Even though we see fresh evidence of it almost daily, the contempt the corrupt have for the rest of us still astounds.

They don’t think we’re dumb.

They think we’re really, really, really dumb.

Two U.S. Supreme Court Justices—Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—are among the latest examples. Both jurists have been caught accepting lavish favors from billionaires.

Alito and Thomas took these goodies—six-figure vacations, pricey libations, gourmet meals and financial help with projects involving family members—without declaring them on legally required forms designed to catch potential conflicts of interest. They also enjoyed the largesse without bothering to recuse themselves from cases involving their billionaire benefactors.

When news of the justices’ high-flying lifestyles while on the public payroll broke—through the work of dogged journalists—Thomas and Alito resorted to the time-tested dodges of the tainted.

Even though both men pride themselves on their erudition and their ability to dissect texts and legal codes with a surgeon’s skill, they claimed to be befuddled by the language requiring them to report gifts.

Thus, they did what so many people caught with their hands in the cookie jar have done. Given the choice of acknowledging moral and possibly legal corruption or pretending ignorance, they chose to rely on incompetence as a defense.

Two of what are supposed to be the best legal minds in the country claimed that they just didn’t understand a relatively simple legal requirement.

But that’s not the only way they leaned on their defense of innocence by way of incompetence.

Both justices also said they just didn’t know their rich friends had business before the court. No one told them and they didn’t ask. When it came to considering potential conflicts of interest, Thomas and Alito truly found ignorance to be bliss.

But resorting to the “we were too stupid to do our jobs properly” argument doesn’t reveal the audacious scope of the contempt Alito and Thomas have for the people they’re supposed to serve.

Both justices also contended that the gifts they received from their billionaire sugar daddies couldn’t possibly be conceived as attempts to influence Thomas and Alito as they pondered legal matters affecting the financial fortunes of their benefactors.

Oh, no.

Heaven forbid.

Rather, the billionaires showered the two justices with gifts totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars simply out of friendship. The rich guys flew the two jurists around on private flights, provided them with bottles of wine costing thousands of dollars and eased any financial pressures just because the moneybags guys loved, loved, loved the pleasure of Thomas’ and Alito’s company and were dazzled by the justices’ smiles.

Please.

The most insulting part of all this isn’t that two smart guys like Alito and Thomas are willing to pretend they’re morons to save their behinds and spare themselves public embarrassment.

No, what’s truly insulting about this is that they’re asking—no, demanding—that we all pretend that we’re morons too.

That we don’t understand what was going on here.

Thomas and Alito both like to present themselves as moral exemplars, men who occupy such positions of rectitude that they are entitled to lecture the rest of us.

That act is likely to flop in the future.

Most people can identify hypocrisy when they encounter it.

Many years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter, an assignment required me to interview some working prostitutes.

As I talked with those women, I was struck by the way they told their stories.

Most weren’t proud of where they were and what they did to make money. Often, desperate circumstances had forced them to do what they did.

But they didn’t lie to me about the work they did.

They didn’t pretend to be something other than what they were.

They owned the choices they’d made and acknowledged the parts of themselves they’d sold.

In doing so, they showed more honesty, honor and dignity than two members of this nation’s highest tribunal of justice.