A website linked to Ethics Alarms last week, and inadvertently exposed me to some nasty critics*, one of whom wrote that among other transgressions, I “really hate the Clintons” and am “a very angry person.”
I know what this is, and I enshrined the technique as Rationalization #48. Ethics Jiu Jitsu, or “Haters Gonna Hate!”:
This vintage of obnoxious rationalization is recently pressed. Its objective is to turn the tables on legitimate critics of unethical conduct by asserting that it is the act of criticism itself that is wrong, thus allowing the object of the criticism to not only escape unscathed, but to claim victim status... The politically-motivated legal monstrosities known as “hate crimes” have inspired this rationalization by making it plausible to argue that dislike itself is wrong, even when what is being disliked, criticized or hated is objectively wrongful conduct. All “haters” are lumped together, whether the object of hate is Lance Armstrong’s cheating, the NFL’s conspiracy to hide the effects of concussions, or Barack Obama’s ineptitude, in a linguistic trick that suggests that sincere critics are no different from people who hate the United States, minorities, decency, true love and puppies. They are all haters, hate is bad, and it’s the haters who are the problem, not the corruption, dishonesty, and betrayals they criticize…
I don’t hate the Clintons. I have no emotional investment in the Clintons at all, any more than I am filled with hatred for Donald Trump, Melissa Harris-Perry, Bill O’Reilly, Kim Davis, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Michele Bachmann, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Carol Costello, Barry Bonds, Tom Brady, the NFL, PETA or any of the targets of intense criticism here. Hate is a powerful emotion, and it leads to irrational decision-making. This is a blog dedicated to ethics, which requires rational decision-making. Hatred leads to bias, and bias makes us stupid. I am not a hateful person; I doubt that anyone who knows me thinks of me as a hateful person.
Nor am I an angry person, though I am told that I am a frightening one when I am angry. (“You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry…”). I almost never write posts when I’m angry; in fact, if I’m angry about an event, I will wait until I’m not angry before I tackle it. I can think of one exception rom last year: this. Because I was angry, I let another columnist do most of the substantive critique. This was an unusual case.
The commenter who said I am angry claimed that he read all of January’s posts. I just checked them, and none of them reflect anger on my part. I just don’t work that way. I am passionate about ethics, but that doesn’t translate into anger. I take strong positions and express them with gusto, but that’s just my style, and it is also designed to spark debate. True, I don’t respect weasel words and cowardly equivocation; I consider pundits like Kathleen Parker, who habitually argues both sides of any controversy and behaves as if a shrug is a verdict, a waste of our time and a newspaper’s space. That’s just me. This is a blog; unlike a scholarly website (The Ethics Scoreboard was more restrained), Ethics Alarms renders a professional opinion with my personality attached, much like my seminars. Ethics is fascinating, but the people who typically write and talk about ethics are boring as hell. My career, and ProEthics, is based on the presumption that ethics is more appealing when it isn’t made boring, and while I can be fairly accused of many things, being boring has never been one of them.
As far as criticizing the Clintons’ ethics are concerned, and I write this prior to a review I’m preparing of Hillary’s wonderfully horrible week, I confess to being relentless, and proud of it. The couple has some admirable traits, and among them are determination, endurance and perseverance: I even saluted Bill for this in the middle of his impeachment crisis. The Little Engine That Could had nothing on Bill and Hillary. But this is also their winning strategy. The plan is to keep going, keep denying, keep lying, and keep doing exactly what they want, no matter how shady, in the belief that legitimate critics will eventually look like persecutors, and they can then play victims. It’s a clever strategy, and they are good at it. It lets their corrupted supporters and the party they have robbed of self-respect and integrity argue that we should “move on.” “Move on,” however, means that the culture has accepted and ratified their conduct, and them.
I don’t hate the Clintons. I understand them. My job is to help as many people as possible to also understand them, until their grand strategy, which is ethically toxic for the culture, fails.
*In the original version of this post, I implied that the site was intentionally up to mischief. This was terribly unfair, and I have revised this intro and apologized to the proprietor, who was only trying to bring some interesting sites to the attention of her readers. I judged her site by the rhetoric of the commenters, and should not have. My fault, entirely.
Ethics Alarms 
Understanding them and telling it to the world is devastating to the narrative. Anyone who understands them must also hate what they do. And, like children being found out and called out, the reactive response is that you must hate them. It’s pure Alinsky.
I think it’s also projection. The Clinton’s and their minions genuinely do hate the people who condemn their behavior. If you condemn what they do you must be a hater because they are defacto correct and virtuous and all their behaviors are also correct and virtuous.
Do you have a link to the web site?
I’ll see if I can locate it.
Is the site you mentioned that the former hopeful, Titanium Dragon, was involved in?
Yes.
Hold on a sec. As the person who linked you, I object to being characterized as:
“a misbegotten website that apparently linked to Ethics Alarms purely to sic its readers on me,”
It might be misbegotten, but it’s a fanfiction website, and home to some surprisingly serious aspiring writers and wonderful, fascinating people. I’m know in the community for offering interesting ways to think about writing, and among other various links I linked to your list of Rationalizations, with the following text:
Ethics Alarms List of Unethical Rationalizations and Misconceptions requires a bit of explaining in a couple of different ways.
I have no idea how I stumbled across this blog, but it’s run by a professional ethicist and the purpose is to look at current events in terms of ethics rather than politics. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, but I will say that he’s just as tough on the left and right, and where he stands on issues has nothing to do with party lines. (The comments on the blog do lean right, though there are very intelligent voices on both sides.)
The list linked above are excuses, fallacies, and outright trickery that people often use, whether in public statements or to themselves, to justify unethical conduct. Now, I happen to love fallacies and biases. Every now and then I’ll hit wikipedia and look at them for hours, I just find it fascinating the way people can purposely or unintentionally misuse logic. So I think the list is an interesting read just for that.
It also might offer some plot seeds and ideas to writers, because it’s always fun to consider new reasons why a hero or villain might convince themselves to do the wrong thing, or see through someone else who’s doing it.
(Also interesting on that site, for history buffs: He’s transcribed a set of 110 rules for conduct that George Washington memorized and reportedly tried to live by. As one would expect, they range from charmingly outdated to surprisingly relevant.)
___
Now, I thought I made my intentions in linking you perfectly clear. I think it’s an interesting blog, and I love your rationalizations list and thought it could be useful to writers. The people who read my blog are writers and fans, I happen to know they cover the entire political spectrum, so I dropped a (neutral) explanation of what they might find upon reading further.
I didn’t argue with the negative comments because that’s not why I linked it (and because arguments with the gentleman in question can become a week long investment. I did have an interesting conversation with one of the other commenters about it in a private chat.)
I can totally understand why you wouldn’t want to make an account just to defend yourself on that forum, but if you’d like I can send a link to the commenter who made the statement to give you a chance to explain yourself.
Could you post a link please.
I hope you like My Little Pony Fanfiction. 😀
http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/590166/have-some-links
Thank you
Nice links, thanks. I think I will now use the list as story fodder too.
I apologize, Emily. I couldn’t figure out what the site was for, and the comments were lazy—plus one of the most prominent was in the process of trolling here, and alluded to a vendetta. I’ll take out the aspersions on your site, with an apology. If someone has a complaint about content here, they can raise it openly, on the site, with a name attached. Again, I am sorry to have unjustly characterized you or your site.
Thank you.
Regarding the allusion to the vendetta, I have to laugh. That footnote was intended to be appended to Bill Clinton. The commenter was making a point that he is no fan at all of Bill or Hillary, though for entirely different reasons (which he doesn’t talk about publicly.)
I find it kind of ironic that what you read as an reference to a vendetta against you was actually a vendetta against Bill Clinton. 🙂
(And I can understand the purpose of the site being unclear. It’s a fanfiction archive, but there’s a social media type set up for writers, readers, and bloggers to communicate with each other. That’s a blog post I made under my account.)
1. Thanks for accepting the apology. That was really unfair of me, and careless: I’ve revised the post, with another apology.
2. That is funny. The vendetta allusion caused me to ban him here, but he was heading that way anyway. I probably should give him a chance to come back. I’m thinking about it.
3. I saw the fanfiction in the URL, but the site itself didn’t seem to be about that. Thanks for explaining.
4. And thanks for giving out the link. Some thanks you got for it…
I’m not sure which of the three people making comments you banned, if it was Titanium Dragon he’s not the one with the “vendetta” (that was GhostOfHeraclitus.) But I can say that all three of them are intelligent, educated, and more than capable of holding their own in a more formal debate. None of those three are trolls in the usual sense, though all three of them are capable of defending their views or playing a very thorough Devil’s advocate.
Of course it’s your blog and up to you to moderate, but I wanted to provide what I know for context.
And you’re welcome for the link. I’m used to this, my commenters are… spirited. A few weeks ago I was telling a friend that I could post a cookie recipe and people in the comments would tell me why I’m wrong. At least it keeps me on my toes.
Then I really was mixed up. In any event, I apologized and retracted the ban.
“But I can say that all three of them are intelligent, educated, and more than capable of holding their own in a more formal debate.”
Regarding Titanium Dragon, I would submit your praise be a bit high. Maybe he manages well elsewhere, but here, I’d give him the title “Strawman Extraordinaire”. I haven’t seen much of what he says that seems to allude to thought.
To be more specific, it was his rambling about how Bill Clinton deserved to get away with perjury.
If you’re talking about on Ethics Alarms someplace, I’m afraid I’ve missed those comments. I’d be interested to know which post they’re on, though.
If you’re talking about the comments on my blog, I believe that was a different commenter, and believe me those comments are not representative of anything any of those three are capable of. My blog and the comments there tend to be casual, unless things escalate (which I’ve been trying not to do lately, since I have a one-year-old who needs my attention more than internet arguments do.)
Hate is simply because you cared to state the obvious about the Clinton’s. I believe Granny sums it up rather well.
Okay From here on out, I’ll just tell myself I have a very strong dislike for the Clintons (and let’s not forget Chelsea and her husband, you know, the young son of a convicted fraudster who ran the Bill and Hillary Clinton desk at GS and now has his own hedge fund and ‘invests’ millions of dollars provided him [certainly not because of his stellar track record as a money manager] by who on Earth knows). I will no longer think or say to anyone I despise the Clintons.
My Dad met Bill, and was horrified to find him irresistibly likable.
Jack,
Two exceptions. You also wrote a pretty scathing, anger-filled discourse after your son was almost committed by overly cautious bureaucrats — though I don’t remember if that was in the last year.
Best,
Neil