On Mediaite this morning–that’s the useful if still left-biased news media headline aggregator–there are 38 main stories and 17 of them involve Donald Trump. Quite a few also involve ethics issues, unless you consider the man’s very existence in our world an ethics issue, I have to deal with sorting this out every single day: if I give the constant tsunami of ethics issues raised by this persistent celebrity from Hell the attention and analysis they require, the blog ends up being as much about politics as ethics. Worse, the Trump Deranged apparently can’t process the concept that people can be unethical themselves and still have a right to be treated fairly, so any post delving into that situation, which has been an ongoing ethics scandal since at least 2016 (The 2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck) is immediately attacked as “supporting” Trump. This, in turn, leads to a repetitive scenario like the one we saw twice this week, with two new and prolific single issue commenters flogging their hatred of the man refusing to move on to other topics, getting antagonistic, and forcing me to ban them.
Of course, non-Trump ethics news hasn’t been great lately either. Yesterday, I had to decide if this story—“Penn State professor arrested for having sex with dog”—was worthy of a post. I decided against it, even though I had a great line to use: “His horrified colleagues finally learned what he really meant when he told them, “I’ll be in the lab…”
Over to you, Clarence…
Ethics Alarms 
My apology, it’s Trump related.
As I wrote on Twitter…
I do not support the choices Trump made with regards to the documents he had that were marked Top Secret, Secret and Confidential regardless if he actually declassified them when he was President. Whether Trump was unethically targeted, he was, or not all Trump had to do was to work with the government and give all the documents back last year when they asked and subsequently subpoenaed them and Trump would not have been indicted for possessing them and having likely made false statements regarding the documents, etc. He could have always negotiated to get copies of some, or all, of the documents for his Presidential Library at a later date but what took place was as if he was intentionally trolling the government and prodding them to prosecute him so he could try to use that as more evidence that he’s being “mistreated” and use that as a political slogan, well Mr. Trump you loose cannoned mouthed narcissist, being mistreated is not a reason to be elected President of the United States.
Here is a pointed statement that will likely anger some Trump supporters,
“Being mistreated is no excuse to engage in behaviors that are considered to be illegal.”
Choices have consequences.
In my opinion, it’s time for Trump supporters to politically cut the umbilical cord and force the loose cannon mouthed narcissist to fight his own battles. Stop feeding the Trump political troll. Free up all that space that Trump is occupying in your head. There are better candidates out there just open your eyes and ears and listen.
I’ll not support Trump in the GOP primaries, period. If Trump gets the GOP nomination and the candidates for President in 2024 are Biden vs Trump, I won’t vote for either of them, period.
I’ve made my choice and I think it is an ethical choice.
Steve,
I agree with your position. If Trump truly cared about our country, he would not run for a second term even if he didn’t have all the baggage of his current legal issues. His running is his attempt to vindicate himself.
As a lame duck his ability to accomplish anything substantive is highly doubtful. He would still be hounded by the media and progressive jackals. His opponents would just need to run the clock out. Whether he was beaten fair and square or cheated out of a second term is immaterial. He is out. Biden is in. Life is not fair. He and his supporters need to suck it up and deal with it.
Of late we have been discussing the changes in our culture, mores, and political system foisted upon us by the progressive movement’s practitioners. It seems that with each passing year, we learn what we thought was bad was really much worse. Before Trump, who knew how partisan and corrupt the DOJ and FBI had become? Before COVID, who knew the CDC was run by a megalomaniac with a Napoleon complex? Before the Clinton/Trump race, who knew how completely biased the news media and social media really were?
I have asked myself when did society start to unravel? While philosophically I blame the progressive movement and the greed of individuals and politicians, I have wondered if a key event or events were integral to the shift or unraveling of the American culture.
The best I can guess is it started with the consequences of the US policy of propping up corrupt totalitarian regimes in Korea, Vietnam, and Iran to guard against the “Red Threat”. Those wars were profoundly wasteful in our expenditure of blood and treasure. Of the three, our involvement in Vietnam was the trigger point that contributed most to our polarized society. More than anything, LBJ’s escalation of US troops in the Vietnam War created a divide in our culture like what a civil war would spawn.
The second pivotal event was Bill Clinton’s election as President and subsequent impeachment. In my mind, the decision to impeach President Clinton was a profound mistake. As Emerson said, “When you strike at the King, you must kill him.” Having failed to nail the Clintons on Whitewater, Republicans stupidly abandoned their high crimes pursuit and branched out into Mr. Clinton’s sexual escapades. President Clinton and his supporters gave rise to the belief that morality and ethics took a backseat to what you could get away with, and Newt Gingrich could very well have set the stage for President Trump’s impeachment. Both events led to the extreme polarization of our society today. I am curious what others think.
I think this was a pivotal moment. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
For a data junkie that is a great collection of graphs.
While I concede Nixon taking the US off the gold standard had significant global economic consequences I don’t see it being a profound catalyst in changing US culture. Can you elaborate for me?
I think diluting a standard measure of value has far reaching impacts on society. Many of the graphs are measures of diverging social well being, not just financial.
My main issue is that an inflationary policy favors spending and disfavores saving. Supposedly this is by design, the reasoning that money in mattresses helps no one, but that’s an habit that died with the survivors of the Great Depression. A carrot via interest is a better motivator for moving currency than the stick of value theft.
Inflation needlessly complicates saving, and this reduces self reliance. It incentiveizes buying on credit, furthering enslavement of the individual. It harms the most those at the bottom of the economic barrel and limits their class mobility.
Maybe I’m just cynical about government in general, especially a strong federal level. Sixteenth Amendment is an additional pivotal change for the worse.
I share your distrust of government, especially what it has become since the turn of the century. I also distrust the major banks. For every restriction governments impose on the banking and investment markets, bankers and financial firms quickly develop systems to work around the restrictions.
The issue of going off the gold standard is complex. One cause of the Great Depression was the tight money supply. Under the gold standard, the money supply was restricted to a percent of gold reserves. FDR via executive order confiscated private gold supplies to boost gold reserves to increase the money supply. In 1944, to stabilize markets torn apart by WWII, the globalist John Maynard Keynes and the US, the new world power, crafted the Bretton Woods Agreement. This created a worldwide monetary system with the US at the center. As with most policies conceived by progressive experts, it was a flawed system that looked good on paper, but it contained a fatal flaw, i.e., the ability to control the value of gold and the US $. In the real world, everything has the value that the marketplace places on it, not what the experts say it should be. Going off the gold standard in 1971 benefitted bankers and US politicians. Bankers could increase lending without increasing gold reserves and politicians could print money to cover their unrestrained spending. What could go wrong?
I do not think the elimination of the gold standard caused the problems reflected in the various graphs presented. Rather it facilitated various truisms to flourish. Humans always want something for nothing. Politicians are willing to do anything and spend other’s monies in exchange for votes regardless of the consequences to the country, state, etc. Bankers and financiers will do whatever they can to eke out another 1/10th of a percent profit. The oligarchy the US has become guarantees the top and bottom will continue to do very well relative to their position and the middle class will continue to be suppressed.
My original question was how or why did the country willingly shift from a conservative melting pot to the progressive divisive dystopia we have today? Regrettably, not too many of us were willing to take that question on. I appreciate that you are an exception.
I think another contributing factor was the Satanic Panic of 80s, the vestiges of which live on in QAnon. It soured a lot of people against traditional conservative values, and pushed “geek” culture underground and into the arms of the Left.
I would separate Korea from Vietnam or Iran.
Korea was an unequivocal invasion of one country by another. It is akin to the Nazi invasion of Poland or, for that matter, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
We went to Korea to protect the people of Korea from being conquered and subjugated and guess what? We succeeded! We won that war!
Now it is also true that we suffered from a major case of mission creep when we decided that we, in turn, ought to conquer North Korea. There are some justifications for that — they absolutely were the aggressors, after all. But we ignored the warnings from China and ultimately that second war ended in a bloody stalemate.
So did we accomplish anything in Korea? I would argue yes, very much so. We prevented the South Koreans from being conquered and we have served as a shield for now 70 years.
There are a log of things the military cannot do. But in this case, by shielding South Korea from another invasion, we bought them time to develop their nation. Eventually they evolved into a thriving democratic society (and economic powerhouse).
That would not have happened without the United States intervention in Korea. I believe it is something that we as a nation can be proud of.
It is also true, I think, of Germany and Japan who have also developed into democratic countries. We didn’t do it but we provided the time and environment for that to develop. There has not been a Nazi II regime develop in either country.
My point was that the hypocritical US policy of supporting corrupt totalitarian dictators had a negative impact on US culture, particularly among the younger generation. The defense for supporting evil, repressive dictators, because they opposed communism, is unethical. Those same dictators would oppose any system that didn’t benefit them personally including a representative democracy.
Regarding your points on Korea, I don’t discount the benefit to South Korea of the UN involvement in repelling the North invasion. I just question the benefit specifically to the United States of our involvement in Korea. I believe Korea and Vietnam were the result of the domino theory which history has shown to have an insignificant impact on geopolitics. The US’s support of the Shah in Iran I think was more about oil than anything else. We saw how well that worked out. In general, as Washington cautioned, the United States should avoid lengthy foreign entanglements. I think the expenditure of blood and treasure for a non-existential threat is unethical and immoral. Regarding coming to the aid of those attacked by others, the question becomes what are the criteria for involvement? You can’t always serve as the world’s policeman forever. Regarding the development of Germany and Japan into democratic countries, was a direct result of the gift of billions of US dollars and oversight after the end of WWII.
Actually I’d agree that the effect of the Korean War on the United States was at least somewhat deleterious, despite the good things it accomplished and enabled both in the short and long term.
I think our attitude towards Korea was in large part due to an American mentality of ‘There is no substitute for victory’ and ‘Unconditional surrender’ when it came to the wars we had engaged in prior to Korea. It was a harsh lesson in the concept that many (perhaps most) wars do not end in ‘total victory’ for one side or the other, even for the ‘good guys’, which is how we (I think correctly in this case) saw ourselves in Korea.
Korea was perhaps a coming of age moment for us in the sphere of great power geopolitics — and we hated it. However, if the United States wanted to be a Great Power after World War II, I could argue that Korea was, in fact, an existential threat to that.
Correctly or not, during and after WWII we decided that hiding our head in the sand was not a winning strategy if it meant having to go to war in Europe every two or three decades. A consequence of that meant having allies around the world, which meant sometimes we have to intervene. In Ukraine we’re intervening materially — and part of that calculation (I believe) is that if we let Ukraine fall, soon enough we may be in a situation where we _have_ to send in our own troops. In Korea, the only realistic option was to send ground troops. Even then, it was a near run thing in the summer of 1950 whether South Korea would survive.
I do see one similarity between Korea and Ukraine. In both situations I believe much of the world did not believe that the U.S. president would intervene and both Truman and Biden surprised a lot of folks by doing so. I disagree with a lot of the tactics and equivocations of Biden’s Ukrainian policy, but at least he has acted (finally) to stand up to naked aggression by Russia, where Obama never did.
I agree with your observation that Korea was an existential threat to United States’ desire to be a Great Power after World War II. I also believe that the US was impressed with its victorious performance in WWII and felt it would be a quick war.
I am a bit on the fence regarding the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. On basic principles, I am not in favor of foreign entanglements for the US if they do not directly involve the security of the US. However, in exchange for Ukraine abandoning its nukes, the US and Russia agreed they would not invade Ukraine. Since the threat of the US invading Ukraine is slim and none, it was implicit that the US would protect Ukraine from Russia. The other factor encouraging US involvement in the conflict is Russia’s worldwide influence was greatly diminished after the collapse of the USSR. Capturing Ukraine’s significant resources would be a large boost for the economy of Russia, and possibly lead to a partial reconstitution of the USSR.
The one positive but ignored aspect of this conflict is the total worthlessness of the UN. Why we continue to support the UN since it does not provide a beneficial function is beyond me. Many of the European countries couldn’t put aside their own self-interests to fully participate in sanctions. Italy is a disgusting example claiming luxury goods made in Italy to be exempt from sanctions.
As interesting as discussing geopolitics is, and I mean that sincerely, I go back to my original question. What if anything precipitated the significant cultural shift in America post WWII to now?
Seriously, though… the top story in the country (and worldwide) should be the massive data breaches (ransomware) attributable in at least several cases to a vulnerability in a software program called MOVEIt, which “securely” (erm… no) allows for the transfer of large files between sites.
Confirmed victims include the BBC, British Airways, Johns Hopkins University, the city of Halifax, the University of Georgia system, the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles, and the Minnesota Department of Education.
My university has also been hit, and I know they use MOVEIt (for example, to send student files to the state Coordinating Board). University officials aren’t saying it’s ransomware, but we’re now at the point where a lack of denial might as well be a confirmation, as the breach happened last weekend.
The response here has been to shut down everything until the IT folks can figure out a safe response. The means the university website, email, connection to the systems used for online courses, the library, even copiers that require access codes… all down for what might be weeks.
We need hardly discuss the ethics (or lack thereof) of the perpetrators. But what of MOVEIt? What of the victims. some of whom are considerably less than transparent with the real victims, the people whose files have been accessed? What, as they used to ask on the cereal commercials, is a mother to do?
My inner Luddite has been awakened.
Are these Gotchas or more indications of a gathering storm?
The (arguably) highest ranking elected official in the known Universe refers to his signature program Wednesday as: Build Back Biden
Were that his only…um…slip of the tongue; to wit:
“We Have Plans To Build A Railroad From The Pacific All The Way Across The Indian Ocean,”
Huh?
Any Lefties appear concerned? Heck no…it’s Pride Month!
Whilst they were debating this program, I eventually started referring to it as Build Back Brandon — it just seemed to fit.
A baseball ethics topic for Jack: https://www.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/stanford-starters-156-pitch-complete-game-sparks-debate-on-social-media
Weak bullpen or not, this kind of workload creates far too great a risk of injury, the kind that can end a career before it begins. (And there is a career to be lost. Despite how the linked article describes him as a marginal pro prospect, he’s the Pac-12 pitcher of the year and should go in the first five rounds this year.) If the kid avoided damage, that’s just luck. I sure wouldn’t want my kid playing for a coaching staff that endangers players like this.
That’s just crazy. I think one of the reasons pitchers have so many arm problems these days is that they are throwing harder and more physically challenging pitches, resulting in more stress on their arms and elbows.
Coaches are supposed to look out for their players better than this. I cannot fault the kid for wanting to win and watching to pitch — but there are supposed to be adults in charge. I don’t care if this is the last game this guy is ever going to pitch for that university — they have an ethical duty to watch out for his health.
If you have someone like Randy Johnson who has been pitching professionally for a decade or more – there is a better argument that he knows his own limits and can make his own decisions — but it’s still questionable for a manager to allow it. For a college kid — you may be foreclosing his entire adult career. And he’s still just a kid, not really an adult.
Let us discuss this.
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/reddit-communities-dark-protest-planned-platform/story?id=100037332
One one hand, these moderators doing this are shutting down their communities with hundreds or even thousand of users, who rely on the group to share ideas and form a community.
On the other hand, mods rely heavily on some of these third-party apps to conduct their moderation, so that, for example, a Holocaust education subreddit does not get inundated with anti-Jewish comments nor hardcore pornography, and Reddit’s recent decision make it unaffordable for the mods to actually moderate.
What do you think?
I was irked because Reddit’s Star Trek sub shut down, put up a notice indicating what better website it was moving to and eliminated every post I’d made since the beginning of time.
I don’t know how Reddit’s moderators are contracted. Are they guaranteed to have specific apps available? If I couldn’t do my job as a moderator, I guess I’d have to step down and let someone with the compatible app take over rather than shutting down, but that’s just me.
However, it’s back and my posts are restored and I have some place to chat about Star Trek that doesn’t require me to register elsewhere. Now I’m irked because there are people who believe that, if you didn’t support the shut down, you’re not a real Star Trek fan.
This is the second time in a month I’ve encountered the attitude that, if you don’t support a specific action involving a relatively narrow interest, you’re not embracing the vision of Trek and not a real fan. The first time was about three weeks ago when someone on Facebook decided that those who don’t agree with the writer’s strike can’t be real Trek fans.
I pointed out that Trek fans are people who enjoy watching “Star Trek” and that I wasn’t aware there was a political test required. The OP claimed that those who don’t support the strike are fascists. I reminded him that his original comment was that they weren’t real Trek fans and now he’s moving the goal posts to calling them fascists. Then someone made things worse by repeating the Woke Trek talking points making the rounds these days that “Star Trek has always been political” which is beside the point.
Sure, Trek has always used allegory and metaphor to engage in social commentary. It painted Frank Gorshin half-black and half-white to address racism. It did that terrible “Don’t do drugs” episode with Tasha Yar lecturing Wesley Crusher.
But there was never a demand that fans support a writer’s strike or a API/Third Party App dispute in order to be considered real fans.
Like everything else these days, even our favorite things have to be divided along political or social issue lines,
Rant over.
‘ I don’t know how Reddit’s moderators are contracted. ’
Most are unpaid volunteers. They want to keep the tools they’ve been using that make their work easier. Their work is estimated at a value of $3.4 million annually. Reddit couldn’t exist without them. On the other hand, some people say that these APIs are making money by piggybacking on Reddit without having to pay fees. I am not a tech person, and don’t totally understand all the arguments being presented regarding this,and they are varied!
I miss my subs. I hope they reach an agreement soon.
I hope so, too. I got my “Star Trek” sub back.
Dr. Andrew B. Chung wrote about Wokeness.
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.atheism/c/Jfj4i4IJipo/m/ZRrTfiHWAgAJ