove Justice Thomas, who keeps taking outright bribes in order to influence his decisions, and the public is completely aware of it with documented proof.

You have very different definitions of "the public" and I promise you that yours is a hell of a lot smaller.

People who are aware of who Justice Thomas even IS would still be a vastly smaller circle than the number of people who would be affected and have very strong opinions on a US default (although not until it happens).

Most people (and more than is the case for any other Supreme Court Justice) know who Thomas is, and most of those (by a wider absolute than any other justice, though by a smaller relative margine than Kavanaugh or Barrett) who do have negative impression of him.

https://thehill.com/homenews/4019788-poll-thomas-has-highest...

Missing context:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been friends with Dallas billionaire Harlan Crow for 27 years. Crow said that he and his wife have been friends with Thomas and his wife Ginni since 1996.

Is there proof they were bribes as opposed to the innocent explanation that they are just family friends, and it's not unusual for billionaires to offer a free ride to their non-billionaire friends on vacation?

Thomas joined the court in 1991, so I'm not sure that the 1996 friendship date helps him much.

Giving and forgiving a $200k loan, buying his mom's house (while still allowing her to live there free for over a decade), and paying for his kid's private schooling while you have cases in front of a justice has the appearance of impropriety.

My corpo policy doesn't even allow me to accept $20 of gifts from friends or acquaintances if there is also a sniff of business relationship there as well. The goings on between the Justice and his friend sure don't smell right, to me.

The pertinent questions are, what are norms for this kind of thing in the rest of the federal court system, and is Thomas’ behavior in the same universe as those?

The answers are “you turn down gifts of far, far less, from much less-risky associates” and “not in the same multiverse, even”.

This seems so far from the present-day reality that I don’t know where to begin. Thomas is demonstrably taking bribes. Kavanaugh had a large amount of debt he claimed was from “baseball tickets” that just magically disappeared. Cony-Barrett is part of a cult. Meanwhile, the court is making wildly unpopular decisions left and right and openly states no one can hold them to account for anything they do or say, on or off the bench. They have zero legitimacy.

The public plainly does not care about the bribes. Their decisions have been unpopular, but not wildly so. The courts approval rating is sitting at 40% which is probably fine. The issue is when it starts approaching single digits.

Much of the courts approval rating is due to one judgment, I suspect. Take that away, and I wonder how it looks.

The senate could impeach him... but that would seem a bit hypocritical considering all the insider trading (bribes) that goes on there.

Recent history has demonstrated the impotency of impeachment.

Given that no US president has been convicted after being impeached, I'm not so sure what's impotent. Mere impeachment doesn't have a penalty.