good morning.
The previous time I traveled, I couldn’t get to sleep in the hotel ( as usual) until the early morning hours, and the hotel neglected to give me a wake-up call. I woke up two hours late and almost missed my engagement. Last night I couldn’t sleep (and this is a terrific hotel), finally got to sleep around 5 am…and my wake-up call came 30 minutes early. When I ignored it, the staff knocked on the door to see if I was dead…still before the time I had requested for a wake-up.
1. Facebook being Facebook. The social media giant doesn’t just censor Ethics Alarms, it censors Elizabeth Warren. Facebook removed several ads that Senator. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign published on the its platform. The ads promoted the Massachusetts Senator’s proposals to break up tech company monopolies like Facebook. The company quickly back-tracked when it got the obvious reaction for such ham-handed suppression of dissent, and claimed that it was all a big mistake. The ads were restored, it said, in the interests of “vigorous debate.”
Sure. Why am I still on Facebook?
2. Certainly we respect your moral objections to the law, Chelsea. And we expect you to respect the fact that you have to go to jail. Chelsea Manning, who in her previous incarnation as Bradley Manning committed treason by sending classified documents to Wikileaks, endangering U.S. personnel and aiding its enemies. Now she is defying a judge and refusing to testify before a grand jury despite having been given immunity, on the grounds that she has a “moral objection” to grand jury secrecy. Manning, who has never been the sharpest knife in the drawer, is not a lawyer, is not a philosopher, and as a traitor (whose prison sentence was commuted by President Obama), her assessment of what is moral or ethical should carry as much weight as R. Kelly’s endorsement of women’s rights. Grand jury secrecy is essential to the justice system, of course. A judge has said that Manning will stay in jail until she testifies, and since she ought to be in jail anyway, let’s hope she maintains her “moral” stand. In reality, she is likely to only stay jailed until the grand jury is through, which will be 18 months. Pity.
If you want to begin the day with a rueful laugh, read this supportive article about Manning in “Teen Vogue.” This is why our kids grow up confused about basic values. The thrust of the piece is that because Manning’s stand is based on her principles—her principles have always been warped–, she shouldn’t have to suffer by violating the law. No, that’s not how civil disobedience works. This theory would mean, in practice, that no law-breaker could be punished as long as they claimed that they objected to the broken law “on principle.”
3. The show must go on, unless he doesn’t feel like it’s worth his time. Morrissey, the British singing star whose real name is Steven Patrick Morrissey, is starting a one-man Broadway show a la Bruce Springstein in May. The Times informs us that he has a “penchant for canceling shows on short notice,” doing so a staggering 120 times since 2012, including canceled a 2017 performance in Paso Robles, California., because it was too cold. Rock and pops singers are virtually the only people who get away with this, and then only if they are major stars. Some also are notorious for showing up late while their fans wait.
4. Norms. House anti-Semite Rep. Omar said yesterday that the President “wasn’t human.” Nice. Any guesses about what would have happened to a Republican lawmaker who opined that President Obama wasn’t human?
5. Hillary lies using fake stats, and the mainstream news media ignores the whole thing. In other words, the usual. The amazing thing about this episode is that two of the more partisan “factcheckers,” at the Washington Post and PolitiFact, actually flagged Clinton’s disinformation. The Post gave her “four pinochios,” and PolitiFact gave her its “pants on fire” rating. She was in Selma taking part in a civil rights celebration, and said,
“I was the first person who ran for president without the protection of the Voting Rights Act. I’ll tell you, it makes a really big difference. And it doesn’t just make a difference in Alabama and Georgia. It made a difference in Wisconsin, where the best studies that have been done said somewhere between 40,000 and 80,000 people were turned away from the polls because of the color of their skin, because of their age, because of whatever excuse could be made up to stop a fellow American citizen from voting.”
Of course, Hillary is still spinning to excuse herself from blowing her Presidential run, and engaging in race-baiting, since she is a Democrat and that’s what they do now. But she was also just making stuff up:
A. Wisconsin is not one of the Southern states that were the subject of the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling on the Voting Rights Act, which was using outdated data from the Sixties to justify the Federal government vetoing state laws. Democrats regularly misrepresent the SCOTUS decision, and I doubt most American understand what it was. It definitely had no effect on Wisconsin whatsoever, and Clinton, a lawyer, DOES know that. But that’s Hillary…
B Black voters weren’t “turned away” at polling places in Wisconsin.
C. From The Intercept:
The limited academic research that directly assesses Wisconsin’s voter ID law on the black vote isinconclusive as to its effect on Clinton. A University of Wisconsin-Madison study estimates that black nonvoters in Wisconsin were more affected by the voter ID law in comparison to whites, but it also shows that lack of interest in the candidates was a much more frequent reason why nonvoters stayed home. Forty-two percent of respondents, across race, said they were unhappy with the choice of candidates or issues or that they simply were not interested. Responses indicating possible voter suppression — long lines, not being able to get an absentee ballot, not having an adequate ID, or being told at a polling place that their ID was inadequate — made up a combined 5 percent of the responses.
(From me: the claim that requiring IDs constitutes voter suppression is a Democratic presumption that the data just doesn’t support. The only Supreme Court ruling on the issue pronounced requiring identification as legal, Constitutional, and necessary. Democrats would like people to be able to vote telepathically by thinking the names of Democratic candidates in bed, without registering or having to do so at any specific time or date, because the less committed to responsible civic participation a citizen is, the less important voting is to them, and the more easily their vote is to manipulate.)
Hillary’s deception was not reported by ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, or NPR, nor by the New York Times, USA Today, or the Associated Press. The AP did do a factcheck on President Trump’s speech at CPAC, however.
As an aside, this story makes me angry at everyone who adamantly refuses to acknowledge the unethical bias of the news media and the harm it does to the nation. At this point, the denial signals personal corruption and dishonesty, and enables the news media as it continues its transformation into a partisan propaganda machine, leaving Americans without the information they need to be responsible citizens.
Fox News did reveal Hillary’s lies, clarifying why it isn’t worthy of holding a Democratic candidates debate.
Ethics Alarms 
# 5-HRC should have heeded what Other Bill, et al, have always maintained;
Don’t Mess With WESconsin!
Voter ID? The world accepts it.
A certain demographic in the good ol’ U. S. of A.? Not so much.
If anyone is interested, HRC is getting her @$$ justifiably handed to her in the comment section over at Ann of Althouse.
Stop using wake-up call services, they are notoriously unreliable because the service requires a revolving door of unreliable staff members that are usually paid just slightly above a McDonalds counter person to properly input data into poorly designed systems and if the power goes out they stop functioning and completely loose the temporarily inputted wake-up call data, if they aren’t using a digital phone system that allows for wake-up calls, those same revolving door of unreliable staff members are using a piece of paper and a wall clock. Let’s face it, there are way too many things that are completely out of your control that can go wrong with a wake-up call service. Put the control back in your own hands and bring a small battery powered alarm clock that you can rely on. I currently use my smart phone because it’s proven to me to be 100% reliable even without cellphone service, I used to carry a reliable table top windup clock.
4. Strikes me US Representative Omar is either on the fast track to obscurity or the Democratic nomination for President. Stay tuned to see which one it is. At this point, it really is a close call.
5. So many lies. So much propaganda. So little thought. When in doubt, blame it on the reliably oppressive whitey meme.
I am actually wondering Ocasio-Cortez will be reelected, given the distressing number of revealing “gaffs”. It is hard to tell if all the hype surrounding her in the news is real, or groupthink.
Isn’t the news (propaganda) intended to create groupthink? Not sure they are at all separable.
Regarding AOC’s gaffes, it is clear the blame pouncing Republicans is the cover being used for most, if not all, of them.
I suspect that the “establishment” Democrats are already lining up a well-funded primary challenger for her. Pelosi won’t let someone disrespect her the way Ocasio-Cortez has without payback.
Then again, if the unusual arrangements between her campaign and Saikat Chakrabarti’s operations (which looks more than a little shady) gets investigated by the FEC, she may not last until the 2020 election.
Re Rep. Omar: Does she really think that her anti-Semitic stance will hold water with the general American public? 50 million people died during WWII and the Holocaust because of that attitude — and of course the fact that Japan thought IT should rule the world. All she is doing is hearkening back to 9-11 and terrorism — as a member of the House of Representatives, Stop and think. I am in awe of Israel and its dedication to its survival. We all have to stand up against Omar andl her cohorts.. Too bad there isn’t an impeachment rule for members of Congress. Melting pot my ass. This scares me.
Re Hillary. I think she’s got incipient dementia or is such a narcissist that she just can’t shut up. Who, really, listens to her now? Defensive, offensive, and ill. Retire, Hillary, for pete’s sake. No one cares except you.
#2 As far as this Chelsea/Bradley Manning (I don’t give a damn what the fucking traitor calls itself), all bad people eventually get their comeuppances, the traitor Manning is no exception.
#4 “House anti-Semite Rep. Omar said yesterday that the President “wasn’t human.” “
It’s much much easier to publicly justify killing someone who isn’t human, you know kinda like abortion claiming that unborn human beings aren’t people. Bastardizing the English language.
#5 Hillary will be stumping for whatever extremist the Democratic Party colludes to push to the front of the DNC Presidential nomination. Did y’all see that Hillary was promoting Stacey Abrams in Georgia, I think you’re going to see Stacey Abrams on the Democratic Party Presidential ticket as Vice-President candidate for 2020. It’s clear that the democrats are running short of race baiting extremist in high positions in Washington DC these days, they need one like Stacey Abrams that’s unafraid to play the race card for everything.
“Rats spread lice, cholera and plague. Just as rats are lowest form of animal, so are the Jews the lowest form of mankind.” ~ The Eternal Jew, Germany, 1940
Dehumanization always goes back to the Nazis, doesn’t it?
Interesting background to Rep. Omar’s “not human” comment about Trump:
She made a surprisingly open statement that it’s wrong to focus hatred strictly on Trump, and that a lot of the things he’s being vilified for were done by his predecessors who got away with it because they were “more polished.” She specifically called out Obama for his administration’s record of drone strikes and border detentions with the comment “we want to recognize the policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”
I’m frankly astonished to hear that sort of rhetoric at this point- it doesn’t read as “but the other guy did it too!” but rather as a call to a more principled view of supporting/opposing policies based on the actual policies, rather than supporting (or at least ignoring) things by “our side” and then shrieking in outrage when the same thing is done by “their side.”
She was promptly crucified in the media (mainstream AND social) because her remarks were too supportive of Trump, unfairly blamed Obama for doing his best within a broken system, etc. and rushed to backpedal with her comment that no, she wasn’t saying Obama was anything like Trump, only one of them is human, and so forth.
So close.
1 Facebook
To ask the question is to answer it. You, me, and many others who ostensibly would simply disengage from Facebook use it to connect with family and friends. That’s what it’s for, and as such, it is a wonderful and useful tool.
When used to censor speech, collect personal information for sale, and generally use our own desire to connect with those close to us to spy on us and sell our information without our consent, it’s become a pernicious influence. The trouble is, most people are willing to put up with at least some of that for the benefits aforementioned.
Another pernicious influence is people using Facebook as their own censorious database, cutting off friends and family who’s politics don’t align with theirs, an using it as a mechanism for moral preening, sowing discord, and virtual mob attacks. This is an example of why, as a species, we can’t have nice things.
The idea of Facebook is far better than its actual execution. Too many of us still use it for what it’s for, and try to pretend it isn’t used as much for evil as good.
4. Omar
Oooh! I know, I know! They would’ve been declared a racist!
Which is exactly what Omar is, anyway, and everybody knows it. The Democrats don’t care because they can rationalize it away, and they don’t think Trump is human, either. Nancy Pelosi said he wasn’t worth impeaching, and isn’t that the selfsame sentiment using other words? Arguably, at least? One can’t help but notice the serendipity.
Can we call Pelosi a racist if she “others” someone out of the human race because of their politics?
Reading George Yancy’s Backlash (he wrote a letter addressed to white people called Dear White People that was published in the Times, is a philosopher, went to Yale), I begin to capture a better view of the essence of the animus that animates those who blindly, or self-consciously, see exposing whiteness as their primary object. He is talking about the essential violence that exists within white culture and, as I understand him, within the white psyche.
I place myself within his described narrative in order to get the sense of what he feels and believes. I do not dismiss his view. It would not ever work to brush it aside, to say that it is exaggeration, to deny it. In all that I have read of Black critical literature (polemics I guess is the word) the same sentiment is repeated. This is their experience.
The book Backlash is presented, according to Yancy, as a ‘letter of love’. He keeps saying that he intends it as a ‘gift’ — a difficult gift — but one that must be received because he is doing Whites a favor. His entire project — maybe in his entire philosophy? — is one of unmasking ‘levels’ of oppression, specifically in relation to racism but sexism too. The entire book is — literally — a rant in the exact tone and style of the quoted paragraph.
Turning to Omar and her comment: I see that one has to understand the *sense* or the *feeling* (and the belief & understanding) that informs her view of herself, and she as she is aligned with they ‘we’ she defines (POC), against the entire white world: literally against whiteness. It is not possible to escape the understanding that this people, and people who understand the world in this way, and their telling of their American Experience, represent a kind of Trojan Horse. That means that in its *belly* there is a rage so intense, so profound, so enduring, so pointed, that it will never diminish! Given power, it will have its revenge. I am not saying this to be dramatic.
The ‘love’ that he speaks of I can only interpret as a sort of forced reversal of hatred and ressentiment. In fact, his book would explain and illustrate Nietzschean ressentiment very nicely; would indicate how dangerous it is. Basically, it is the same energy of a Black slave revolt on a plantation and the hacking of the white master and his children to pieces. Again, I am not exaggerating for effect.
Therefore, what is really strange is that Omar — and hundreds of thousands and millions — of people who share these views and sentiments — have projected inhumanity onto what they understand to be the enemy of their well-being. Trump is not, and cannot be, human. He is ‘anti-human’. Which fits, in this way of looking at Whites and whiteness, and history, into the understanding that they have of *the Black experience’ (and this extends to all oppressed categories).
The way around this unbelievable condemnation is to allow it to them one hundred percent. You cannot fight, correct, or reverse this perception, this understanding, this interpretation. It is a developed epistemology.
Probably, when you get right down to it. Self-preservation is at the lowest ring of the Id.
I think this is right. You can’t fix stupid. Or self-interest at the level of self-preservation.
The thing is — and I think this is a problem for me (I use that word in the sense of ‘an issue that I confront that is not easy of solution and which lingers, unresolved’) — that I am not sure if I would necessarily define their views as ‘stupid’.
For example as I meditate on Yancy’s views — he regards America as a Black person’s horror and he says that white supremacy and racism not only exist and are noted, but that those things define white America — I cannot call him a liar because there are too many instances where the truth he notices is apparent. No, racism is very real in America, in Europe and in many places. And it will not be changed and it will not dissolve.
So, I move to a therefore. Therefore, there is no solution to the problem. He pretends that there is a solution. That if white people read his letter (of love) that they will have a change of heart. But honestly he knows, though he does not say it outloud, that this is not the case. White America and whiteness is his essential existential problem. And it is *theirs*. That is, those who claim it.
All of this connotes a battle, a social struggle. But he does not talk about, and no one talks about, what *winning* the battle will result in. He denies that we are in a ‘post-racialist’ era. He says that racism is only that much more apparent, more visible. This can only lead him and those who think like him to wars of liberation.
That is really all there is to it. That is what they are calling for and what they are bringing out into the open.
This is why I say that the *problem for white people* is to become aware that this is not a solvable problem. I don’t say that because I secretly want that, but because it appears true.
(I dedicate this ‘one screen post’ to Marie Dowd). 🙂
True, but incomplete. Yes, there is racism, and there will always be racism, both in America and elsewhere, including in non-white majority countries. Racism is a fact of the human condition. “Not like me” is bred in the bone, and it takes education and determination to overcome this thinking. But the survival default to “Different. Other.” is strong in the human race.
Sorry, but I can’t subscribe to this. No, there is no way to eliminate racism because its fundamentals are built into human survival instincts. It can be managed, and more importantly, minimized as an aberration rather than, as we currently do, make it into an earth-shattering event that must be destroyed at all costs.
We used to have a saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Implicit in this statement is that angry words have no power unless you, the listener give them power. The American Left, and to some extent, the Right, have rejected this notion and adopted a theory that any expression of even the most marginal “ism” (depending on who’s ox is being gored) requires an all-out war against that expression.
Perhaps. War is a real possibility here, and I can’t say that it won’t happen. I can say that I hope it doesn’t, but then again, hope is not a plan. But I do have a plan, like I’m sure, many others do.
Well, again, I don’t really agree with all of this. No, racism cannot be eliminated, but I think the solution is not in the elimination of racial animus, which I believe to be impossible in any semblance of a free society where mind control is not sanctioned.
What I do believe is that we can learn to reject it without using it as a casus belli.
Because I am trying to get to the bottom and to understand what is going on and why, I am referring to Yancy and his understanding of things. And he connects to a whole movement. I suspect that this racism-narrative-militancy is now becoming and will remain a feature within American politics as the colored demographic gains more power (I apologize for using that word ‘colored’ but i don’t know another). I cannot predict the future, and don’t wish to have an alarmist position, but I think this is a reasonable supposition.
I can say, with little doubt, that he does not agree with what you have written here. He does not see it as an ‘aberration’ that will be corrected or “managed, and more importantly, minimized as an aberration rather than, as we currently do, make it into an earth-shattering event that must be destroyed at all costs”. If you read his book I suspect you would understand why I say this.
You desire to see the racism that he understands and lives with as an aberration and (perhaps) desire to give it minimal focus and energy. But for him it is the core thing. You are failing to take into account a profound psychological element that is bound up in extreme anger and a desire for (a need for?) revenge.
If you blend together the different perspectives and orientations of the present American progressives (I am doing this by reading the books that they write), it points directly to a cultural war that may remain ‘low intensity’ for some while but which may also escalate into something requiring political separation. That is the part that I cannot visualize. Too strange!
There is a contradiction here: in a society — as what they say about America — that has made a political and social decision to alter its demographic by diluting the ‘super-majority’ — the racial component of the social conflict will not diminish except through various forms of what you call ‘mind control’.
There is no good reason, if you really examine it, to create or desire to create multi-ethnic or multi-cultural societies. If a person dreams of such a thing they are a) hyper-idealists or b) American marketeers.
The issue then is that this is going on, and increasing. It is only when the dilution of the super-majority is attempted that the problem of ‘whiteness’ is brought out into focus. And that is what is going on now, and we witness it.
That is part of my Answer to Yancy. Fine, I accept that your experience of America is the nightmare you describe (psychically and also, according to him, physically). You are right: racism is real. And white racism is real. You should not have to live in such conditions! I would not want you to. But, I will not agree to have my culture and civilization modified or destroyed by your Black rage, though I do not deny you it.
This is why having read, extensively, about the concerns and issues of the New Right, Alt-Right, Radical Right, European Right, I have become a committed white nationalist. Philosophically, socially, culturally, spiritually, and free of *hate*. I subscribe, spiritually I guess I will say, the the 14 Words. All the other choices were mistakes.
The response that I offer to Yancy and to all of them is: fine, then let us begin to work in the direction of visualizing political and social separation.
And my question to you, Glen is why don’t you see the same thing?
Here is something to write about.
http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/12/reed-college-white-supremacy-covert
But of course. Because shut up.
“expecting people of color ‘to teach white people,'”
This is one of the racial hucksters’ most infuriating moves. You see, white people are racist because they don’t understand the viewpoint of other races. Also, it’s racist to ask people of color to help you try to understand their viewpoint. Kafka himself couldn’t come up with a better trap.
It’s pretty obvious that anyone who espouses this garbage isn’t really interested in trying to move toward greater racial harmony.
So why would whites not simply embrace white supremacy?
Your cell phone has a clock/alarm on it, it is easy to set and reliable.
I am currently working with a shattered and damaged Android that can’t be turned off and was too complicated for me even before it was dropped and soaked in seltzer.
Y’ just can’t help some people!
Get an iPhone! And switch to Macs! I think this would be a remarkable help for the work you do. How about a Go-Fund-Me to raise 4 thousand for Ethics Alarms? (I don’t know how to do this but it would not be hard I don’t think).
Jack, do you not trust the alarm function in your phone’s clock app? I’m quickly conditioned to hate whatever sound I have mine set to use, but it’s often more reliable than the hotel desk.
5, Media bias : From an infographic on TV last Sunday, headed “Primetime Coverage Thursday” and noting time given to coverage of the Trump-Kim Summit vs the Cohen Hearing;
MSNBC: Summit, 5 min. Cohen, 88 min.
CNN: Summit, 8 min. Cohen, 32 min.
Fox News: Summit, 37 min. Cohen, 38 min.
Only one of those news sources was deemed not “fair” enough to host a democrat candidate debate, of course
Never mind on first sentence. Was interrupted in writing comment & didn’t know phone issue had been asked (by Paul) by the time I came back to finish.