Month: June 2022

A Popeye: I Have To Fisk This Smoking Gun Opinion Piece, Because My Head Will Explode Beyond Repair If I Don’t…Part 2: “The Hell I Won’t!”And “The Great Replacement”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The comments on Wajahat Ali ‘s anti-US rant almost make my planned fisking of his revolting opinion piece unnecessary. Almost.

If you want to read his lament “Is It Time for Me to Leave America?”without my annoying commentary, go to the link or Part I, here.

I am in sympathy with the commenters who feel that Ali’s gaslighting isn’t worthy of the time it takes to read or rebut: it is a bit like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. But as soon to be Sheriff (Black) Bart (Cleavon Little) says before he hits Taggart (Slim Pickens) over the head with a shovel in “Blazing Saddles,” “I gotta!”

Now that I’m committed, however, it is clear that I can’t begin to do Ali’s rant justice—meaning to punch it in its metaphorical mouth so it slides down into a mudhole—in a single post. So I’ll primarily devote Part 2 to his “Great Replacement” claim.

Here we go…

“Is it time to leave? I’ve caught myself asking my wife this question several times over the past year.”

I’ll state up front: I don’t believe him. The threat to leave the United States is a uniquely leftist bluff, and almost always employed to cheaply make the point that “I really, really don’t like where democracy is taking us right now.” The proper reaction to that is, “Oh, shut up. Running away is un-American; if that’s your response, you don’t belong here anyway.” It’s such an arrogant and presumptuous threat.  Why do you think anyone cares whether you leave or not, man? “Do things the way I want or I’m quitting!” is infantile. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Flaviane Carvalho

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I love this story, and not just because it supports several Ethics Alarms principles, like the duty to confront, the duty to rescue, and the duty to fix the problem.

In Orlando on January 1, 2021, Mrs. Potato restaurant employee Flaviane Carvalho noticed that a young boy was sitting secluded from his parents and a a young girl. Carvalho said the boy was wearing a mask and hoodie as he sat at the table along with two adults and a young girl. She also noticed that he had a scratch in between in his eyebrows and wasn’t eating, even though food had been brought to the table. She asked the table if their food and drinks were all right, and when the one of the adults replied that the boy would eat his dinner at home, Carvalho said she began to think something was seriously wrong.

She did not decide to “minding her own business,” but instead decided that as a proactive and ethical member of society, this was her business. Carvalho stood behind the boy’s parents and held up a note asking the boy if he was OK. When the 11-year-old shook his head, she wrote a second note asking, “Do you need help?”  This time, the boy nodded yes. Carvalho called her boss and then called 911.

Police arrived and questioned the child, who told detectives he had suffered abuse at the hands of his stepfather, identified as Timothy Lee Wilson II.  Wilson was arrested at the restaurant, and the boy’s mother, Kristen Swann, was taken into custody on later that week after the boy made additional disclosures of alleged abuse.

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Thank Goodness It’s The Friday End Of The Work Week Ethics Warm-up, 6/10/2022!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Three notable markers in ethics lore occurred on June 10. In 1752, Ben Franklin did something creative, inventive, bold and really, really stupid, flying a kite during a thunder storm to collect lightning in a jar. He pulled it off, too, because he was lucky, as usual. Ben just as easily could have been electrocuted, meaning that he would not have been around to add his considerable wisdom, negotiating skills and talents to the founding of our nation, which might not exist today if old Ben was a-moldering in the grave when they needed him in Philadelphia. A things turned out, Ben’s kite-flying experiment added to his fame, but it just as easily could have been an epic disaster for the world.

And that, my friends, is moral luck.

Another ethics landmark occurred on this date in 1692 in Salem Village the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Bridget Bishop, the first victim of the Salem witch trials, was hanged and 18 more innocent colonists were executed (none were burned) before the epic example of how fear, ignorance and political ruthlessness can turn good people into monsters. In 1976, a scientist published a paper arguing that the young girls’ weird behavior that triggered the witch trials may not have been caused, as “The Crucible” has it, by teenage rebellion, but by a hallucinogenic fungus that sometimes infects the type of grain the Salem colonists used for bread. The theory has substantial support in the scientific community if not so much among historians.

The witch trials are particularly relevant today, because of the Jan. 6 hearings…

Finally, on this date in 1935, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, two recovering alcoholics, founded Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA, a 12-step rehabilitation and support group program that has helped millions of people worldwide (including many very close to me) battle a terrible and widespread disease that destroys lives, families, and businesses.

1. “A Nation of Assholes,” redux. As regular readers here know, I posted A Nation Of Assholes: The Ultimate, Undeniable And Crucial Reason Donald Trump Must Never Be President nearly seven years ago, and all has transpired as I predicted. Well, not exactly as I predicted: I assumed that the rising generations would have their language and civility corrupted by having an unrepentant vulgarian and boor in the White House, but I did not predict the adults who were his adversaries quickly adopting equally unethical habits, and in some cases, worse ones. I was reminded again of this phenomenon—which as far as I can tell, only Ethics Alarms flagged—yesterday when a controversy emerged over Boston Celtics fans chanting “Fuck you Draymond” at Warriors court thug Draymond Green during yesterday’s NBA Finals game at the Boston Garden. As a born-and bred Bostonian, I can testify that not all that long ago such sporting event crowd conduct would have been unimaginable in the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin. The critics of yesterday’s disgrace concentrated on a “Think of the children!” tactic, which misses the ethics point. Chanting “fuck” is disrespectful of everyone.

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Friday Freakin’ Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

It was, finally, a busy week at ProEthics—law firms and others are finally paying attention to ethics again after being preoccupied by the #@$%(!! Wuhan virus—so I wasn’t able to cover everything I should have or wanted to.

As always, I’m hoping that the Open Forum participants will make up for my inadequacies.

Please keep comments germane to ethics, civil, and brilliant!

An Ethics Alarms FIRST! Carl Paladino Scores Two Ethics Dunces In A Single Day!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I don’t want to leap to conclusions or anything, but I think maybe Mr. Palladino needs to reassess his political ambitions.

Today a recording surfaced of the congressional candidate Ethics Alarms just featured in this Ethics Dunce post telling Buffalo’s WBEN Radio host Peter Hunt on Feb. 13, 2021 that he had recently listened to a broadcast about “Adolf Hitler and how he aroused the crowds.” Palladino continued,

“And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just – they were hypnotized by him. That’s, I guess, I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it.”

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Ethics Dunce: GOP Congressional Candidate Carl Paladino…Oh Yeah, This Is Just The Kind Of Person Congress Needs

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Carl Paladino, a Buffalo businessman and former candidate for New York governor now running for Congress as a Republican, re-posted to Facebook a ridiculous conspiracy theory by a fellow idiot claiming that the mass shootings at the supermarket in Buffalo and the school in Uvalde were “false flag” operations. There are screenshots of the since-deleted post, which you can read at your peril.

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A Popeye: I Have To Fisk This Smoking Gun Opinion Piece, Because My Head Will Explode Beyond Repair If I Don’t…[Part I: Why]

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

“It’s all I can stands, ’cause I can’t stands no more!”—Popeye, sailor and American icon.

The column (below) by periodic New York Times opinion writer Wajahat Ali has been bothering me for over a week now. The moment I read it, I wanted to rush to my PC and tear it apart. Then I began questioning the exercise on a cost/benefit basis. Lunatic, hateful, biased pieces like this come out in the mainstream media every day; I can’t, and shouldn’t, use my limited time for Ethics Alarms debunking them all, for to objective, discerning readers, they debunk themselves.

Yet, as Thomas More futilely, fatally and correctly maintained at his trial, silence implies consent. This stuff is poisonous to our society and civil discourse. Moreover, Ali’s bile is especially illustrative of the Left’s current anti-America propaganda: it hits almost every one of the Big Lies, false narratives, hypocrisies distortions and fear-mongering appeals to emotion that threaten to tear the nation apart. It transcends unethical to border on evil. So after having this thing impinge on my sleep for a fifth night—I’m not exaggerating— I have to vivisect this monstrosity, for my own sanity if for no other reason.

Here is the whole essay, which was originally published at the now thoroughly deranged Daily Beast. (There’s hope in this: maybe it was too far off the rails even for the Times.) Read it, please. Its title, flagrant clickbait, is “Is It Time for Me to Leave America?” (Go ahead and read it on Yahoo, where that link takes you.) I’ll be back soon in Part II to take it apart.

You can also read it below….

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Should Fox News Broadcast The Prime Time Hearings Of The House’s Partisan Jan. 6 Committee? Of Course Not. And Neither Should Any Other Network…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The mainstream media and the usual suspect in the world of punditry are having a particularly silly meltdown over the decision by the Fox News management not to treat the hyped Jan. 6 Committee hearings as anything other than what they are and have obviously been from the beginning: an unethical, biased, last-ditch effort to salvage the November mid-terms by painting the GOP as a threat to democracy—because a bunch of morons and assholes stormed the U.S. Capitol in response to President Trump’s irresponsible claims that the election had been “rigged” and “stolen.”

Meanwhile, Democrats and their legions are trying to intimidate the Supreme Court, undermine the Bill of Rights, legalize racial discrimination,, and bomb anti-abortion organizations. Yeah, these are the people who will “save democracy,” all right.

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Good. Now Do Female Gymnasts, Swimmers, Child Models And Actors

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The international governing body for figure skating, the International Skating Union, announced yesterday that it will gradually raise the minimum age for Olympic-level competition from 15 to 17.  Thus no skaters younger than 17 will be allowed to compete in the 2026 Milano Cortino Games.

The body suddenly figured out that there  young athletes competing in sports at a high level faced unacceptable risks, not merely physical injuries due to their immature physiques, but also “psychological injuries” which can have devastating effects on their mental, cognitive, and emotional health in the short and long term. Of course, they knew this before, and didn’t care as long as child champions brought revenue and visibility. But the ugly scandal resulting from Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s positive doping test at the last Winter Olympic Games in the Nation That Shall Not Be Named mandated a Barn Door Fallacy reaction. Valieva was given a child’s pass that allowed her to compete unfairly against adults, became the center of controversy, and crumbled under the criticism and scrutiny. Ethics Alarms discussed the matter here and elsewhere.
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Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Dunce, And That’s Not The Half Of It: ESPN Host Sarah Spain”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I confess: I was immediately drawn to Steve-O-in NJ’s comment because it gave me another opportunity to post my favorite ethics film clip of all, Sir Thomas More’s speech from “A Man For All Seasons.”

But Steve’s comment, on the post, “Ethics Dunce, And That’s Not The Half Of It: ESPN Host Sarah Spain,” is a worthy Comment of the Day on its own.

Here it is…

***

I have to laugh, because the same persons who want to come for the conservatives today were saying “First they came for the Muslims – and then we said, “not this time motherf***ers!” at the beginning of 2017.

These days it’s more like:

First they came for the Second Amendment, and I said nothing, because they said they were protecting schoolchildren.

Then they came for the Fourth Amendment – and I said nothing, because they said if you had nothing to hide, then you had nothing to fear.

Then they came for the Fifth Amendment – and I said nothing, because they were just streamlining the process to get bad people out of society.

Then they came for the First Amendment – and I said nothing, because they were just stopping the spread of disinformation and misinformation.

Then they came for me – and I was disarmed, cowed and silenced,with no protection, so I had no choice but to go quietly with them.