Good Morning!
1. Covington Catholic Students Ethics Train Wreck update. I’ve decided to cover this topic in the Warm-Ups because it will be repetitive if I don’t: this, like the Kavanaugh debacle, has signature significance. Attention must be paid and the American public’s dangerously short attention span has to be overcome. Imagine: pundits, elected officials, academics journalists and celebrities from the Left—and don’t quibble over that label, because that’s where they are, and from that source oozes the increasingly unethical values that are driving them—are deliberately denigrating and attacking a teenager by name for doing absolutely nothing wrong by any objective standard. The non-objective standards—bigotry and racism—that are being applied, however, find him guilty of supporting a President the Left hates and a cause, the rights of the unborn, they find inconvenient to think seriously about; not retreating when an obnoxious activist began beating a drum in his face; being caught smiling in a manner they chose to link to all manner of subconscious and malign motives, being male, and being white. And, incredibly, these vicious, vicious people are being defended, when they should be, and must be, shamed and shunned. This is not a partisan or an ideological position Ethics Alarms is taking here. It is a civilized, non-partisan and ethical mandate, if we want to live in a free, decent and civil society.
- On Friday’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on HBO, Maher, an alleged adult operating under the protection of the First Amendment, with a weekly platform and an audience of knee-jerk hooting fools, called the randomly selected child victim of Native American activist Nathan Phillips, student Nick Sandmann, a “prick” and a “smirkface” with a “shit-eating grin” :
I don’t blame the kid — the smirking kid. I blame lead poisoning and bad parenting, and, oh yeah, I blame that fucking kid. What a little prick — smirkface. Smirkfaces. Please, I mean, like that’s not a dick move, stick your face in this elderly man’s (face).
As anyone who watched the video knows, Sandmann didn’t “stick his face” anywhere. He left it where it was when Phillips stuck his drum in the students’ face, but then Big Lies and repeating false narratives is one of the partisan tactics on ugly display. Classy as ever, Maher ended his attack with, “I don’t spend a lot of time — I must tell you — around Catholic school children, but I do not get what Catholic priests see in these kids.”
Here’s a definition of “punching down”: A nationally known comedian using a cable show to call a high school student names in public. I cancelled my HBO subscription in part because I refuse to support a company that tolerates conduct like that from a prominent employee.
- In Colorado, Mountain Ridge Middle School seventh-grade history teacher Michelle Grissom named and posted a picture of Covington Catholic student Jay Jackson as one of the boys wearing MAGA hats during the pro-life demonstration, and called him a “Hitler Youth.” As it happened, Jackson wasn’t in D.C. for the event, not that her conduct would have been less despicable if he has been. When parent Aaron Johnson protested the teacher’s actions before the school board, he was ejected from the meeting for supposedly violating a rule against “using individual names in an offensive matter.” How is naming a teacher whose social media behavior both slanders a student and embarrasses the school district “offensive”?
It’s offensive because when one is defending a false narrative, the truth is offensive.
- Arizona State University lecturer Lillian “Marie” Wallace mistakenly doxxed a Covington Catholic student on social media who wasn’t involved in the infamous confrontation, and encouraged people to contact the college he planned to attend and try to get him rejected. The Covington student’s family said the identification spawned violent threats and harassment. Wallace was horrified that she accidentally subjected one student to outrageous unethical conduct that should get her fired rather than the student she intended to subject to outrageous unethical conduct that should get her fired. “I was outraged when I read this and I reposted a post that was NOT correct that had the wrong child’s name in it,” she wrote, “I am horrified at my own behavior as there is a child out there trying to live his life and was wrongly identified. I am now a party [sic] of the cause of his fear and misery. I am so SO so sorry to this young man…I hope somehow I can get a message to him and let him know. I want to publicly apologize to this young man.”
Ethics Alarms 
These kinds of stories / events make me believe that we will never return to any sort of decency. These social media mobs and the MSM try to destroy people over one incident whether they are correct or incorrect, and, most (if not always) they are incorrect.
I don’t understand why these people want to inflict so much harm or ‘sentencing’ on people with differing views. They outright want to ruin peoples lives for perceived offenses. These people are extremely nasty, especially Maher who I used to enjoy a little bit.
I’m glad you cover these stories because for the most part I’ve divorced myself from watching any news (tv or online). Before I stopped watching the news, it became apparent to me that it has just evolved into tabloid type reporting with little or no regard for truth.
Amen to that brother.
I copied the following from the comments section under an article in the NYTs in which a journalist writes about finding antique Nazi items for sale at a flea market:
There you have it ‘in a nutshell’. What stands behind the Anti-Trump Narrative is, in its essence, a mutation of the Anti-Nazi doctrine, yet it derives from the anti-Nazi doctrine. These follow from the propaganda-narratives that were constructed during and after the Second WW, and the problem is in how these doctrines, which are complex psychological constructs, were brought to bear against the *Nazi*: which thereafter became whatever ‘evil entity’ one desired to label with the title. It is really an irresponsible use of the term for obvious reasons. Only a Nazi is a Nazi. And all others — even those whose ideas have semi-fascistic elements (and this is never clarified by those who use these terms) — are always people with vary different, and varied, political and social ideas.
But I suggest (I am not the one who came up with this idea though) that the Anti-Nazi Doctrine, which is both a structure of perception and also a praxis, has morphed into an anti-white doctrine. But it is not really a *doctrine* but rather a mood or a feeling. I further suggest that these together operate as a ‘European grammar of self-intolerance’. That grammar is a white European grammar that was established by whites and in whites of their own accord. Others, recognizing that it involves a deep-seated guilt-complex, sense that it can be used against whites and so it is used.
This *complex* is at the center of white self-hatred and self-contempt and, if I am right, is an internal weakness, or an internal wound if you wish, that must be healed. It is auto-destructive and even suicidal.
The need to condemn, to hate, to punish, to inflict injury, to see suffer, to bankrupt, to dox, to subject to rituals of public humiliation: all these are symptoms of this syndrome of white self-contempt. Our *liberal* brothers & sisters suffer from this guilt-complex and they imagine that if they turn against themselves by bringing attacks on their own brethren and to smother them with guilt & shame that, voilà, they purge their own self-hatred.
It is the white Liberal who is the main author of this ‘mood’ of self-hatred. It becomes an armament which is *given* to others. And when it is used most Whites have no defense against it. When it is used they cower in terror. In this sense though the accusation of antisemitism functions similarly: one collapses before it.
I try to describe here inner, psychological dimensions. It is hard, and by its nature speculative, to describe. I admit that my understandings here have been influenced by Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, but so too has Jonathan Bowden’s views, as here. (I have friends that react very adamantly against Bowden’s analysis, but it makes a good deal of sense to me)
To those who say with a straight face that the MSM (outside of Faux News, they all pretty much lean left) and the so called “journalists” that write for their associated organizations are not trying to push a narrative with their reporting, I will simply reply to them with “Covington”.
“The truth dies in darkness” eh WaPo?
Good. Because that’s the perfect answer. And it will remain so forever.
But think of the children…uh….think of the Democrat children!
Given all the fatalities resulting from automobiles, why should we not simply shut down all automobiles? I mean, is mere convenience worth the carnage? Why is mere convenience more important than human life?
if we tolerate the loss of human life for mere convenience, then the only conclusion we can draw is that human life is not valued at all.
We can certainly blame the Democrats.
“The Democrat party really is my father’s Democrat party:
* racialism
* anti-Semitism
* disdain for the presumption of innocence
* organized violence against political opponents
The despicable Kavanaugh farce tells me that were Emmett Till to be lynched today, the Democrat party would say (again) that he had it coming.”- Chris Morton
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2018/11/armed-guards-in-houses-of-worship-is-not-a-bad-idea-just-because-president-trump-suggested-it-mark-weinberg-opinion.html#vf-2523500018036
It’s no longer just looming on the horizon. You can clearly see the lightning strikes drawing closer and closer. Eventually one will hit something highly flammable.
In this case the storm coming has a free will and could turn back, but it isn’t showing much interest in that course. If anything, it appears more determined than ever to proceed, despite the warnings. Ethics is the least of its concerns. Let’s name the storm…Alinsky.
Storm did you say? There is an interesting symbolism there! And in lightning strikes as well.
It might be just because a good deal of my prior reading had been in psychology (and in Nietzsche), but I suggest looking over a short essay written by CG Jung in 1936. (I have no idea about the site that the essay appears on, it is the only one I found with the complete text). There is a great deal of food for thought there.
To me, it is clear as crystal that we are dealing with demonic projections. The demon is being sighted here .. then there! .. and keeps shifting forms. The SJW is, nearly by definition, a demon-chaser. But the demons are all outside of their self, always in another. It is a dangerous psychology to have.
I am suggesting — really I have been suggesting this in various ways for a long time — looking more deeply into these manifestations in our present. They are profoundly psychological, and profoundly reactive (and dangerous).
But I suggest that no one seems to *see* what is going on. It has a great deal to do with ‘devilish imagos’ and projections of deep hatreds which seem to be far larger than the hate one person could feel! Consuming hate, consuming contempt. These are social hysterias and evidence phenomena that cannot quite be seen. Just as it plays *out there* it also plays *in us*.
I have certain suspicions of Jung (and Jungian analysis) but I think it wise to be aware that (to all appearances) and just as you indicate: things are heading in the direction of a lightning strike.
I do not think it is 1936 though. It is a strange inverse of that time. The *flip-side*. I think this view warrants consideration.
When the Covington story first appeared I stated the adults let this kid down. The young man needed an adult to intervene in DC and needs more adults now. I still believe that many adults have displayed absoutely horrendous behavior. Each of those adults who believe they are righteous in destroying these kidsmann need to be stripped of their livelihoods and their wealth.
The only way to stop these brownshirts is in the courts. I was pleased to see Sandmann had retained counsel. The others should do the same.
“The only way to stop these brownshirts is in the courts.”
Actually, that is not the ONLY way. The other way is even less palatable, and could involve a steep cleaning bill. Blood is so difficult to get out of carpets!
2: I was watching a really old Tonight Show(far better than most current shows) and Mr. Carson made a joke about Gov Brown saving money for a trip to Mexico by catching a ride withillegal immigrants being returned on a bus…
How things have changed, No way would that bus be running today, And equally bad, even making the joke would be forbidden. I’m fine with immigrants, as long as they do it legally. My life would be easier and cheaper if I didn’t have to deal with paperwork and taxes, but isn’t that the price of living in anyplace?
Re: No. 1, Colorado School Teacher.
I am confused. What does seventh-grade history teacher Michelle Grissom from Douglas County School District in Denver, CO, have to do with naming a Kentucky Catholic high school student as being involved in this idiotic controversy with Nathan Phillips? Are they related? How and why does she know this student? The articles I read don’t mention the connection.
jvb