Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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crfriend
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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moonshadow wrote:What we're talking about here is an "us vs them" mentality. I don't think that's the case. The 99% can't agree on anything. Its not the politicians at each other's throat (save for the occasional theater acts)... no, it's the 99% that are harassing each other.
Examine the situation closely, and whilst doing that also recall that the 99% are being fed a continuous stream of pabulum that is specifically engineered to keep them at each others' throats to deflect any sort of attention to what's really going on which is the systematic raping of the 99% by the oligarchs. Make no bones about this, the ruling class knows the game very well and is using historical precedent as its play-book.
We are our own worst enemies, and again, we have the government we deserve.
I believe you are being overly harsh here. Most folks, left to their own devices, tend to be reasonably moderate types and who tend to get along well with others. That model breaks rather badly, however, when there is a continual stream of disinformation that's specifically designed to incite mob-mentality. Read up on how the National Socialists [1] came to dominate Germany in the 1930s. Then look at the past 40 years in the United States. If you divide the populace sufficiently and can keep them that way then you have absolute control over them. "Divide and conquer." Also, "Beware section and faction."

What we have today is "rule" by the oligarchs who hold same because they've harnessed mob-mentality to divide the electorate. The current "rulers" are not "ours" (as in those who are representative of, and whom represent, the electorate) but rather the puppets of the billionaire class which lacks both morals and -- worse -- ethics.
I mean the oligarchs are not gods for Christ sake. They are mortal, flesh and blood just like the rest of us.

They have power because we give them power.
No. They have power because they bought it.


[1] The polite term for NAZIism.
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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crfriend wrote:
moonshadow wrote:What we're talking about here is an "us vs them" mentality. I don't think that's the case. The 99% can't agree on anything. Its not the politicians at each other's throat (save for the occasional theater acts)... no, it's the 99% that are harassing each other.
Examine the situation closely, and whilst doing that also recall that the 99% are being fed a continuous stream of pabulum that is specifically engineered to keep them at each others' throats to deflect any sort of attention to what's really going on which is the systematic raping of the 99% by the oligarchs. Make no bones about this, the ruling class knows the game very well and is using historical precedent as its play-book.
recall that the 99% are being fed a continuous stream of pabulum that is specifically engineered to keep them at each others' throats
This is true, however it's the people who are gullible enough to fall for it. I mean, one requirement for voting is you must be an adult. Ideally, adults shouldn't be so easy to dupe.

Make no bones about this, the ruling class knows the game very well and is using historical precedent as its play-book
And we have the advantage this go 'round of a mostly literate populace, and yet we still fall for it, hook line and sinker!
crfriend wrote:I believe you are being overly harsh here. Most folks, left to their own devices, tend to be reasonably moderate types and who tend to get along well with others.
I disagree here. I believe it is in our animal/primitive nature to naturally arrange ourselves into certain hierarchies. This not only plays out in politics, but at work, in the home life, friends, family, virtually every time a group of people have to work and/or live together hierarchies are eventually formed. Many in the animal kingdom exhibit this too. The cunning typically find their way to the top.

In theory, humans should have evolved enough to at least have a hierarchy of power that is fair and just for all in the system, but alas, we find that humans, are really just animals. It's doesn't make them evil, it just shows that we're really not so far advanced.

...

Ultimately my point is somewhat moot. What I believe humanity needs is something we can not obtain. I believe it is beyond our mental ability. How in the world the founders of the U.S. managed to craft our constitution is a mystery to me. But wait... lets back up a little. Was the founding documents in their origional form really all that great? No.. otherwise we wouldn't have had to amend it 27 times. Slavery was a big whoopsiedaisy, as was the right to vote for non-property holders, women, etc. The 14th is pretty strong if the courts would ever uphold it to the letter, but that ain't never gonna happen.

Indeed it seems like the founders were human too, and prone to error and mistakes.

Anyway, oligarchs have always ruled humanity. Always have, always will. We're in a period of relative freedom right now. Cherish it... tomorrow everything may change, and I can tell you this, if we have a constitutional convention, prepare to enter the dark ages all over again.

The church is waiting patiently....
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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crfriend wrote:No. They have power because they bought it.
And what gives that money its value?

:think:
-Andrea
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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John, the Imperial system isn't so bad. Don't know why you're so down about it. I could tell you my weight in stones and pounds and height in feet and inches but kiligrammes and metres - no chance. I haven't a clue when distances are measured in kilometres or speed in kilometres per hour. And I was brought up to use metric in science through my teenage years.

As for political instability your scene is calm compared to what is happening here. Parliament taking the Prime Minister to court for closing Parliament early and trying to decide whether it was legal or not. Not that it matters as even if it was illegal the PM could resume Parliament then shut it down again quite legally. What a waste of time and funds. To quote Moon, "Geez."
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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moonshadow wrote: Ultimately my point is somewhat moot. What I believe humanity needs is something we can not obtain. I believe it is beyond our mental ability. How in the world the founders of the U.S. managed to craft our constitution is a mystery to me. But wait... lets back up a little. Was the founding documents in their origional form really all that great? No.. otherwise we wouldn't have had to amend it 27 times. Slavery was a big whoopsiedaisy, as was the right to vote for non-property holders, women, etc. The 14th is pretty strong if the courts would ever uphold it to the letter, but that ain't never gonna happen.

Indeed it seems like the founders were human too, and prone to error and mistakes.
Many of the founders wanted to address the stuff like slavery, but knew they couldn't get the Constitution ratified if they did. They had the sense to build in the amendment process so it could be fixed over the centuries, because they new they and the document they had made were imperfect. And remember, the first 10 amendments are the Bill of Rights. They originally avoided enumerating rights, because they wanted too emphasize that rights did not come from government, but were natural and innate in the people "endowed by their Creator."

I read recently, that there were two more amendments that were drafted as part of the Bill of Rights, and one got ratified later, I believe as the 14th.
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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Dust wrote:
moonshadow wrote: Ultimately my point is somewhat moot. What I believe humanity needs is something we can not obtain. I believe it is beyond our mental ability. How in the world the founders of the U.S. managed to craft our constitution is a mystery to me. But wait... lets back up a little. Was the founding documents in their origional form really all that great? No.. otherwise we wouldn't have had to amend it 27 times. Slavery was a big whoopsiedaisy, as was the right to vote for non-property holders, women, etc. The 14th is pretty strong if the courts would ever uphold it to the letter, but that ain't never gonna happen.

Indeed it seems like the founders were human too, and prone to error and mistakes.
Many of the founders wanted to address the stuff like slavery, but knew they couldn't get the Constitution ratified if they did. They had the sense to build in the amendment process so it could be fixed over the centuries, because they new they and the document they had made were imperfect. And remember, the first 10 amendments are the Bill of Rights. They originally avoided enumerating rights, because they wanted too emphasize that rights did not come from government, but were natural and innate in the people "endowed by their Creator."

I read recently, that there were two more amendments that were drafted as part of the Bill of Rights, and one got ratified later, I believe as the 14th.
What I'm about to say is debatable, and I may be wrong, as there are two schools of thought on this. Even the experts are divided...

My understanding is the bill of rights only pertained to the federal governments handling of the states, and perhaps to a lesser extent the states' citizens. Consider the actual wording of the 1st amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The literal wording of this only applies to congress, it says nothing regarding the citizens of the various states. Thus, the states could create an official "state religion", and some basically did. Note that during the time the constitution was drafted, people's citizenship was identified with their state of residence, thus Benjamin Franklin would have been considered a Pennsylvanian first, George Washington would have been considered a Virginian.

Today, hardcore conservatives that want to push Christian theocracy like to point this out, they like to say this is the reason Tennessee should be allowed to have the bible as the official state book. 150 years ago they might have had a leg to stand on, but today, thanks to other amendments (that I'll get to in a minute), they would still run afoul of the modern constitution.

Enter the second amendment and the political roles reverse, anti-gun people like to hold to the literal wording, whereas conservatives take a more "liberal" approach, though I will admit in either case, the wording could be taken either way depending on the bias of the reader:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

I'm not well read on the second amendment. Some believe that this only applies to state militias, others believe that this amendment means anyone can bear arms. The wording is very interesting, because read literally, even undocumented people (what constituted an "undocumented person" anyway back before birth certificates and I.D.'s?) could legally own firearms. Note that the constitution does differentiate between citizens and people, all citizens are people but not all people are citizens. When the U.S. was founded, we basically had open borders, but I digress. Further, at what line do we draw on "arms"? Does this only apply to single shot firearms, muskets, bows, knives, etc? Or does this mean that Joe Sixpack can legally own a nuclear warhead? Also interesting that "state militias" today are not often considered, as the largest weight of the American military comes from the five federal branches: Army, Navy, Marines, Airforce, and Coast Guard.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but it gets more complicated the further down the list you go until you get to the 10th,

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
And this is the amendment that some say rendered the bill of rights mostly useless to the ordinary state citizen, as it put them under the total jurisdiction and authority of their respective states, and it was up to those in the various states to decide how to run said state.

Fast forward to the 14th, and it [the amendment] fixed all of that. In my opinion the 14th is the strongest amendment in the entire document. Thanks to the 14th, Tennessee can not give special privilege to Christianity over other faiths. Thanks to the 14th, no state government system can deny a government document (like a license) to someone because they are homosexual. I.E. They can't say a homosexual can't obtain a marriage license on Christian grounds no more than they can deny a drivers license to a woman on Islamic grounds.

The Equality Amendment (proposed)

Is a waste of time, money, and effort. The 14th already covers this. If the supreme court won't hold to the letter of the 14th, why should they hold to the 28th, other than just a message from "the people" to say "no guys... we mean it, NO DISCRIMINATION!"? It is redundant. as Carl would say "full stop".

However none of this matters in private, non government matters. If you read far enough back in my post, you'd find that I have changed my thoughts on this. Not long ago, I would have sworn a baker denying a cake to a gay couple would be unconstitutional, however, I was wrong. Don't get me wrong, it's still an asshole move, but illegal? No, and nor should it be.

Now I may be wrong on this, but I think how the federal government gets away with law like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is by holding states essentially hostage with funding. I suppose in theory a state could say that a private business could legally not hire a black woman on those grounds alone, however once word of that got out, the fed would cut all federal funding... and no state wants that. In some twisted, ironic, way, this makes the I.R.S. somewhat of a hero of sorts, because their tax code is basically what puts money in the federal treasury's coffers.... well that at the reserves liberty to print money as needed... :roll:

Again, not sure about all of that. I got a clue on it back when Obama was president and one of the states (I can't remember which) tried to pull a stunt with trans-students and bathrooms, and Obama basically said "do this or no soup for you!"

All else fails... just withhold the $$$... gets 'em every time!

Whew... that's enough for now.. back to you Bob.
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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Reading all of the posts on this thread I do believe all of us need to run for the house seat in Washington for your states. We need people with some common sense and Washington is short on that.
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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Now I may be wrong on this, but I think how the federal government gets away with law like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is by holding states essentially hostage with funding.


At the risk of being blunt I have to say you are wrong. Congress has the duty to regulate interstate commerce. Most of the issues touched on in the 1964 Civil Rights Act involved commercial activities. Similarly the Voting Rights Act put some teeth into the 14th Amendment.

Dust is exactly right, when it came to slavery the drafters of the Constitution deliberately and consciously kicked that can because they knew 1) that issue had to be resolved sooner or later 2) they couldn't possibly do it at that time and 3) it was more urgent to hold the country together.

Moonshadow correctly points out that there are 27 amendments to the Constitution. However, I have to disagree with his contention that those show a failing on the part of the Framers of said document; I have always felt that their inclusion of a workable amendment process was one of their foremost strokes of genius. It only makes sense that as conditions change, you will probably have to make changes in your governance. In 1790,just after the Constitution was ratified, the USA stretched only to the Mississippi River and had a little less than 4,000,000 people. Today our country is more than twice that size, it stretches all the way to the Pacific Ocean and beyond. We also have almost 90 times as many people, about 330 million. Who'd a guessed?

And the basic structure is still intact.

Yes, the Constitution was amended 27 times but as we all agreed, the first 10 came within a few years of the original ratification and spells out our rights under federal law, which the states in one form or fashion adopted as well. It took until 1865 to get the count up to 14 and the last two were intended to abolish slavery. That piece of unfinished business from the original drafting. Another couple amendments dealt with drinking. One tried to abolish it; the other that went into effect about 10 years later, said, "Never mind!" or was it "It seemed like a good idea at the time … " Either way it reopened the taps (legally) across the country. So when you came right down to it, there are only 15 amendments in 232 years that changed the way we run the country. And let's not forget it's the world's first written Constitution.

And did I say that the basic structure of President, Legislative houses and Supreme Court is still in place? That a legally defensible interpretation of the Constitution that was finalized in September 1787 is still the last word on what is legal and what isn't in this incredibly wealthy, powerful, sprawling nation of 330 million people?

It wasn't perfect, nothing manmade ever was, but I think it's almost beyond belief what that small group of men in wigs, high-heeled shoes and capris were able to achieve.
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

Post by moonshadow »

Thanks for the feedback Dave. Do not worry, I'm open to being corrected, which is why I try to start statements on topics like this with phrases like "to my understanding", or "I believe". My "beliefs" have always been fluid and subject to amendment when presented with new information.

I live to learn, not show off my intellect, the latter almost always proving to be an embarrassingly futile endeavor! :lol:
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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Youtuber "Knowing Better"puts out some quality stuff regarding history, politics, law, social issues, etc. Some of his lectures have changed my thoughts on various issues and I've learned quite a bit from him.

His video on the the 14th is a good one, essentially explaining the meat of the amendment in layman terms, and describing basically how we don't need an "Equality Amendment", in that we've had the constitutional amendment required to correct virtually any type of government favoritism or discrimination since the end of the civil war....

The Most Important and Overlooked Amendment by Knowing Better

And to put this back on topic, is why that bigoted principle, being the headmaster of a PUBLIC SCHOOL can't say sh!t about that child's long hair, unless he wants to require all students with long hair to wear dresses.
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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moonshadow wrote:And to put this back on topic, is why that bigoted principle, being the headmaster of a PUBLIC SCHOOL can't say sh!t about that child's long hair, unless he wants to require all students with long hair to wear dresses.
The thing with law is that it's all down to how laws are interpreted and how they're enforced. If a law is interpreted in ways that nullify its purpose or intent then it becomes meaningless. Also, if a law is interpreted correctly but is not enforced then it, again, becomes meaningless. So, the trick when "looking in from the outside" is to evaluate whether an extant situation runs counter to law as written (and laypeople can, with diligence, interpret law), then to see whether the law as applied is of some alternate interpretation, and finally -- even if the interpretation passes muster -- is the law properly enforced? That chain is important, and it can break at any point because there are a lot of weak links in it.

In the United States, the original ten amendments to the Constitution (the "Bill of Rights" which limits Federal governmental interference in the daily lives of the citizenry) have been systematically interpreted out of existence. The words are still there, but they carry no weight hence have become null and void. Usually, however, the issue is that there is no enforcement of the law; the courts and the cops simply look the other way. In that case, either the law in question needs to be repealed outright (if it has outlived its usefulness) or the enforcing authorities brought to task for not enforcing it. Sadly, there is no effective way to deal with either situation. And, no, "elections" are not the answer when all the candidates appearing on the ballot are all bought and paid for.
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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I remember the mid-1960's [0] when long hair became fashionable in the youth culture. Some of us adopted the longer hair fashion and had "running battles" with the Headmaster over it. You have to remember that long was shoulder-length or maybe just a bit longer. We were called to his office many times but we eventually got our way. So this is nothing new. Until recently I had a long ponytail and only cut it off because the density up top decreased and made it look straggly. I'm surprised that it's still an issue. That was, like, 50 years or so ago!!!!

[0] I was born 1954 so just about getting to my teens.
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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CRFriend said
And, no, "elections" are not the answer


Then what is.

You keep dismissing elections and yet we see with each election the party in power taking quite different directions on a good number of issues. But clearly where I am naïve enough to think they about half of them show we are making progress, whereas you see them as either trivial or mere smokescreens.

So, please, enlighten us; what is the solution?

If you haven't got one, please keep your over the top cynicism and despair to yourself; I find it incredibly tiresome.
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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Youtuber "Knowing Better"puts out some quality stuff regarding history, politics, law, social issues … His video on the 14th (Amendment) is a good one, essentially explaining … how we don't need an "Equality Amendment"


Having never seen any of "Knowing Better's" videos I'm in no position to judge their overall quality, but from what you said about his video on the 14th Amendment he missed the boat on the Equality Act. The proposed Equality Act would not only outlaw discrimination by the federal government against LGBTQ+ people but also by employers and businesses. So, in all 50 states we could go to any venue of public accommodation (Hotels, motels, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, etc.) or to work in our skirts and be protected by federal law from being discriminated against. At least by the business itself.
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Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress

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Pdxfashionpioneer wrote:So, please, enlighten us; what is the solution?

If you haven't got one, please keep your over the top cynicism and despair to yourself; I find it incredibly tiresome.
Oh, there are solutions all right, but the problem is is that most of 'em are a bit too much like October, 1917 for my tastes. I'd prefer a solution that would not involve mass bloodshed.

Of course there is the option of keeping the rose-coloured glasses on, drinking the Kool-Aid, and going along like nice little sheep in the meantime. Until it's time for lamb stew, that is.
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