TrueTomHarley

Well we are pretty close to gas being $6.66 per gallon.
 

It is arcane reasoning like this that led the Jurassic Park scientists to attempt recreation of certain other wild beasts, with disastrous results, particularly in the sequels. 

Where are these small JW discussion forums? I’ve never been invited to one. Not that I would accept, most likely. I have my hands full now—but still. I do get FB group invitations all the time but when I look them over few strike me as unique.
Yeah, I guess that’s true. When the old hen took down the entire TrueTom vs the Apostates thread I was much put out, having taken for granted I could always go back there, as though it was a filing system.
Uh oh.
Just look how it has turned out for Elon Musk
Why do I think with such admiration of JWI keeping up with old-time fellows Bethelites, some of whom have fallen into instability? It’s a personality trait that extends into other areas.

Yes. I don't think anyone else (who has watched multiple-page discussions with him) really doubts that they know him from previous accounts. But not me.  I won't make a big deal about that any more. I told him I wouldn't. He has just as much right to post as anyone, under whatever account name he chooses. It's not like he's really fooling anyone anyway.

It's not new. The possibility that 616 might be correct, was already acknowledged by a person who was born between only about 15 to 30 years after the apostle John died. At such an early date, every known difference among the Bible manuscripts would have been significant, because there were so few manuscripts of the Bible books at this time, compared to later. So any differences, if not caught right away, could result in a mistake that would be with us for the next 2,000 years.
As it turns out, we don't need the "witness" of the man born as few as 15 years after the apostle John died. The very earliest known fragment of the book of Revelation also says 616, not 666. Note this from Wikipedia:
Around 2005, a fragment from Papyrus 115, taken from the Oxyrhynchus site, was discovered at the Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum. It gave the beast's number as 616 ????. This fragment is the oldest manuscript . . . of Revelation 13 found as of 2017.[2][3]Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, known before the P115 finding but dating to after it, has 616 written in full: ????????? ???? ??, hexakosioi deka hex (lit. "six hundred and sixteen").[17]  
Fragment from Papyrus 115 (P115) of Revelation in the 66th vol. of the Oxyrhynchus series (P. Oxy. 4499).[16] Has the number of the beast as ???, 616. What looks like XIC in the fragment is actually Greek for "xis" which are the numerals for 6+10+600 or 616. But to show that this was no simple copyist error, the verse also spells out the word for 616 in the way that we spell it out in English as "six-hundred sixteen" (oder auf Deutsch "sechshundert sechzehn"). In the text of the manuscript in Greek this is spelled out as "hexakosioi deka hex" as already noted above. Irenaeus, the man born as few as 15 years after John, preferred 666 to 616, but provides the evidence that he already saw the number 616 in manuscripts in the same generation as the apostle John. Irenaeus said:
Such, then, being the state of the case, and this number being found in all the most approved and ancient copies [of the Apocalypse], and those men who saw John face to face bearing their testimony [to it]; while reason also leads us to conclude that the number of the name of the beast, [if reckoned] according to the Greek mode of calculation by the [value of] the letters contained in it, will amount to six hundred and sixty and six; that is, the number of tens shall be equal to that of the hundreds, and the number of hundreds equal to that of the units (for that number which [expresses] the digit six being adhered to throughout, indicates the recapitulations of that apostasy, taken in its full extent, which occurred at the beginning, during the intermediate periods, and which shall take place at the end), - I do not know how it is that some have erred following the ordinary mode of speech, and have vitiated the middle number in the name, deducting the amount of fifty from it, so that instead of six decads they will have it that there is but one. [I am inclined to think that this occurred through the fault of the copyists, as is wont to happen, since numbers also are expressed by letters; so that the Greek letter which expresses the number sixty was easily expanded into the letter Iota of the Greeks.] - Adv. haer. 5.30 The Bible manuscript (P115) is not the only manuscript in which the 616 is found. Wikipedia also says:
Although Irenaeus (2nd century AD) affirmed the number to be 666 . . . theologians have doubts about the traditional reading[13] because of the appearance of the figure 616 in the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C; Paris - one of the four great uncial codices), as well as in the Latin version of Tyconius (DCXVI, ed. Souter in the Journal of Theology, SE, April 1913), and in an ancient Armenian version (ed. Conybeare, 1907). Irenaeus knew about the 616 reading, but did not adopt it (Haer. v.30,3). In the 380s, correcting the existing Latin-language version of the New Testament (commonly referred to as the Vetus Latina), Jerome retained "666".[14][15]   The P115 mss is probably from 225 C.E. to 250 C.E.  Here, below, is how "666" was written in the Codex Vaticanus (between 350 and 400 C.E.):
So either version has the potential to be correct. But the earliest evidence we have is for 616, not 666. Also we can think about whether it was more likely that a mnemonic number like 666 would more likely turn into a non-mnemonic 616 or would it be more likely that a non-mnemonic would be retained as a mnemonic. In the study of the history of textual changes, the difficult is simplified more often than the simple is made more difficult.
In this case, however, there is an even better explanation as to why both 666 and 616 were both known at such an early date in the history of the manuscripts of Revelation. But that's another story, that is not necessary for this discussion.

Why am I reminded of a certain local sister’s remark years ago about witnessing to her own former people, the Pentecostals? ‘When they’ve got their music on, you can’t touch em.’
In the background as I write this, family members play ‘Jehovah Give Me Courage’—it’s not only music, but video. 

Flat notes they were.
For me, it is the 49 round boxing match of my great uncle, Joe Jennette against Sam McVey in Paris, both of whom used to routinely fight Jack Johnson, until the latter captured with World Heavyweight title and thereafter himself refused to face Black challengers.
As the 50th round began, Sam refused to budge from his corner, moaning, “This man ain’t human!”
The date was 1909, so it more or less matches prophesy, particularly if one isn’t fussy.

Why am I reminded of a certain local sister’s remark years ago about witnessing to her own former people, the Pentecostals? ‘When they’ve got their music on, you can’t touch em.’
In the background as I write this, family members play ‘Jehovah Give Me Courage’—it’s not only music, but video. 

Why am I reminded of a certain local sister’s remark years ago about witnessing to her own former people, the Pentecostals? ‘When they’ve got their music on, you can’t touch em.’
In the background as I write this, family members play ‘Jehovah Give Me Courage’—it’s not only music, but video. 

Flat notes they were.
For me, it is the 49 round boxing match of my great uncle, Joe Jennette against Sam McVey in Paris, both of whom used to routinely fight Jack Johnson, until the latter captured with World Heavyweight title and thereafter himself refused to face Black challengers.
As the 50th round began, Sam refused to budge from his corner, moaning, “This man ain’t human!”
The date was 1909, so it more or less matches prophesy, particularly if one isn’t fussy.

Are you crazy?!
Posting your social security number is an invitation to identity theft!
***
I demand credit for this thread! Don’t give it to Moise. How unjust!
TrueTom writes about John Brown. JWI responds with John A Brown, the chronology writer.
What’s next?
TrueTom: Robert E Lee commanded the . . .
Anna: ‘There used to be a Bob Lee as I was learning the truth. What a character he was!’
TrueTom: Jefferson Davis presided over the . . . 
Pudgy: ‘Dave Jefferson, the Presiding Overseer of the Backwoods congregation, was a . . . 
TrueTom: Frederick Douglass spoke powerfully for . . . 
Amidstheheroes: ‘Fred Douglas, our table head, back when I . . . ‘
TrueTom: Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, was the one who . . 
JWI: ‘Brother Stewart Williams, a plumber by trade, was stuck with the task of cleaning out the sewars on one particularly . . .

Whoops! You are right. I did indicate that I was taking about a month-long break way back around December 10th (on another part of the forum). It sure FEELS like it's been a month already.

“I will not run! If elected, I will not serve! I am not going to participate here at least to the end of the year. NOT! NOT! NOT! Get behind me Satan! You cannot tempt me for all the guns in Harpers Ferry!”
I’ve no doubt that when I mention Frederick Douglass there will be a Frederick A Douglas who served in the Antarctic Branch.

On the day of his hanging, John Brown handed a note to a guard written the day before: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” 750,000-person’s worth of blood was spilled in that Civil War.” It was blood spilled in payment for a moral failing, is what John Brown was saying.
Both Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S Grant, the 16th and 18th presidents of the United States, came to hold and express that view. At Lincoln’s second inaguration, after four years of bloody war, the reelected president expressed hope that the fighting would soon end, “yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the [slaveholder’s] 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” He did not exempt himself from guilt. It was not an ‘us versus them’ speech. How could he condemn the South for not ending slavery when he knew of no easy solution himself? 
Says Ron Chernow, author of Grant, the 18th president, as both general and president, also “deemed the war a punishment for national sins that had to come sooner or later in some shape and probably in blood.” I am reminded of how, at the Martin van Buren home, a National Historical Park site, the hatted ranger told me that no president after Andrew Jackson served more than one term because “the challenges leading up to the Civil War were thought to be unaddressed by those presidents.”
They were “addressed” in that war. Per Brown, Lincoln, and Grant, they were addressed with plenty of blood. As a punishment for sins? You’d get no argument on that from those men. There is such a thing as ‘community responsibility.’ 
That inaugural address of Lincoln’s was overall praised, though the non-religious persons grumbled at his “substitution of religion for statesmanship." He himself allowed that the address would wear well over time, but not immediately, since “men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them."
Tom Pearlsnswine, the fellow who mortified me by muttering about the ‘wiles of Satan’ when I was dumb enough to invite him to tag along with us on a visit to the dinosaur museum, the fellow who puts the dog into dogmatic, was not at all happy with this above historical discussion. “What does this have to do with the Bible?” he spouted. “These men were all bloodguilty,” he fumed, as he took another bite of his Bible sandwich. “Stay on topic!”
Even given his confidence in preservation of the union, even given his confidence in emancipation, would Lincoln not have agreed with the ‘bloodguilty’ charge? North and South were appalled at the phenomenal loss of life—far eclipsing the walk in the park some had first envisioned the war would be—and Lincoln, a man with a conscience, was commander in chief. Couldn’t he have gotten the job done with less blood? Wasn’t it his fault if he hadn’t? “If there is a worse place than hell,” Lincoln remarked in the aftermath of a staggering slaughter under the leadership of a particularly incompetent general (Burnside), “I am in it.”
Ten days before his death, Lincoln related a dream to friend and bodyguard Ward Leman. He was in the White House. “There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. . . . I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along.” At length, he came upon a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments, surrounded by mourners and guards. He asked who it was. “The President,” was the guard’s answer. “He was killed by an assassin.”
Ten days later Lincoln was killed by an assassin. Ones who regard such premonitions as impossible deny the dream report, but Lincoln was well-known for relating portentous dreams.
(Written first, though as yet unpublished, on my own blog)

October 17, 1871: Proclamation Suspending Habeas Corpus
Transcript By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Whereas by an act of Congress entitled "An act to enforce the provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes," approved the 20th day of April, A. D. 1871, power is given to the President of the United States, when in his judgment the public safety shall require it, to suspend the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus in any State or part of a State whenever combinations and conspiracies exist in such State or part of a State for the purpose of depriving any portion or class of the people of such State of the rights, privileges, immunities, and protection named in the Constitution of the United States and secured by the act of Congress aforesaid; and whenever such combinations and conspiracies do so obstruct and hinder the execution of the laws of any such State and of the United States as to deprive the people aforesaid of the rights, privileges, immunities, and protection aforesaid, and do oppose and obstruct the laws of the United States and their due execution, and impede and obstruct the due course of justice under the same; and whenever such combinations shall be organized and armed, and so numerous and powerful as to be able by violence either to overthrow or to set at defiance the constituted authorities of said State and of the United States within such State; and whenever by reason of said causes the conviction of such offenders and the preservation of the public peace shall become in such State or part of a State impracticable; and
Whereas such unlawful combinations and conspiracies for the purposes aforesaid are declared by the act of Congress aforesaid to be rebellion against the Government of the United States; and
Whereas by said act of Congress it is provided that before the President shall suspend the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus he shall first have made proclamation commanding such insurgents to disperse; and
Whereas on the 12th day of the present month of October the President of the United States did issue his proclamation, reciting therein, among other things, that such combinations and conspiracies did then exist in the counties of Spartanburg, York, Marion, Chester, Laurens, Newberry, Fairfield, Lancaster, and Chesterfield, in the State of South Carolina, and commanding thereby all persons composing such unlawful combinations and conspiracies to disperse and retire peaceably to their homes within five days from the date thereof, and to deliver either to the marshal of the United States for the district of South Carolina, or to any of his deputies, or to any military officer of the United States within said counties, all arms, ammunition, uniforms, disguises, and other means and implements used, kept, possessed, or controlled by them for carrying out the unlawful purposes for which the said combinations and conspiracies are organized; and
Whereas the insurgents engaged in such unlawful combinations and conspiracies within the counties aforesaid have not dispersed and retired peaceably to their respective homes, and have not delivered to the marshal of the United States, or to any of his deputies, or to any military officer of the United States within said counties, all arms, ammunition, uniforms, disguises, and other means and implements used, kept, possessed, or controlled by them for carrying out the unlawful purposes for which the combinations and conspiracies are organized, as commanded by said proclamation, but do still persist in the unlawful combinations and conspiracies aforesaid:
Now, therefore, I, Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution of the United States and the act of Congress aforesaid, do hereby declare that in my judgment the public safety especially requires that the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus be suspended, to the end that such rebellion may be overthrown, and do hereby suspend the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus within the counties of Spartanburg, York, Marion, Chester, Laurens, Newberry, Fairfield, Lancaster, and Chesterfield, in said State of South Carolina, in respect to all persons arrested by the marshal of the United States for the said district of South Carolina, or by any of his deputies, or by any military officer of the United States, or by any soldier or citizen acting under the orders of said marshal, deputy, or such military officer within any one of said counties, charged with any violation of the act of Congress aforesaid, during the continuance of such rebellion.
In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this 17th day of October, A.D. 1871, and of the Independence of the United States of America the ninety-sixth.
U. S. GRANT.
By the President:
J. C. BANCROFT DAVIS,
Acting Secretary of State.

I’m not reading up on Lincoln anymore. I’m reading up on Grant. Pudgy would like both, I think and may already be well-versed. They both were raised in lowly circumstances. They both were unusually humble and defenders of the lowly. They both were continually sneered at by elites. They both made emancipation of slaves their chief mission. And they both . . . wait for it  . .  found occasion to suspect habeas corpus. 
I have a younger relative who is libertarian. By far, that is his overriding philosophy, motivating everything he does. The first factoid he ever learned about Lincoln was his suspension of habeas corpus. That was enough for him to permanently put Lincoln on his evil-person list. From there, he immediately bought into the invective that Lincoln didn’t give two hoots about freeing slaves—his sole concern was preservation of the union.
In fact, from the very beginning, Lincoln purposed that quenching the ‘rebellion’—such it was called at the time—would go hand in glove with destroying the

institution of slavery. But he could not just outright say it. He knew he had to first build a consensus. Many were the northern abolitionists who did outright say it, and they were immediately marginalized into a minority camp. Minorities don’t win at the human game of government. William Seward (by far the front runner leading up to 1860–everyone supposed hewould be president, not Lincoln) also did say it, giving a lofty speech invoking a “higher law.” Not only was he marginalized by those to whom the sole mission of freeing slaves was insufficient motivation, but he was alsomarginalized by those who supposed there was no higher law other than the human experiment of ‘government by the people.’
The only way Lincoln’s Emancipation would fly in all the North, not just with the abolitionists, was for him to sell it as a military strategy. White northern troops fretted over who would mind the household while they were gone. White southern troops had no such concerns; their slaves could keep things humming. Free those slaves and the playing field was leveled. In fact, it was more than leveled: those slaves would begin to conspire against their masters.
Two sacrosanct, as human principles go—standards of justice took front and center stage in the Civil War years: state’s rights and habeas corpus. I can imagine Pudgy railing against any infringement of either:
”Tyranny …. in soft measured voices, done in secret, and with powdered silk gloves is STILL TYRANNY.”
Oh yeah, I can easily see it! And I’d tend to agree, in a relative sense—but only a relative sense. Fact is, such lofty human principles stood squarely in the way of a far greater good: the liberation of hundreds of thousands of enslaved people. Robert E Lee personally loathed slavery. He had never owned a slave. But he took up the call of what he considered even more sacred. ‘State’s rights’ became the clarion call for him. Consequently, he signed on to command Southern troops, enshrining slavery as the ‘right’ of the state to decide, not some meddling Union to impose their standards from afar.
‘Man is dominating man to his injury’—even (and in this case, due to) when they run by their own self-invented concepts of justice. In the greater removed picture, looked at from our time, only the elimination of slavery matters. One Union should split into two? It’s like Bud said when he threw away the anti-rattle clip he couldn’t figure out how to reinstall—“What’s more rattle on a Ford?” So it is with human self-government. What’s one more division of mankind in a sea of many divisions?
Here the two bedrock principles of American justice, habeas corpus and state’s rights, stood squarely in the way of real justice for hundreds of thousand of Blacks—for Whites too, for that matter, since Jefferson wrote of the South: “The parent storms [in domination of his slaves]; the child looks on . . . puts on the same airs . . . and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, can not but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.” 
One is reminded (a bone for science-fiction aficionados) of ‘Childhood’s End, in which the alien overlords paid no attention whatsoever to ‘state’s rights,’ immediately and decisively ending the cruel spectator sport of bullfighting. 
Lincolns’ suspension of habeas corpus was a measure he deemed essential to preserve the Union, which action would enable the freeing of slaves. Certain journalists were openly encouraging desertion from the Northern army. ‘I should shoot some guileless plowboy deserter and not the guileful propagandist who induced him to do so?’ he posed.
Grant’s suspension of habeas corpus during his presidency is more directly connected with the welfare of Blacks than was Lincoln’s. In the early days of Johnson’s presidency, the Ku Klux Klan arose. Reports were that it commanded the active participation of 2/3 of southern Democrats whites, and the tacit participation of the other third. By many measures, Blacks were worse off than during slavery. The white aristocracy manipulated them into situations just as oppressive but with no obligation to provide for them.
Unspeakable and well-documented atrocities became routine. Not only might blacks be easily beaten or killed, but also white Republican southerners who aligned with them. Murderers could not be brought to justice. Witnesses were too intimidated to speak out, and with good reason; no jury of peers would convict Klansmen, and the retribution against witnesses would be severe. Grant sent in federal judges, and suspended habeas corpus in enough instances that Klansmen would turn upon each other in efforts to get off or gain lighter sentences for the crimes that a non-federal judge would excuse. Within a few years, he had broken the back of the Klan. It’s later reemergence is in name and ideology only (just as Baal worship kept coming back, even though guys like Elijah would clean it out from time to time.)
Habeas corpus and state’s rights—noble as far as human principles go, but not a guarantee that evil cannot, not only exist, but prevail. 
Anyone thinking that God works through America (or any other country—America being the only topic of consideration here) is invited to look at the Andrew Johnson administration. “Be Like Abe” flies, as does (to a lesser degree, but still doable) “Be Like Ulysses,” but not “Be Like Andrew.”
By the end of the war, Abraham Lincoln succeeded in bringing justice to blacks. Andrew Johnson undid it all. Grant’s work was to undo the damage that Johnson had wrought and he largely succeeded. What justice might have prevailed if Lincoln had been immediately succeeded by Grant, with no Johnson in between? 
Like Lincoln and Grant, Johnson too was brought up in lowly circumstances. He too was a self-made man. There the similarities end. Johnson was intensely racist. He was intensely vindictive (at first) to the former Confederacy, favoring severe punishment (akin to that imposed on Germany after WWI?) in contrast, Lincoln had been completely non-vengeful. Worse, vengeance was personal with Johnson. Vengefulness was a way of getting back at the aristocratic elites who had ridiculed and looked down upon him all his life. Northern abolitionists, who also (unlike Lincoln and Grant) favored harsh punishment for the South, at first thought they had found an ally in Johnson. But in fairly short order, he gave up despising the southern white aristocrats, and began kissing up to them, as though hoping to be anointed king of their club, his racist orientation a perfect match for theirs. 
God works through human governments? What if there had been no Johnson, and Lincoln’s ideals carried directly over to Grant. Shortly after the war, General Grant’s man told local transport companies in New Orleans that if they continued their practice of segregation, he would ban all that company’s cars from the road. According to Ron Chernow, author of Grant, “once the original hubbub over desegregated streetcars subsided, the locals had cheerfully adopted the new system and the excitement died out at once.” Chernow cites it as an example of the “startling early revolution in civil rights [that] would be all but forgotten by later generations of Americans.” What if Johnson had not come along to poison the well? Don’t you think if God ran the show through human government, he would not have?
A little bit on roll here. Sorry. I just wanted to kick back a little at those who think human standards of justice from the Founding Fathers are the bee’s knees. They're better than their absence, generally speaking, but sometimes they get in the way of true justice. 

@TrueTomHarleyyou got me curious about his suspension of habeus corpus and I had to read up on it a little.... interesting.
One could make the argument that he did "evil" according to the law for the greater good of emancipating the slaves. 
 

I’m not reading up on Lincoln anymore. I’m reading up on Grant. Pudgy would like both, I think and may already be well-versed. They both were raised in lowly circumstances. They both were unusually humble and defenders of the lowly. They both were continually sneered at by elites. They both made emancipation of slaves their chief mission. And they both . . . wait for it  . .  found occasion to suspect habeas corpus. 
I have a younger relative who is libertarian. By far, that is his overriding philosophy, motivating everything he does. The first factoid he ever learned about Lincoln was his suspension of habeas corpus. That was enough for him to permanently put Lincoln on his evil-person list. From there, he immediately bought into the invective that Lincoln didn’t give two hoots about freeing slaves—his sole concern was preservation of the union.
In fact, from the very beginning, Lincoln purposed that quenching the ‘rebellion’—such it was called at the time—would go hand in glove with destroying the

institution of slavery. But he could not just outright say it. He knew he had to first build a consensus. Many were the northern abolitionists who did outright say it, and they were immediately marginalized into a minority camp. Minorities don’t win at the human game of government. William Seward (by far the front runner leading up to 1860–everyone supposed hewould be president, not Lincoln) also did say it, giving a lofty speech invoking a “higher law.” Not only was he marginalized by those to whom the sole mission of freeing slaves was insufficient motivation, but he was alsomarginalized by those who supposed there was no higher law other than the human experiment of ‘government by the people.’
The only way Lincoln’s Emancipation would fly in all the North, not just with the abolitionists, was for him to sell it as a military strategy. White northern troops fretted over who would mind the household while they were gone. White southern troops had no such concerns; their slaves could keep things humming. Free those slaves and the playing field was leveled. In fact, it was more than leveled: those slaves would begin to conspire against their masters.
Two sacrosanct, as human principles go—standards of justice took front and center stage in the Civil War years: state’s rights and habeas corpus. I can imagine Pudgy railing against any infringement of either:
”Tyranny …. in soft measured voices, done in secret, and with powdered silk gloves is STILL TYRANNY.”
Oh yeah, I can easily see it! And I’d tend to agree, in a relative sense—but only a relative sense. Fact is, such lofty human principles stood squarely in the way of a far greater good: the liberation of hundreds of thousands of enslaved people. Robert E Lee personally loathed slavery. He had never owned a slave. But he took up the call of what he considered even more sacred. ‘State’s rights’ became the clarion call for him. Consequently, he signed on to command Southern troops, enshrining slavery as the ‘right’ of the state to decide, not some meddling Union to impose their standards from afar.
‘Man is dominating man to his injury’—even (and in this case, due to) when they run by their own self-invented concepts of justice. In the greater removed picture, looked at from our time, only the elimination of slavery matters. One Union should split into two? It’s like Bud said when he threw away the anti-rattle clip he couldn’t figure out how to reinstall—“What’s more rattle on a Ford?” So it is with human self-government. What’s one more division of mankind in a sea of many divisions?
Here the two bedrock principles of American justice, habeas corpus and state’s rights, stood squarely in the way of real justice for hundreds of thousand of Blacks—for Whites too, for that matter, since Jefferson wrote of the South: “The parent storms [in domination of his slaves]; the child looks on . . . puts on the same airs . . . and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, can not but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.” 
One is reminded (a bone for science-fiction aficionados) of ‘Childhood’s End, in which the alien overlords paid no attention whatsoever to ‘state’s rights,’ immediately and decisively ending the cruel spectator sport of bullfighting. 
Lincolns’ suspension of habeas corpus was a measure he deemed essential to preserve the Union, which action would enable the freeing of slaves. Certain journalists were openly encouraging desertion from the Northern army. ‘I should shoot some guileless plowboy deserter and not the guileful propagandist who induced him to do so?’ he posed.
Grant’s suspension of habeas corpus during his presidency is more directly connected with the welfare of Blacks than was Lincoln’s. In the early days of Johnson’s presidency, the Ku Klux Klan arose. Reports were that it commanded the active participation of 2/3 of southern Democrats whites, and the tacit participation of the other third. By many measures, Blacks were worse off than during slavery. The white aristocracy manipulated them into situations just as oppressive but with no obligation to provide for them.
Unspeakable and well-documented atrocities became routine. Not only might blacks be easily beaten or killed, but also white Republican southerners who aligned with them. Murderers could not be brought to justice. Witnesses were too intimidated to speak out, and with good reason; no jury of peers would convict Klansmen, and the retribution against witnesses would be severe. Grant sent in federal judges, and suspended habeas corpus in enough instances that Klansmen would turn upon each other in efforts to get off or gain lighter sentences for the crimes that a non-federal judge would excuse. Within a few years, he had broken the back of the Klan. It’s later reemergence is in name and ideology only (just as Baal worship kept coming back, even though guys like Elijah would clean it out from time to time.)
Habeas corpus and state’s rights—noble as far as human principles go, but not a guarantee that evil cannot, not only exist, but prevail. 
Anyone thinking that God works through America (or any other country—America being the only topic of consideration here) is invited to look at the Andrew Johnson administration. “Be Like Abe” flies, as does (to a lesser degree, but still doable) “Be Like Ulysses,” but not “Be Like Andrew.”
By the end of the war, Abraham Lincoln succeeded in bringing justice to blacks. Andrew Johnson undid it all. Grant’s work was to undo the damage that Johnson had wrought and he largely succeeded. What justice might have prevailed if Lincoln had been immediately succeeded by Grant, with no Johnson in between? 
Like Lincoln and Grant, Johnson too was brought up in lowly circumstances. He too was a self-made man. There the similarities end. Johnson was intensely racist. He was intensely vindictive (at first) to the former Confederacy, favoring severe punishment (akin to that imposed on Germany after WWI?) in contrast, Lincoln had been completely non-vengeful. Worse, vengeance was personal with Johnson. Vengefulness was a way of getting back at the aristocratic elites who had ridiculed and looked down upon him all his life. Northern abolitionists, who also (unlike Lincoln and Grant) favored harsh punishment for the South, at first thought they had found an ally in Johnson. But in fairly short order, he gave up despising the southern white aristocrats, and began kissing up to them, as though hoping to be anointed king of their club, his racist orientation a perfect match for theirs. 
God works through human governments? What if there had been no Johnson, and Lincoln’s ideals carried directly over to Grant. Shortly after the war, General Grant’s man told local transport companies in New Orleans that if they continued their practice of segregation, he would ban all that company’s cars from the road. According to Ron Chernow, author of Grant, “once the original hubbub over desegregated streetcars subsided, the locals had cheerfully adopted the new system and the excitement died out at once.” Chernow cites it as an example of the “startling early revolution in civil rights [that] would be all but forgotten by later generations of Americans.” What if Johnson had not come along to poison the well? Don’t you think if God ran the show through human government, he would not have?
A little bit on roll here. Sorry. I just wanted to kick back a little at those who think human standards of justice from the Founding Fathers are the bee’s knees. They're better than their absence, generally speaking, but sometimes they get in the way of true justice. 

With a smattering of Vietnamese (because long ago we studied with a family and there was a makeshift group in our area—this was well before the organization began emphasizing foreign groups and congregations, Minh and someone were speaking Vietnamese in front of me. 
“Toi hue het” I said in my rudimentary way, which means roughly “I understand what you’re saying” (literally: ‘I understand all”—though I’m sure I have neglected accent marks here, which changes the meaning—sorry)
”You understand nothing!” Minh shot back in English.

The first rule of Super Extra Double Plus Special Closed Club, is to never talk about Super Extra Double Plus Special Closed Club.
All communications must be squirrel noises.

In this case, I was just making a joke. The ‘American thinking cap’ strikes again. I don’t know of such groups. Just one scholarly one in which participants are not necessarily even Witnesses. It is invitation only and I have never been invited. Nothing scholarly about me. I just putter.
Other than that, there are groups and forums everywhere. People can get in simply by asking and meeting minimal qualifications. You never know for sure who the others are. I keep my distance, for the most part. It’s all I can do to keep up with my own stuff.

In this case, I was just making a joke. The ‘American thinking cap’ strikes again. I don’t know of such groups. Just one scholarly one in which participants are not necessarily even Witnesses. It is invitation only and I have never been invited. Nothing scholarly about me. I just putter.
Other than that, there are groups and forums everywhere. People can get in simply by asking and meeting minimal qualifications. You never know for sure who the others are. I keep my distance, for the most part. It’s all I can do to keep up with my own stuff.

And there are ones more special still that even you don’t know about.

Picking a fight, are you? But I suppose you’re right. Lots of names are odd.

I’m not so sure. Whenever a person with an odd name appears out of nowhere (especially when another of odd name has disappeared) and becomes intensely active, we can suspect another reincarnation of you know who. 
That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, necessarily. I mean, just look at who he is squaring off against—hardly a paragon of fair play or reasonableness.
That said, a couple of innocent people have been caught in that net, so you never know. Only ONE person—a certain wizard in internet technology who takes the place of ‘only your hairdresser knows for sure’—can be said to know.