This was Trump’s fault? OK, that makes sense, Senator….thanks for clarifying
I’m sorely tempted to write an unethical post, thus creating the first unethical quote about an unethical quote about an unethical quote…but that would be wrong, as Richard Nixon said.
The topic was the recent New Zealand terror attack, the venue was CNN, the speaker was Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal ,and the quote was
“Words have consequences like saying we have an invasion on our border and talking about people as though they were different in some fatal way…I think that the public discourse from the president on down is a factor in some of these actions…Words do have consequences, and we know that at the very pinnacle of power in our own country, people are talking about ‘good people on both sides.”
That’s right, the Senator was trying to blame a terrorist attack in New Zealand on Donald Trump. I wopuldn’t have to know a thing about Blumenthal to hear such a statement and conclude, with high confidence, that the speaker was a despicable, principle-free asshole. This is the unethical cognitive dissonance game that has the vile objective of ginning up hate by associating something universally understood as terrible to the person or group you want to demonize, despite the fact that there is no connection at all. President Trump plays this game on occasion, as when he links all illegal immigrants to gang members and murderers, the worst of their number, but at least there is some nexus there. Blumenthal’s smear is completely dishonest; it is in the same category as Hitler blaming Jews for the bad economy. (Don’t throw Godwin’s Law at me: an apt Hitler comparison is the clearest way to show how despicable the tactic is.) “If you hate massacres like this, then you should hate Trump too, because he helps make them happen!” No, he doesn’t, and didn’t, you irredeemable hack:
- Calling illegal immigrants “invaders” is harsh language but not inaccurate. or unfair. An invader is “A person or group that invades a country, region, or other place.” Invade means “to enter (a place, situation, or sphere of activity) in large numbers, especially with intrusive effect.” There is no requirement, ethically or otherwise to describe those who seek to break our laws in nice terms. Failing to do so, moreover, does not cause maniacs to kill people in New Zealand. Did I mention that Blumenthal is an asshole?
- “Talking about people as though they were different in some fatal way”…nice turn of phrase there, Senator Boob. The President makes distinctions between law breakers and law abiding citizens, and, in fact, there are many material differences between people, which your party increasingly wants to have embodied in law, so some groups have advantages over others in employment and other areas. But how does the vague conduct alluded to in this inarticulate blob of a phrase kill New Zealanders? I’m not seeing it.
- “Words do have consequences”...True, and what a shame you don’t know how to use them…
- “We know that at the very pinnacle of power in our own country, people are talking about ‘good people on both sides.” Yes, Senator, we know that the position of your party and supporters is that the only good people are those who believe what you want them to believe. Everyone else is deplorable.
Blumenthal’s statement was moronic and an embarrassment; one doesn’t have to exert much mental energy to show how. His objective, moreover, was transparently ridiculous. You have to be in Stage 5 Trump Hate to think that he has any accountability for the New Zealand shooting, or in Stage 6 cretinism to hear his mumblings and think, “Hey! That’s a good point!” Thus it is incredible that a conservative news source (The Lid) would stoop to this unethical headline:
Stolen Valor Blumenthal (D-CT) Blames Trump For New Zealand Massacre
In case you have forgotten, and you shouldn’t, the good people of Connecticut voted into the U.S. Senate a man who had repeatedly lied about his Vietnam service, of which there was none.
I believe this lie disqualified him from office, and I also believe he should have been disciplined by the Connecticut bar, for lawyers are not supposed to lie. However, there was no “stolen valor,” which implies that he claimed to have been recognized for military heroism. He never did. That’s bad enough, but worse is the fact that The Lid is engaging in a pure ad hominem attack. It iw like a headline that says, “Fat con man Trump says that we need a wall at the border.” Blumenthal’s accusation is either unfair and wrong, or it isn’t (it is), and his dumb statement is just as nauseating whether the speaker is a particularly shameless Senator or St. Francis of Assisi.
Ironically, as with the Unethical Quote of the Day, President Trump also has demonstrated the same unethical tactic that characterizes the Unethical Quote ABOUT the Unethical Quote of the Day, when he labelled his various political adversaries in 2016 with denigrating nicknames like “Lying Hillary.” Yes, our President is very versatile in his unethical tactics.
But none of them killed anyone in New Zealand.
Ethics Alarms 
A week or so on from the change I’d like to say I like the new layout (again, mainly because it feels more mobile friendly. )
The left (and their media minions) are again in imminent danger of pulling a “Sandmann” by jumping the gun on this New Zealand incident by blaming Trump, the NRA, etc. There is already word leaking out that the shooter’s 74 (?) page manifesto doesn’t put him neatly in their preferred right-wing pigeonhole:
China loving environmentalist who wants to destabilize the west?
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/03/15/killers-manifesto-reveals-white-supremacist-who-admires-communist-china/
This news just in as well: In Nigeria, thousands of Christians being slaughtered yearly, churches and homes burned. Report at…..well, never.
Always best when possible to read the primary source.
Since I am interested in understanding, not necessarily in controlling how people see things and how they *frame* this incident and any incident, I feel I have a certain advantage.
President Trump — even if he does not know it or understand it — has come into history (if I can put it like this) in a kind of Hegelian sense and has a role, if only symbolic, in helping extremely propagandized Westerners, perhaps especially Americans, to re-visualize their situation. He seems to be (I say *seems* because I have no exclusive, perfect understanding) an ‘historical actor’, a representative of ‘the spirit of the time’. This means that a) people project onto him, but b) that he does ‘dance’ to the tune of those who are his ‘base’.
That ‘base’ is a vast group of people who have been, and are, the subject of a tremendous social engineering ‘experiment’. His ‘base’ is the original American demographic. They did not want, and I think they do not want, to live in the country and the System that is being devised for them. So, they rebel. They resist. But their resistance is unschooled, raw, even grotesque in some ways. In short, there exists a rebellious underbody within the body politic that responds to Trump.
All over the European-world (Australia, USA, Canada, and Europe) Trump has inspired similar people and similar groups. They are not happy with the lot that has been devised for them. Something is not right. They begin to approach organizing a counter-proposition but they don’t know how to do it. But they begin to notice, or believe that they notice, that ‘they are under attack’. That’s what they feel, that is what they say.
Since Blumenthal brings up Charlottesville, and this is a major catalytic even of the day, one will have to fully understand Charlottesville, but one cannot understand Charlottesville because it is exactly that sort of *understanding* that the MSM and government actors cannot allow. (They get in there immediately and format the view that we must have.)
You’d have to understand the people of the South and the motives of their rebellion against the North. You’d have to understand the Divided Nation that was created through the Civil War conflict: the most defining event in American history that is still in motion. To arrive at *understanding*, and not mere political dogma, you’d have to genuinely be interested to understand. But *understanding* is different than partisanship. To understand Charlottesville you’d have to understand so much that it would become, essentially, a research project!
Similarly, to understand the developing Resistance to Hyper-liberal globalizations projects and the *machinations* (in a Heideggerian sense) that are involved in this, you would again have to understand many many different things. It is all connected. It is all intertwined.
If you only look at one sole moment, some even of the day or week, you will fail to understand that the turn against the Liberal Model, which liberalism has become perverted (and this requires explanation), represents a historical shift with profound implications. One must think in units of 25 or 50 years, not what happened last week. It has taken 60 years to bring America to this bizarre social state and crisis. It will take the same amount of time to correct the errors. The same can be said of Europe. The struggle is only beginning. What side one chooses to be on, well, that is another question. But first you have to take the time to see what is really going on and why.