Thoughts from the Mountain Top

Over the last few years I watched as people I was acquainted with came out with deeply racist thoughts and at the same time proclaimed they weren't racist.  They couldn't see how what they were saying was racist, or would outright declare "I am not a racist."  In an early morning discussion, a comment someone made got through my thick skull and I finally understood their way of thinking. They don't believe they are racist.  They believe that it's just the natural order of things. “In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become  free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument...They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, ...

In the news today, United Airlines kicked a couple of teenagers off one if its flights for wearing leggings.  The explanation is deeper than what it appears on the surface - they were traveling on a companion pass of an employee and there is a dress code for using that privilege.  Airlines see it as you representing the company when you get to travel for free and have set certain standards. I have no issue with dress codes at work or school when they are unbiased.  When I was in high school, at one point shorts were banned.  Late spring or early fall in a school on Long Island, New York with no air conditioning was not pleasant. Athletic uniforms were allowed, and the boys on the lacrosse team would come every day in their uniforms, consisting of shorts and a jersey, while the rest of us were dying in jeans.  A friend of mine who would later be the salutatorian of our class, got fed up and started wearing shorts to school, daring them to suspend her.  The...

Yesterday I got suckered into an argument; one of those you can't win.  It was with "those people".  The ones who think their religion, or their particular set of beliefs, is the correct one and the only one. It started simple enough and wasn't supposed to devolve into what it did.  One of my Disney groups asked the question of what did we think about the news that there's a gay character in the new Beauty and the Beast.  There was some debate about whether it was integral to the story or not.  I pointed out that it's not like LeFou is going to whip his dick out and start trying to bang Gaston, most likely he was just that he was going to express unrequited love for the man (although I was a little more polite than that). The group admin even said if the woman had just said "it goes against my religious beliefs.  I won't seeing it or taking my children" that would have ended the discussion.  She's stating how it affects her, and she has e...