The key question is: “Will any mainstream media pundit have the courage to make the points esteemed Ethics Alarms commenter Sarah B makes below, in her Comment of the Day to the post, “In Maui, DEI Insanity Kills”?
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So I’m going to say something that , at first glance, may sound pretty unethical here, but let me defend it first, before telling me that I’m going all in on Rationalizations. That being said, my TL,DR is “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I do think that it is fair to argue that, for the most part, the people of Lahaina had it coming. This fire was the rather predictable consequence of years of bad judgement and voting practices. First, the sugar cane farming dissolution into non-native dry grassland came because “we couldn’t possibly grow sugar cane there, it was too insensitive to the natives”. Then they didn’t make any reasonable plans to replace the farms with native plants that could handle both the wetter times and the drier times, but instead just let the farms grow over, which led to imported grass and other vegetation taking root off of spreading seeds. This worked out for a bit when things were wet, but these grasses are unable to handle the drier times. That led to a high fire hazard with a high burn interval.
Then they decided that they would go all in on the green energy to the degree that there was a huge governmental push (which often starts with the residents) for green production over safe electric lines, AFTER there was already substantial documentation that the power lines were likely to cause significant fires. Of course, the electric company is nowhere near blameless, but neither are the voters.
The idea that we now have DIE standing in the way of appropriate water being used to put out a fire, because we find that DIE is more important than lives and property (after all, we are founded on the notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion right, not that old fashioned life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), well, that is a conscious choice by the Hawaii electorate too.
I hope this is understood as a warning to much of the West. We have similar issues and we continue to fight for the ability to put our safety above green technology which continues to show “unexpected” hazards that were written about in their own foundational documents. If Washington would butt out, maybe some of our local governments could get a grip.
I do not feel happy about saying that this was a much expected turn of events. I am very sorry that anyone lost lives, and yes, I do hope they turn this mess around. However, if you choose to put your communities in danger, you cannot be surprised or offended when your community is in danger. This is just as much of a reasonable and predictable consequence as what we see in the city of San Fransisco, where the governmental employees are being told to work from home for the foreseeable future because it is too dangerous on the streets.
Ethics Alarms 
GREAT comment Sarah B!
“This is just as much of a reasonable and predictable consequence as what we see in the city of San Fransisco, where the governmental employees are being told to work from home for the foreseeable future because it is too dangerous on the streets.” (bolds mine)
On the subject of the…um…STREETS of San Francisco:
Californians Hoping Hurricane Will WASH ALL POOP Off Sidewalks.
As usual, Sarah B, a thought provoking comment, provoking some challenging thoughts, as is the case when fundamental issues are at hand.
The essence of democracy lies in the phrase, “the people of Lahaina had it coming.” If we believe in government by the people, then we have to accept that they own the consequences of what that government does.
But, what about the minority that did not vote for that government; did they also have it coming?
Consequences are why, even in democracy, we need enlightened leadership, leaders who do not always follow the desires of the majority that put them in office.
Consequences are why we need an active minority, those who did not vote for the winner of the last election, but who nevertheless are willing to make their voices heard.
“But, what about the minority that did not vote for that government; did they also have it coming?”
This questions always haunts me. Many times, I feel we need an Abraham to our Sodom and Gomorrah. “For the sake of those ten, I would not destroy it.” Even then, though, there were only four innocents found, and one was so enticed by the life she left behind that she turns back and receives the negative consequences of her actions.
Honestly, I believe that I can draw huge parallels from our current situation to Sodom and Gomorrah, and not only as a town razed by fire. I don’t mean this as a Christian sermon, but the parallels and lessons at least draw out questions that lead to ethical discussion.
It is a struggle to be part of the minority when people choose obviously bad things. At what point do you sit as judge at the gates, as Lot did, trying to do all you can to improve things for yourself and your neighbors, while slowly accumulating their scorn. Can you make the changes needed by trying to convert others to your point of view, or are you merely a stopgap measure that postpones the inevitable?
Do you stay even after you experience a minor tragedy that turned out ok, but foreshadows what is to come? Lot was captured by the enemies of Sodom and Gomorrah, and his goods were taken. However, his privation at the time was fixed by his uncle Abraham, at some cost to himself. We see minor tragedies happen all the time in this day and age. I gave the example of San Francisco, but Steve-O mentioned Chicago, Portland, and Seattle, all great examples. These problems, for some, are only minor, as Uncle Sam (not nearly as benevolent as Uncle Abraham) comes riding to the rescue, at great cost to others.
Do we stay longer than we ought, out of pride in our choice of where to live? We look at the valley that is “well-watered, much like the garden of the Lord” and stay, even when we should go. We like our comforts and hesitate to lose them. Perhaps our choice is hampered by the cost of picking up our lives and moving to another locale that is not totally lost. Perhaps we fear to go somewhere that is not so nice as where we are. Perhaps we have too much pride to run back to Uncle Abraham or other beloved family members and tell them that the choice we made was the wrong one.
Do we find ourselves becoming mired in the evil we hate? Lot decided that to maintain his honor as a host, he would sacrifice his honor as a father. He was not trying to be evil in offering his daughters to be raped, but instead, trying to do what was right in a seemingly impossible situation. However, in trying to fight a horrible wrong, he took the wrong path. We find ourselves at this crossroads every day. Here on this forum, it is nearly a daily argument in the comment section on whether or not the Democrats are enough of an evil that, to fight and win, we must use their tactics. The lesson Lot got, by being raped by his daughters, should remind us that we need to stick to the straight and narrow in this fight, or we will suffer horrendous consequences. We cannot act evilly and expect to come out ahead.
I do not know the answer to “what of the minority?” I feel that I am part of the minority in so many ways. I continue to rant and rave to anyone who will listen about the stupidity of the green movement and why it just cannot physically work. Most people don’t listen and it feels that the few who do are already mostly convinced. It seems that there is little way to stop the continual march towards our “Green New World” except to run away, as Lot did, and live in a cave. And, honestly, the elected officials the majority seems to keep choosing seem to be leading us to the caves again. This is why elections are important, and you are absolutely right that having principled statesmen who can go against the will of the majority when they realize what is right, despite the fact that it will lose them power, are essential to the survival of the American experiment.
As it is, I feel that having a place, like Ethics Alarms, where we can discuss and debate these issues with a moderator on hand to keep us from turning into the usual online cesspit is great. Jack gives us so many areas and topics that we can discuss and while none of us always agree with him, he always gives us a chance to disagree as long as we do so respectfully and with reason instead of passion alone. His perspectives are very useful in honing our own Ethics Alarms, and our discussion on here can hone our rhetorical skills, at least in print, after fifty rewrites. While this isn’t an echo chamber (many posts have us disagreeing on many points), it isn’t an unfriendly place to work out thoughts with people from many different walks of life. I’m from Wyoming. We have those from Boston, Virgina, DC, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Canada, Texas, and more. How often can you debate with others from such a geographically diverse group?
Perhaps the minority, who doesn’t fully deserve the punishment that comes as a consequence to their neighbor’s actions, needs to start acting as a judge at the gates and informing others. Perhaps that is exactly what we can do, until it is time to flee. I hope I can follow the voice of an angel telling me when I must go, instead of remaining, convinced that nothing is wrong. I hope that, out of this tragedy, we can construct great learning lessons to help the rest of society turn away from insanity. I fear that, like Portland, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, and others, we will ignore the consequences of our choices and continue down the path to destruction, but perhaps, when the rubber truly meets the road, and we see a city torched, rather Biblically, like Lahaina, we can assess what has gone wrong, as well as determine where we need to go. Here, in the minority, perhaps that is all I can do.
But, what about the minority that did not vote for that government; did they also have it coming?
That’s a great question by HJ: maybe I’ll do a whole post on it. In a republic, we all agree to accept the results of the system, and if we don’t like it, we have an obligation as citizens to work hard to get sufficient public support to change things. That shared accountability should ensure an engaged, responsible citizenry. “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos!” doesn’t fly, or shouldn’t. EVERY citizen is responsible for a bad government. It is why I have taken the position here that the US military shouldn’t undermine its war efforts by going to absurd lengths to avoid harming civilians. If your country has a mad dictator on the loose, you need to understand that it’s in your interest to get cracking and get rid of him. We are all responsible for Biden. We are all responsible for Trump.
“The lesson Lot got, by being raped by his daughters, should remind us that we need to stick to the straight and narrow in this fight, or we will suffer horrendous consequences. We cannot act evilly and expect to come out ahead.” wrote Sarah B. regarding the holy restraint it takes not to give the democrats a taste of their own medicine – not only the same medicine but the same hoodwinking delivery system. Wrote Henry Miller: “Writing is its own reward” Just as chastity is. And now the straight and narrow.
Sarah B.,
Your COTD was well-deserved, as they always are, but this response was remarkable! I just discovered it and I’ve read it twice…and will read it again.
Outstanding!
You are absolutely right. At least for now, We the people get the government we are willing to vote for. That’s why it’s important to be informed and to know everything you are voting for before you vote for it. It’s especially important not to be a single issue voter or someone voting only against something. Despite what some c-list celebrity who wrote about molesting her sister in her autobiography it might say, voting is not like sex where you want to do it with a great guy or like a party. At least for now, it’s making a serious choice about the direction of things. When you vote, you vote for a vision of what your school board, town, state, or nation is supposed to look like. When you vote you vote for a whole raft of positions. When you vote, now you frequently vote for weather government will be helpful to you or hostile to you. As often as not, you are voting whether to continue the policies that have gone on up to date, or whether to change direction.
That’s why I have to say that certain ways of voting boggle my mind. Chicago just saw what a far left ideologue and borderline incompetent like Lori Lightfoot could do. They have their chance to vote for a more moderate mayor in the runoff. Ever, they went and voted for the far left guy who’s going to be exactly the same. If they do that and expect things to get better, or even to change, they might as well be planting turnip seeds and expecting carrots to grow. New York had a chance to change direction, but it voted for the Democrat again. At best, they are going to see an incremental change from the crypto communist rule of far left de Blasio, who thankfully is now fading into obscurity and I don’t think we’ll see him again. This country voted against Trump, not really caring what they were voting for as long as the chaos stopped.
Well, what we got was institutionalized incompetence, embarrassment abroad, and increasingly ridiculous policies that now target what kind of car you can drive or what kind of stove you can own. We also got increased inflation that is made everything harder to buy. If you asked people whether they wanted any of these things, especially to pay 20% more at the grocery store and a third more at the pump, they’d look at you like you were crazy. However, it should not come as a surprise that it happened, because when you pour too much money into the economy, it tends to overheat and you get inflation. This is economics 101. When you get inflation, prices go up and people’s purchasing power goes down. When you make it too easy to be unemployed, a lot of people choose not to be employed. If the labor force is not working close to full employment, then the economy doesn’t do well. Then there are those single issue abortion voters who actually think the most important thing in the world is to be able to destroy a gestating child, because they can’t see past the end of their own genitals or think much beyond getting mind blowing sex. They don’t think about the other policies that go with this.
In this case, you had voters who voted what made them feel good and feel like they were doing their part to preserve the environment, by essentially leaving it unregulated and uncontrolled. These are the same policies that have gotten us the wildfires on the west coast, where forest land goes essentially unmanaged and the idea of periodically burning under controlled conditions to thin away undergrowth and dead material that could become tinder later on is looked at as wanton destruction. However, the voters out there have let it get to the point where there is no meaningful opposition and the choice is only between far left and farther left, and between bad policy and horrific policy.
I said that given the far left nature of the government out there, it should come as no surprise that Portland is a city on the brink of collapse and Seattle got to the point where the police chief resigned because she was not being allowed to do her job. There is simply no way out at this point. It should come as no surprise that the people here chose the path they did, either not knowing that it could end up here, or not caring because they thought it was the right thing to do environmentally.
Sarah is absolutely right. When you make choices, you have to own the results of those choices. If you are someone who voted for these policies, you own them. If you are someone who opposed these policies but knew damn well that your voice didn’t matter, you still own the choice to be powerless and what results from your chosen powerlessness.
As much as I am a right wing republican. I do not consider one party government to be ideal. The founding fathers did not want a government where decisions were made too quickly and without actually discussing them and looking at what the results might be.
It really isn’t a very nice thing to say that anyone who has something bad happened to them has it coming. However, the truth isn’t always nice. Saying that someone had it coming is that saying they somehow deserved it, and did something wrong but they deserved to be punished for. However, there is a big difference between saying someone had it coming because you don’t like them or you think they deserve what happened to them, and saying someone got the logical consequences of their behavior. As has been demonstrated repeatedly, bad things don’t usually just drop out of the sky. Sometimes they do, like the Boxing Day tsunami back in ’04 or like Hurricane Katrina, or like earthquakes. However, those are the exception rather than the rule. If you choose to disregard your employer’s rule regarding punctuality and you continually show up 10 minutes late, it’s a logical consequence when you get fired. If you don’t manage your money well and you end up getting conned out of it or falling short of the amount you’re going to need to retire, that’s the logical consequence of your actions. If you keep harassing somebody day in and day out and finally he gets so pissed off that he kicks you so hard in the groin that your testicles hit the inside of your skull and you feel so much pain that you want to die, you’re suffering the logical consequences of your actions. If you keep on smoking even knowing how bad it is, and you die of lung cancer, that’s the logical consequence of continuing to smoke. If you continue to vote for hare-brained policies that sound good on paper but have been proven time and again not to work in the real world, then the results of those policies are the logical consequences of your actions.
Like it or not, the people of Hawaii built this wall of fire brick by brick, as Sarah has already set forth quite well. They made the decisions they did because they thought of Hawaii as this clean and green tropical paradise where everyone lives by the spirit of aloha and they wanted to make it cleaner and greener. Well, now this island is about as clean as it can be. It’s ashes, and everything is going to have to start over again from the ground up. Maybe this time they’ll decide that living safe is more important than living green. Maybe this time they’ll decide that living smart is more important than living diverse. Maybe this time they’ll decide that living in a way that actually works is more important than living in a way that reflects the latest trend out of the Democratic National committee. However, if you are betting smart, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Oh, and one other thing. To hell with the idea of using Federal money to rebuild here. Essentially, what that is saying is that the rest of us, who didn’t make any of these bad choices and don’t own these bad choices, are going to be stuck with the bill for these bad choices. Just you remember that next year when the tax bill comes and when you consider whether you’re going to give Biden and company another four years.
Great COTD!
The circumstances surrounding the Hawaiian wildfires are but an extension of the legal principle that one is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of one’s actions. Just like the obvious negative consequences of Leftist government in areas across the country, the fires evoke sympathy for the devastated, accompanied by a strong desire to figuratively shake the populace by the lapels and scream, “Wake up!”
I’ve read that there are 80 kids missing and presumed killed in the fire. It is easy to say that adults who voted for this had it coming, but much harder to make a case that children did.
I will agree. Children rarely deserve the evil that befalls them. However, it is true that children must suffer the consequences for their parent’s choices. This is not entirely fair, but it is how life works.
If I choose to live in the boonies (like small town Wyoming), my special needs child suffers from lack of services and medical experts. If I choose to relocate my family to the big city to get my special needs child all the medical experts she needs, my other children lose their social circle and access to their grandparents. Then we have to consider the schools in the big cities. If I choose to put my kids in public school in a place that allows boys in the girls bathrooms, my children have to live with the consequences of that choice. If I choose to put them in private school instead, they have to live off of beans and rice, and never have any vacations with the family again. If I choose to homeschool, they lose out on all the activities and social opportunities that are part and parcel of the school system.
There is no way around the fact that children will always be affected by our choices. We cannot save them from our choices. Either we kill them in utero, in which case they don’t even get a chance to experience this world, or we put them into a flawed world where every choice has negatives. My heart breaks for everyone undergoing this tragedy. I feel for the children and fear that one day my choices for my children, especially the ones that I think are for their benefit, will have significant consequences in their lives that I have ignored, wished away, or pooh-poohed as unimportant/unlikely. These are still things that I must own and accept, even if I made them with the right reasons. So must these kids’ parents, as we all hope that no harm comes to the missing, and mourn the losses of those who suffer.
“Deserve” was perhaps not my best word, and Diego (on the original post) worded it better than I. However, I stand by what I said. These are the consequences of the choices made. The people of Lahaina, Maui, and Hawaii need to accept that this tragedy was not a surprise, and much of it was of their own making. Only then can they really move forward to a brighter future. I pray that they get a very bright, wonderful future, but I see no way there without a proper discussion of how they got where they are. We in the West better learn from this, or we’ll be here soon.
Well, when the public schools sent the children home to houses without adults present, leaving them helpless, whose fault is that? The school didn’t want the responsibility of dealing with the children during a natural disaster, so it sent them away to take their chances. Since communications were down, the parents couldn’t have been contacted to be told their children were being sent home to burn.
There is and will be no accountability. I’m sure a few low-level employees will be made scapegoats, but that is all. You can’t hold the schools accountable, if you complain during a school board meeting, the FBI will come after you. If you elect new school board members, those members will be investigated and charged in court for ‘wrongdoing’. You can’t change the teachers because the union controls that. You can’t change the elected officials because they are controlled by the DNC and Hawaiians are not going to vote for anyone but an approved Democrat.
Does anyone see ANY competent people doing the right thing in this disaster, or was everyone incompetent?
It is, however, easy to say that the adults could have thought more about what the impact would be on their children.
I completely agree with your comment, though I have to remind you and myself that there are many sensible people (like me) stuck in these blue hellhole states and cities, who disagree with everything those Dems/lefties are doing and planning to do but are overwhelmed by their democracy “strengthening” apparatuses and machines, and who are unable to leave for one reason or another. Nonetheless, as I said, I don’t disagree with you; those cities/states in the aggregate had it coming, and it’s only going to get worse, especially if those evil Dems/lefties (and they evil, not misguided as they used to be) gain control of the federal government
Just remember, if they take away the soapbox, the jury box, and the ballot box, the last place to turn is the cartridge box. Yes, that’s extreme, but people who have no voice have nothing to lose. It’s a very bad idea to make a lot of people believe they have nothing to lose.