Boy, am I ever sick of these stories.
The pattern is so familiar its completely familiar and would be boring if it weren’t so annoying. President Trump ad-libs something that popped into his head, using his unique stream of consciousness/if James Joyce had a 1000 word vocabulary version of communication. The news media rushes to interpret it in the most negative way possible, and reports that as what he both said and meant. Democrats, “the resistance” and especially social media addicts who barely have vocabularies over 1000 words themselves rush to say and write that the President is a Nazi, or racist, or moron, based on the deliberately misleading reports by people starting from the assumption that he is all three….the essence of confirmation bias.
Then people like me, being reasonable, public spirited and unbiased, point out that this is not a fair interpretation of what he said, whereupon such people are attacked as enablers of Nazis, racists and fools. Even after the original report is shown to be malicious fake news or close to it (my position is that if it’s almost fake news, it’s fake news), politicians, and unscrupulous pundits like Joe Scarborough, and your Trump Deranged friends and mine continue to repeat them. The President said that the white supremacists were “good people.” He said that Mexicans were rapists. He said the Wuhan virus was a hoax. Now, thanks to yesterday’s blather, they will be saying that he told people to “inject” or drink bleach and disinfectant as a cure for the virus.
This new canard comes from yesterday’s bizarre pandemic briefing, and by that I mean more bizarre than usual. Before musing about the potential of surface cleaners for medical purposes, the President waxed optimistic about the uses of light and heat:
So, supposedly when we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting, right?
Yeah, whatever, Mr. President. Great to see you’re thinking out of the box, just like Samuel Goodyear when he tried to make vulcanized rubber by mixing in cream cheese.
Then, in the same riff, he gave us this…
And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.
Let’s stipulate that President Trump, and no President, in fact no elected official, in fact nobody who has access to mass communication, should speculate on such things, in public, over live TV, for all the obvious reasons that are somehow not obvious to him after all this time (or they are, and he just doesn’t care). It makes him sound like an admirably curious kindergartner who might grow up to cure the common cold with a cream cheese derivative. Some idiot might decided that it would be a cool idea to swallow a lit flashlight. And most of all, the Axis of Unethical Conduct (Democrats, the “resistance”, and the mainstream media) will leap on it like the 49ers on a loose football and use it to advance a Big Lie forever. The President is a victim of unprofessional, vicious, dishonest conduct fueled by hate, but in this he is like beautiful woman in a revealing ensemble walking alone down a dark alley in a bad neighborhood where she has already been sexually assaulted repeatedly. He is still substantially responsible for his fate, just as the woman is when she is sexually assaulted again.
That does not make the conduct of the rapist any less reprehensible. Similarly, the conduct of those deliberately misrepresenting what the President said yesterday is not mitigated because the President has a flat learning curve.
Ethics Alarms 
I’m currently having EXACTLY this debate with several TDS-infected people.
It’s disheartening. These are not stupid people. But they’ve lost all capacity to be objective.
The Big Lie works, said to say.
Your rape analogy is not appropriate.
Rape is not sex or predicated on sexiness. Rape is violence utilizing sex organs or replicas of them intended to exhibit control/power and total dominance over another person to the point of being able to do whatever the rapist wishes to the victim. It is the closest thing to murdering the value of a person’s humanity that exists.
Untold numbers of women (and even in rare cases men) have been raped wearing frumpy clothes and sweats in nice neighborhoods where no acts of rape have been reported.
hear hear – I cringed at that one too. something closer to Charlie Brown & Lucy with the football seems better suited. If you also add that Charlie Brown first begs Lucy to please please please let me try kicking it again, and Lucy tells him to go ahead and try, but just so you know I’m going to pull it away at the last minute.
Nah, that’s not quite right either. But something like that.
I won a bet with myself that you’d agree with that comment. It is still contrived and wrong, as I just explained. It’s great how political correctness contrived offense pops out like acne given any excuse, and then you think it entitles you to hijack a discussion into irrelevant realms to comport with some agenda that isn’t even under discussion. In The infamous New Bedford pool table rape of Cheryl Ann Araujo, later dramatized in “The Accused,” the fact that she was attractive, drunk, and flirtatious was used by her gang rapists’ attorney in the defense that she was inviting a sexual encounter. It was the combination of factors that played a part—if you really want to argue that it would have made no difference if she was sober, a dwarf, and looked like a Picasso, go ahead. Then you want to argue that after she was gang raped, and the assailants were acquitted, she returned to the same bar, dressed the same way, and acted the same way, she would have no greater odds of being attacked than any other woman there? Sure.
Your position is insulting, but predictable.
was that directed at me? I’m not offended and don’t really give a damn about political correctness. But I agree that it was a terrible analogy. so I said so.
“then you think it entitles you to hijack a discussion into irrelevant realms to comport with some agenda that isn’t even under discussion”
is that what I did? by suggesting a different non-rape analogy would perhaps be better? get a grip Jack.
And for the record, my objection has nothing to do with the particular angle you took with your analogy. I actually agree that purposely and/or recklessly increasing your own personal risk of harm should be avoided. I just think if you’re going to compare anything to rape, which is one of the worst things that can happen to a person, the bar of severity needs to be way, way higher than the media going after Trump for the latest dumb thing he said.
You want a different analogy that is less vivid and makes the point less effectively because you default to feminist cant. The analogy was people who suffer bad fates because they do the same thing that created the risk. Rape, war, drug overdose, being denigrated diringa national crisis—you can rank them any way you want; it’s irrelevant. I didn’t say the consequences were the same, or equal, I said, and clearly, that the culpability of the victim were similar.
The Peanuts analogy illustrates something else, and is not “appropriate.” I knew when I chose that comparison, someone would jump to indignation, just as I have had commenters yell at me for using the term slave or slavery, with “How dare you compare the buying and selling of human beings to that?” when the understand exactly what I was saying.
It’s a gotcha!, Joey. maybe you didn’t mean it that way, and if so, I apologize for being too severe.
Apology accepted. And, even though I know I piss a lot of people off here and can tend to be a dick when I start debating (something I try to improve, some days are better than others), I would hope that at this point you would know better than to say that I’m the type of person that would “default to feminist cant.” I am left of center on most things, but nothing I’ve said here justifies trying to pigeonhole into some extreme progressive loon box.
I do, and it was a cheap shot. I apologize for that too. Too often I dash off replies in whatever state of mind I’m in at the time. It’s a bad (and old) habit. You deserve better.
thank you – I appreciate that.
I’m sorry to be blunt, but you are contriving an offense.The description was ” a beautiful woman in a revealing ensemble walking alone down a dark alley in a bad neighborhood where she has already been sexually assaulted repeatedly.” You object to beautiful woman? Okay, “woman”. “Revealing ensemble”? How about “nude.” Would nude be irresponsible enough? Go ahead, explain to me that these factors don’t increase the risk factor. The main features were ” a dark alley in a bad neighborhood where she has already been sexually assaulted repeatedly.”
There’s a post here somewhere about a woman who set out to travel by foot across a foreign country in a bridal gown. She was raped and murdered, and the gist of the post was that she put herself in unreasonable peril. And she did.
I don’t need to have the motivations and psychology of sexual assault explained to me, thanks. But the claim that demeanor and appearance are irrelevant is political nonsense.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/02/23/ethics-jump-ball-what-is-an-ethical-reaction-to-this-story/
My take is far from feminist cant. This is what any criminologist worth a shite would tell you about rape. Using this analogy still isn’t proper. You want cling to it? Fine. You own it.
I really don’t know what “isn’t proper” means, Jim. The analogy wasn’t about crime or criminology. It was about comparing extreme, irrational recklessness, the conduct, not the consequences. Analogy 101. If I compare an attack to a Punch and Judy show, I’m not saying the victims were puppets, but that’s the way a lot of analogies are attacked. I guess I am excessively cranky about the practice.
While I will agree with you that no person should wax philosophically about what if’s, in my experience many unique breakthroughs come from that type of thinking. You should only do that with others after the NDA is signed.
I ran a tech incubator for 20 years and to a client each and every one had notions on how to achieve a given outcome. Most of these clients were PhD level researchers. They all started their research with what if questions. Over time, what if questions get answered affirmatively and are pursued or negatively and discarded.
On the UV issue. My brother, who spent his entire career in public health, not as a doctor but as a mundane water treatment plant director, is currently developing proof of concept UV system to sterilize PPE for a Maryland hospital. He is not a PhD scientist. What he is, is someone who knows how to treat waste water and how to make safe municipal potable water efficiently.
No one thought to do that because they did not know that water treatment uses UV to kill viruses in municipal water systems and sterilizing water is more difficult because spectral and UV rays dissipate rapidly in water. Apparently his ideas caught the eye of some California researchers.
Every bioscience, engineering, or other scientific achievement begins with a what if. Edison asked and answered a lot of what if questions when developing the electrical illumination. He tells us that he found out how many different things would not work as a filament.
You said “. . . in fact nobody who has access to mass communication, should speculate on such things, in public, over live TV, for all the obvious reasons that are somehow not obvious to him after all this time (or they are, and he just doesn’t care). It makes him sound like an admirably curious kindergartner who might grow up to cure the common cold with a cream cheese derivative.”
I say what if Currie had not wondered if radioactive isotopes could be used to treat cancer? What if she had had access to major media? Would she have moved the needle faster or farther? Don’t know but we do know she suffered for years the derision of conventional scientists.
Every breakthrough begins with a what if moment. Science asks question does this have merit. It may be framed as a hypothesis, test, evaluation replicate but that hypothesis had to begin with a what if question.
BTW. It was Charles – not Samuel Goodyear that patented rubber vulcanization process. Goodyear was at the Eagle India Rubber Company in Woburn, Massachusetts, where he accidentally discovered that combining rubber and sulfur over a hot stove caused the rubber to vulcanize. This accident would not have occurred had he not been asking what if questions such as, would nitric acid work, or will adding magnesia to rubber and boiling it in quicklime work.
I agree that wondering ‘what if’ can be a positive, I don’t think it’s a good idea for our President to do it, especially since everything he says is turned into something nefarious by our current media zeitgeist. The other thing is while ‘what if’ has brought us many wonders and ease, it has also brought us grave harm.
Examples include, eugenics, pollution, and some gnarly social control. This is why discernment, in discussion with others, should be a primary priority. Good ideas can be executed poorly and bad ones can be done well…too well. Thus our President should exercise caution and restraint when speaking of inventions, however I won’t hold my breath on that of course.
Good for your brother btw. We’re thinking of investing in UV technology. It should be interesting to see where it’s used.
Mrs Q
You are absolutely correct. I tried to write that in a manner that did not support the ad lib by Trump but to make sure we dont squelch ideas.
Every good has an opposing bad. Opiates for example are great when approptiately used and bad if we dont. I cannot think of any positive outcome from eugenics but if the original what if question was would society be better off without people with disabilities or impairment, the economist might say of course but the humanist would arrive at an emphatic no. The correct answer is cannot be determined . Such what if questions have no answer because you cannot develop data metrics for them. Somethings are outgrowths of other things. Pollution and social control are actually byproducts of other decisions and more often than not seen as important, costly,or relevant. That’s how they get traction.
I cannot think of any positive outcome from eugenics but if the original what if question was would society be better off without people with disabilities or impairment, the economist might say of course but the humanist would arrive at an emphatic no.
Here is another way that ‘politically correct thinking’ asserts itself. Such a possessive mistress!
Eugenics, quite literally, means ‘good breeding’. The idea behind good breeding is unassailable. It is so simple. People with good qualities create children, and families, where all the positive characteristics are cultivated and transmitted.
If you actually look into the doctrines on which eugenics were based, they are entirely sound. True, when the State gets involved in eugenics projects it quickly moves into dangerous territory. But the ideas standing behind eugenics are sound, unassailable, and in fact are now being revisited and reconsidered.
So, in truth there many ‘positive outcomes’ from good breeding habits and all that attends them.
Facebook is still being a jerk….I have to put links in comments or it “violates community standards”
Thank you Jack for this post..you stated my position on the media and my view on “she was asking for it” perfectly, rape is violence, but I am raising a gaggle of daughters and nieces and I give similar advice and commentary…This is not a perfect world and acting like it is is foolish…
A fairly accurate characterization-
When Trump made mention of light I though tanning beds. Would that have an impact? And with the heat I thought a sauna – would that have an impact? Unfortunately anything Trump says will be fodder.
We currently have endoscopes that emit light inside lungs. The question is can such a scope be used or retrofitted to emit the appropriate rays. Can fiber optics conduct the UV radiation with sufficient Joules to be effective?
As for disinfectants. We have myriad delivery systems to infiltrate lung tissues with chemicals. Most require no prescription. Vaping does just that. So, why is it hard to consider inhalation therapies. COPD patients currently employ such devices. If it is learned that the chemicals in cigarette smoke kill the virus would we say the risk is not worth a short stint on non-filtered Camels. The only question remains is can a disinfectant be developed that is introduced to the lungs like Albuterol that can be used in either a vaping device, Cpap device, inhaler or nebulizer.
I long gave up ridiculing people for asking questions. I only ridicule the answers others offer.
What if they were asking it sarcastically?
All antibiotics and anti virals are technically disinfectants. To disinfect is to kill enough of the target to render it relatively harmless.
Sterilization kills all pathogens.
If I ingest Remdisavir or Hydroxychloroquine I have ingested a disinfectant.
I know nothing about these drugs and have basically decided to stop putting any credence into any medical studies or opinions until this is all behind us or circumstances force me rethink my position. But my point was that I think that the Trump’s questions were actually smarter than they sounded position goes out the window when he later claims he was only saying those things to trick the media.
I honestly can’t decide what’s going on. Does Trump just blurt out whatever cringe-worthy thought happens to lumber through his brain at the time? He has a word-vomit speaking style, throwing in verbal crutches like “beautiful” and “tremendous” to describe something. Or does he deliberately say something stupid and irresponsible so people will jump on it to distract from his screw-ups and shortcomings? The left jumps on every dumb things he says or tweets. And the right will defend it, no matter how idiotic. I don’t think he’s doing himself any favors by holding these rambling press conferences.
Does Trump just blurt out whatever cringe-worthy thought happens to lumber through his brain at the time?
Yes. He always has, and always will. See here.
We’ve long employed various mechanical, chemical, and more recently, radiation, sound, and light means of treatment. What is amputation but a direct physical assault on the structure of the body, itself? What is the alternative?
Maybe the president shouldn’t be spitballing possibilities, considering his rabidly unhinged but influential opposition, even though such might well be the stuff of TED talks and futurists’ novels. Still, I think I’ll consider his ramblings on potential avenues of medical investigation over musing on whether islands will tip over…a strictly democrat undertaking, I believe.
#22!
I think I might know what’s being referenced there…but I’m not sure, and I don’t know how to locate it.
https://ethicsalarms.com/rule-book/unethical-rationalizations-and-misconceptions/
Thanks, that’s what I thought, & I finally found it just before your post…just somehow scrolled past it before.
I was aware it veered into that territory, but I meant it to be taken more as a humorous slap against his hypocritical opponents than as an excuse of his clumsy ways.
via GIPHY
I know. I just love using #22…
Apparently he was asking questions to reporters. Sarcastically. That is now the official Party Line, Jack, you better get with the program, and try to keep up.
Re : light treatment.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3298127/
While UV-C light is an effective germicide, UV-C light with a longer wavelength than 222 nm deeply pentrates skin, causing burns and skin cancers. 222nm does not penetrate past the first layer of cells, so does not cause blindness and other undesireable side effects. Deep Penetration of the body by harmful radiation as suggested “sarcastically” by the President is the last thing you want.
Virusses, being small, get their RNA obliterated though by non pentrating radiation. 222 nm UV-C light in public buildings, busses, subways etc is very promising, just very expensive at the moment.. 254mm UV-C light of the kind used in medical sterilisers is deadly, not just to viruses, but harms all organisms. Bacteria, dogs, humans…..
UV-C light of all kinds does not penetrate the atmosphere, it gets stopped by the ozone layer.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/revealed-leader-group-peddling-bleach-cure-lobbied-trump-coronavirus?fbclid=IwAR1fnDZItzU_KCagAOCvXiqF48EfZ62_40IN9HTbAcuZloz3wZxI3ofQGM8
Donald Trump in reveling clothing or Bill Clinton lounging in a blue dress; I don’t know which one is more shuddering.
However, apparently UV light was used in all sorts of medical treatments in the 40s and 50s, before the widespread use of modern antibiotics. Here’s a study on the NIH website: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122858/
Did you hear President Trump’s utterly ridiculous claim that he was being sarcastic when he talked about disinfectant in that briefing? President Trump has the worst case of Foot-In-Mouth Syndrome I’ve ever seen in a politician.
All he had to do was let the media continue down their path and keep his mouth shut, but nooooooo…
Yup. You describe my reaction exactly. This immediately triggered the lying trope again. But Trump has done this kind of thing ofetn, like with the hurricane path foolishness, or his claim that he always opposed the war in Iraq. It’s funny, because I saw that Ann Althouse tracked down a Quora piece in 2017 by some guy who had figured out that Trunp really was a genius, with an IQ of 150 or higher. He pointed out that people with IQ’s 30 or more points below superior intellects can’t understand the complex thought processes of their superiors, like Trump. I thought his theory was bonkers than, and this episode reminded me why. Trump constantly does (or tweets) things that are signature significance: no really smart person would do (or tweet) such things even once. The stupid tweet about the Squad was an example. This is another. So was the slur on McCain. Or hiring Omarosa. Or, in my opinion, most of all, saying how smart he is. I know a lot of smart people. Literally none of them announce how smart they are. If you are smart, you don’t have to claim you’re smart. Fredo claimed to be smart. Trump also doesn’t do a lot of the things a smart leader does. He has weaknesses. like his tendency to blurt out what ever pops into his head. A smart President would figure out that this is a big problem in his position, even if it…you know what? I’m going to turn this into a post. Thanks for the inspiration…
Deranged friends and mine continue to repeat them. The President said that the white supremacists were “good people.” He said that Mexicans were rapists. He said the Wuhan virus was a hoax. Now, thanks to yesterday’s blather, they will be saying that he told people to “inject” or drink bleach and disinfectant as a cure for the virus.
This italicized part must be clarified, for the benefit of all. It is completely fair and completely reasonable that the political Left and the Democrat/Progressives have concern and show concern when, for whatever reason, flocks of anti- or counter-establishment people converge on a city in order to rally in defense of dissident values and political projects. It must be said: that in all cultures, when a political or religious structure changes, is challenged, is replaced, that the coins and the monuments change: all the trappings of the previous régime. Just think when Mussolini was toppled. Or when the Third Reich went down: the former trappings are torn down utterly.
It cannot be considered unnatural, if you allow this term, that the political Left and the Progressives desire to pull down all the old reminders of a replaced régime. It is simply a thing that happens.
These on the political Left and those Democrat/Progressives, if they had done any research at all, would know, and they would be right, that American ‘identity’ movements, prior to WW2, were heavily tinged with race and ethnic identity concerns. In the 1920s there was a major manifestation of ‘Protestant American Identitarianism’ known as the 100% Movement. It modeled itself on the Klan.
It was significantly different though (and that difference has to be carefully described) and what it advocated for was, in many ways, a sort of national consciousness about what it meant to *be American*. One of their greatest efforts was the standardization of education programs in all states. They wanted a national education that taught youths what it means to be American, and their efforts worked to define that identity on a national level.
Donald Trump is an exploiter. He is non-different from all or most political actors in our day (and to some degree in all days). He exploited — and may continue to exploit — the angst and anger of a submerged disempowered white class (an underclass of sorts, a class reduced in status from a previous position that was relatively stable) in order to get him self propelled into the Presidency. He therefore exploited what now they will call *racist* or *racialist* sentiment that is not unsimilar to the identitarian and nationalistic sentiments of the 100% Movement.
These sentiments are ever-present within this *submerged America*. If you study this submerged America you will find tremendous commonality in what they perceive and think about *what is being done to them* and *what was done to America*. By any standard — and I mean by the standards of American Progressivism as it is expressed by everyone who participates here — all of these sentiments, and these ideas, are intolerable and must be driven down and away. So, what happens is that the relationship between something obviously condemnable as the second manifestation of the Klan (the 100% Movement) is deliberately not seen by an act of the will. It is a deliberate sort of blindness, self-imposed.
You cannot say that white people, advocating for white interests, who are unsettled and uncomfortable, or openly angry and resistant to, their on-going displacement by a rising colored-American demographic, are in any sense justified in having such sentiments. Those sentiments are completely and absolutely intolerable. So, no marches, no Tiki torches, no chants of “You will not replace us!”.
And you cannot, not ever, as President or as any elected official, make even the merest mention that people on that side might be ‘good people’ in any way. They are all ‘bad people’ by definition.
If you understand this, you will better understand where you-plural are situated: within progressive doctrines and outlooks that do not, and cannot, allow for any level of specific *white identity*.
So, the political Left and the Progressives have an internal position that is no-different from the one that you-plural have. You-plural are essentially advocating for the same thing, except that the Lefties have taken it to extremes that make you uncomfortable. Where they (the left) take it is to its *inevitable ends* since their defined enemy is, afterall, ‘whiteness’. Get rid of that and there is no more problem.
President Trump — as manipulating politician — did indeed say and he definitely implied that an identitarian American with racial awareness or concerns could indeed be a ‘good person’. And this is an intolerable statement and one that cannot be defended in the present dispensation. But he did it because he was keenly aware of who was *listening*. You could refer to *dog whistle* if you wished (and this as a political tool, and an election tool strategy can be developed) and you would be right. Manipulating politicians do this all the time of course.
The ‘derangement of the Left’ is indeed a real thing. It seems to have certain hysterical characteristics that remind me of Bacchic possession. It is a sort of fevered intoxication and once it has you in its grip, it has you until you tear to shreds with your bare teeth what has been identified for you as *your enemy*.
The *consecration* I’d refer to is, of course, a kind of hate-filled labeling by which the ‘sacrificial victim’ is annointed. I have a wonderful example that shows how it is done. From a movie.
Enemies are always needed, and they are always used. To defend the *consecrated victim*, to explain his motivation, to allow for it in any sense, is intolerable for the possessed whose irrational will has been set.