Two stories about vulgar flags hanging on houses were so similar, I thought they were a single episode. In fact, they occurred in different states. It didn’t help that in both stories, the politically correct, silly and near-useless news media refused to actually reveal the facts because they might be “offensive.”
In Charlotte, North Carolina, a flag with “graphic language” directed at President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hangs in front of a home down the street from Mallard Creek Elementary School. Teachers and neighbors are upset at “the profane language and blatant disrespect for the President and Vice-President,” and complained that this was was “a terrible example” to set for kids. The house is on a street on the route for all the buses to get to the school.
What exactly is “the graphic language”? We’re supposed to guess: that’s today’s woke journalism, as in “lousy journalism.” Some comments from neighbors are also revealing. A neighbor told the local Fox affiliate, “If she’s concerned about that, then she needs to be getting on these rap songs and everything else.”
Yeah, that’s a classic deflection, in the style of a nice round, ten rationalizations, like 2.Whataboutism, or “They’re Just as Bad,”8, The Trivial Trap (“No harm no foul!”), 8A. The Dead Horse-Beater’s Dodge, or “This can’t make things any worse,” 16., The Consistency Obsession, 22, “There are worse things,” 26, “The Favorite Child” Excuse,” 33. The Management Shrug: “Don’t sweat the small stuff!,” 44. “It’s Not The First Time, ” 50A. Narcissist Ethics , or “I don’t care,” and #58. The Golden Rule Mutation, or “I’m all right with it!” The response doesn’t address the issue at hand, it just shrugs it away.
Too bad they don’t teach basic ethics in the U.S.
The same genius added, “I also believe that what goes around comes around. Trump didn’t get much respect when he was president, so I guess his supporters aren’t going to give him [Biden] support either.” That’s a perfect Tit for Tat argument; Trump would approve. Nobody who has the ethical values above those of Michael Corleone would, however.
Of course, the quoted arguments of critics of the display are hardly any better. Teacher Kristie Morrow told the station, “Whether they support Trump or not, I know there’s freedom of speech, but I think they’re not letting me have my right [to] not to view something like that.”
Ah. You know there is Freedom of Speech, but you don’t know what it means. You have no such right. How dare you presume to teach children?
Kristie and teachers like her are why we have a politically incompetent and a civically ignorant public.
The identical scenario is also unfolding in Jackson, Michigan, where we are told that “a profane anti-Biden flag” on a home “is raising eyebrows and questions about the First Amendment.” Neighbors don’t think their children should be exposed to whatever it is: the news reports won’t say exactly. Apparently the flag contains “an infamous four-letter word.”
It’s a guessing game! What word? Shit? Suck? Dick? Cunt? Am I getting warm? The news sources even blanked out the words in a photo of the house. Michigan had a law banning the use of profanity in front of women and children, but governor Rick Snyder signed a bill repealing that law in 2015. That’s good, because the law was unconstitutional.
I did some research, and it appears that the two homes are flying these flags, or the equivalents:
This isn’t a tough call. Verdicts:
1. It is uncivil, disrespectful and wrong for anyone to display such flags, signs or messages.
2. Doing so near a school is especially obnoxious.
3. Children should be taught to respect their President, and members of the community should not seek to undermine that mission.
4. I’m surprised Amazon allows these to be sold at all. Clearly the censorship memo hasn’t gotten around to everyone.
5. Trump supporters, conservatives and Republicans are crawling into the gutter by employing these tit for tat tactics, and, of course, continuing the harm to democracy, community and public discourse that the AUC (That’s the Axis of Unethical Conduct for new readers: the “resistance,” Democrats, and the mainstream news media) began and escalated (and Ethics Alarms condemned) since 2016.
4. The typical progressive/Democrat/Biden voter, however, is estopped from complaining. Teachers especially fostered disrespect for President Trump at all levels of education. I do not approve of this payback, but I have no sympathy for its targets.
At all.
In my neighborhood, right across the street from the local elementary school, a house has displayed a huge, home-made “Black Lives Matter” display for at least six months. That sign is intended as virtue-signaling; my area is stinking with simplistic signs promoting “End Racism,” and “diversity” in which the residents imply that anyone who isn’t fully on board with the woke agenda is human scum. Such propaganda is less vulgar than “Fuck Biden and you for voting for him,” but no less divisive, disrespectful, and offensive. I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to ask one of these arrogant shills what they think such signs accomplish.
And as soon as one appears as I walk past his or her house, I will.
.
Ethics Alarms 
There is literally a song called “F— Donald Trump” that was a frequent anthem at all sorts of left wing protests.
And of course there was, and is, “Fuck the Cops.”
It’s taken less than a year for the idea of defunding the police, one of the dumbest ideas ever to enter mainstream American society, to be proven to be worse than worthless. American cities are not Costa Rica and policing is not optional, nor is there another entity to rely on for security. But, it’s still blame the police for everything that goes wrong in America’s cities. Now the mayor of New York City might be making a bid to take over for the crippled Andrew Cuomo. If that happens, New York state has really had it.
Then again, a lot of this is stuff we’ve been through three or four or more like a dozen times. Bad ideology results in bad ideas, bad ideas result in bad policy, and bad policy brings bad results.
However, I must conclude that to a large number of Americans, maybe even a majority of Americans, ideology is all important, and identity politics a close second.
Only ideologues say things like “eff whoever.” Only ideologues push bad ideas, because their ideology blinds them to how bad they are. Only ideologues refuse to even consider that the other side might have some valid points.
It should not come as a surprise that after 4 years of ideologues running the Democratic party, culminating in the most ideologically intense year in this country since 9/11, that a lot of people on the other side who previously would have listened, are now ideologues themselves. Anger and hatred, which are often the fruit of this kind of behavior, are not like electricity. You can’t just flip a switch and turn them off. Just like a lot of Pacific campaign veterans reflexively hated the Japanese until the day they died, just like a lot of veterans of the Cold War would never trust the Russians farther than they could throw them, just like a lot of those of us who were a little too close to 9/11 still reflexively loathe the Muslims, going forward a lot of liberals and people of color will reflexively hate whites and conservatives, and the converse is also going to true.
It should come as no surprise when the white and the right engage in the same dirty and brutal tactics that the left and the colored have used to great effect, especially last year. If something works, then you are foolish not to use it against an enemy who has no qualms about using it on you, and improve on it if you can.
In the closing days of the Aleutian campaign, a forgotten corner of World War II (there are too many of those, but I digress), the Americans captured a Japanese Zero fighter almost completely intact. They did not discard it as somehow morally tainted because it was the weapon of the enemy. They put it through its paces and discovered exactly what its vulnerabilities were. Notably, it had a very hard time pulling out of a dive, and its fuel tank was very vulnerable to fire. So the American pilots adjusted their tactics accordingly. In the meantime they were also building the F6F Hellcat, an improvement on the previous Wildcat fighter, which did not have the Wildcat’s tendency to stall when climbing. One can only imagine the look on the first Japanese pilot’s face when he tried to use the same tactics as had been used in the past against a Hellcat (which did not look all that different from the Wildcat, except it was a little bigger), and watched it just keep on climbing (“oh crap”).
I don’t know what the right’s discovery will ultimately be, but for now they are giving the left a good dose of the same crap as they gave them, and no one has really any grounds to object.
Next step, targeting the statues of MLK and the one of Ginsburg they just put up in Brooklyn. Let’s see how they feel when their icons are trashed. I think the one statue of MLK is marble, so let’s haul it away to be remade into toilet bowls.
There is something to be said for the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction which is the ultimate Tit for Tat. The vitriol expressed against Trump and his supporter if left unchallenged will become the tactic of choice for all future challengers to the Democrat machine.
Political pendulums swing back and forth. The pendulum will not swing if sufficient numbers are not convinced that they are not alone. Complaining about what the AUC does has proven to be ineffective. Pick your poison – vulgar flags or riots. Flags such as these, while crass and vulgar, are simply tools to communicate that others feel as they do which gives more people an impetus for speaking out. The electorate seeks safety in numbers. These signs are no different that the BLM or End Racism signs in yards or “Tolerance” stickers on automobiles.
When the bully gets a taste of his or her own medicine the bully tends to behave differently. If there is a better way for the average person to broadly communicate a reasoned alternative perspective, when your local paper limits the number of letters to the editor for their position but promotes the printing of the paper’s preferred perspectives for whatever reason, well, I am all ears. These signs reflect who we are. Only when people see themselves in that mirror will they see just how ugly their own actions were.
Personally, I am tired of talking about the AUC and I am looking for ways to ethically combat their tactics. I will not, however, allow my liberties to be stolen through unethical practices so that I can be called an ethical player.
There is a tactical problem with “tit for tat” because Trump was the perfect guy to demonize. He is, after all, an out-of-the-closet asshole. This is why the left-wing media picked him as the Republican nominee in 2016. (I know there was a primary, but come on…)
Dan
I’ll take an out of the closet asshole over an asshole who hides behind a façade of lies who has at times has stated he thinks beating people up makes him the BMOC. One guy’s asshole is another guy’s truth teller and protector.
The left wing media basically shot themselves in the foot when they gave him so much air time. It would make no sense for the left wing media to push Trump if they thought his message would resonate among disaffected working people. They did not do this because he was easy to demonize. This happens when the smartest people in the room jump out of the plane with the hippie’s backpack thinking it was the last parachute.
I always thought it was the Polak who took the Boy Scout’s knapsack, but I heard it in the 1970s, when Polish jokes were the thing.
Chris I agree that the media misculculated by elevating Trump. He was supposed to lose. But the reasons they elevated him and his eventual downfall are both predicated on the fact that he is out of the closet in his assholery.
That’s exactly right. Despite the narrative that he “lied all the time,” Trump may have been the most transparent POTUS since Teddy Roosevelt. He was exactly who he presented himself as being.
A jerk neighbor has recently replaced his “Impeach the Idiot” bumper sticker with “45 IQ.” What is wrong with these people?
You answered your own question. They are jerks.
We had a flag flying in our neighborhood saying, “Trump 2020: Fuck Your Sensibilities”. Cognitive dissonance scale being what it is, such a flag made me want to support Trump less. Our neighbor is just fortunate that I’m already staunchly in the camp that can’t vote for Democrats period because so many pieces of their platform are diametrically opposed to my beliefs.
I know many people are literally incapable of reaching the end of the sentence without saying “fuck”, “shit”, or some other profanity, but do people not realize how ugly it makes them? Yes, I know, rhetorical question. If the people on the left who were so repulsive didn’t understand how they made themselves unattractive, then I can hardly expect people on the right to understand it. It isn’t a political problem but a human problem.