Once in a while things pile up on my desk and when I look for something, oftentimes another thing, infinitely more interesting, pops up. Such is the case with the things we’ll talk about today. First and foremost, one has to be honest and say that the country, as a whole, is better off than it was under the previous administration. If you take individual parts of what’s going on in the country, economy-wise and political, you may hear entirely different stories… not necessarily true either, by whichever side is doing the talking at the time. Me? I’m a conservative, Republican, and while some might think that they go together automatically, that’s not necessarily so.
There’s “us” and there’s “them” in just about any discussion about any subject. Us, which is mostly Republicans, and mostly conservatives, are strong for the Constitution, the Bill Of Rights, and legal procedures, and it’s that last where some people get “lost”. When a judge looks at a law there might be “wiggle room” for interpretation and that interpretation might bring on another lawsuit… it does happen, and because it does it angers people who have decided that the law didn’t say “that”, it says “this”. One needs to look no further than a long-established law, Roe vs Wade. This one alone has brought people who are ordinarily calm, responsible citizens to the plateau of blind rage. This law, like any law, can be repealed through the proper legal channels.
Speaking of judges, Judge Jorge Alonso of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division said recently in his ruling, that girls have no right to “visual bodily privacy.” The judge said “so far, the right not to be seen unclothed by the opposite sex is not on the Supreme Court’s list” of things that are prohibited. In his ruling, Alonso wrote “The crux of this suit is that defendants seek to affirm the claimed genders of students by allowing male students who claim female gender to use privacy facilities (i.e., bathrooms and locker rooms) designated for use by the female sex and female students who claim male gender to use privacy facilities designated for the male sex … District 211 adopted the policy solely to affirm the claimed genders of those students claiming a gender different from their sex at birth.” Alonso continued, saying the school district has adopted the policy of allowing all transgender students to use the restrooms, locker rooms, and showers of their choice, while it insists all other students “must use the restrooms and locker rooms designated for their sex.”
“Before adopting the policy, District 211 did not investigate the reliability of the science underlying gender-affirmation treatments,” the judge wrote. “Nor did it make any effort to understand the impacts such a policy would have on students exposed to opposite-sex, same-gendered students in locker rooms and restrooms.”
Americans on both sides of just about any issue might be heard to say that “We are a nation of laws” in order to bolster their case. Why then, when a legal issue comes up, do some people lose sight of that phrase and just go hog-wild to the point of confrontation, rioting, destruction of private property and, yes, even to the point of killing or maiming someone for “the cause”. In the case that Judge Alonso presided over, it was clear that he was interpreting that in a way that is contradictory to the “normal” thinking, but he IS the judge and so it sticks, unless someone wins a challenge against it.
One might list this under “blind rage” or “stupidity”…either one would fit quite nicely. The Boston Globe removed an opinion piece from its website where the writer called for waiters to “tamper” with the food of Trump administration officials. Let’s say, before we go any further on this, that “tampering” with food could include poison, and THAT would be more than a misdemeanor, it could be a felony. Luke O’Neil, formerly a waiter, and therefore had access to people’s food, is now an independent writer for several publications. One of the lines in the original piece read ““One of the biggest regrets of my life is not pissing in Bill Kristol’s salmon.”. At the time, Kristol was a staunch conservative, but seems to have changed his tune somewhat. O’Neil concluded the original version of his story by encouraging wait staff to “tamper” with Trump officials’ food, according to The Daily Wire. Now, that seems to be bordering on, but not quite, sedition, and there again, it’s interpretation of the law. O’Neil also said
that tampering with a person’s food could get you into trouble, but you’d be serving America, if the person was connected to government on the side that you were against.
Someone once said that the line between love and hate is very thin…could the line between reason and blind rage be that thin also? Every day, it seems, there is something reported somewhere in the world, that just makes you scratch your head and wonder what in the world that person must have been thinking to do that? Many times, when hearing a confession, police officers have heard the perpetrator say “I didn’t mean to…” whatever it was that was done.
Parting shot: Take a moment, when you’re about to do something, and think twice about doing that thing.
