Wow, what could possibly account for that? The man is paranoid!
I missed “Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course” in the Times two weeks ago. Fortunately a non-Ethics Alarms-reading friend sent me this column by the usually astute and trustworthy Holman Jenkins at the Wall Street Journal. (Aside: I continue to wonder why so few of my friends and long-time associates read this blog, and none of my family members. It must be me, or as one friend who does read Ethics Alarms once said in a moment of self-doubt, “All my best friends hate me.”) His assessment of the significance of the piece tracks exactly with mine, and he seems to be coming from a similar point of view: he doesn’t have any illusions about Donald Trump, but he still finds the Times’ dishonest and biased coverage of him since Trump’s election despicable. Except this one initial arch comment—Gee, imagine not trusting intelligence agencies!—I’ll leave the commentary to Jenkins with a few footnotes from me:
- “Imagine you’re the New York Times. Donald Trump might return to the presidency so you report, as the paper did on April 12, on the “distrust” that exists between him and the U.S. intelligence agencies. But you leave out the part about top Obama intelligence officers going on national TV to call Mr. Trump a Russian agent. You leave out the part about FBI counterintelligence leaders knowingly trafficking in fabricated evidence about him. You leave out the part about 51 former intelligence officials lying to voters to influence an election and help his opponent.”
Footnote: And “you” also leave out James Comey’s refusal to hold Hillary Clinton properly accountable for mishandling classified material and lying about it while she was running for President (the same offense that Trump is being prosecuted for as he runs for President) as well as Comey himself illegally leaking information to a freind to pass on to an anti-Trump reporter.
- “How should we cover Mr. Trump, the Times famously asked on its home page in 2017. The answer might have been ‘fairly.'”Footnote:
Footnote: Oh, no, can’t have that in the world of “advocacy journalism,” aka. “progressive propaganda”! (See: NPR. CNN. ABC, NBC, CBS. The Washington Post)
- “…yes, Mr. Trump is awful but his enemies did lie about him, intelligence officials did abuse their powers in shocking ways.”
Footnote: That’s just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg, as Ethics Alarms has documented, incompletely, but more thoroughly than the New York Times. The Times itself is one of those enemies, a major one, and the concerted Axis effort to cripple Trump’s Presidency and create hate and distrust of him among the public constituted and constitutes far worse “election interference” than anything Trump himself is alleged to have done.
- “…a world in which Donald Trump is Donald Trump, and the intelligence agencies are trying to thwart him, is an interesting world.”
Footnote: In other, more vulgar words, “Do your fucking job, which is to report things as they are, not report things in a way so the world will turn out the way you want it to be.”
- “Times reporters and editors have learned they can be thrown overboard by management in any online controversy that erupts over reporting that seems to justify Mr. Trump or suggests less than total fealty to a groupthink worldview.”
Footnote: As I learned about NPR seven years ago when they threw me “overboard” for enlightening their listeners about a phenomenon that was weaponized against Trump, though I didn’t mention Trump at all. That tactic is what led to the civil trial in New York aimed at draining Trumps’ financial ability to run for President.
-
“His enemies made Mr. Trump, a novelty act now on his way to becoming a historical figure for good or ill. The press thought it clever to lie about him…. the intelligence agencies decided they would punish Americans for how they voted.”
Footnote: The news media still thinks it’s clever to lie about him, and to endorse the lies of others.
- “Whatever happens this fall, we are deluded to think we are done living with the consequences.”
Footnote: Bingo.
Ethics Alarms 
I’ve stated something like this many times; all the political left had to do to get rid of Trump in 2020 was to have been the adults in the room for four years straight and let Trump sink himself, but nope, the political left chose to jump off the edge of reality into a constant flow of pure delusional accusation attacks against Trump and Republicans thus exposing their anti-American totalitarian asperations for the entire world to see.
To be the adults in the room they would have had to first be adults. I do not see a whole lot of adult behavior from the current left. I think the current higher education system is making people on the cusp of adulthood regress to toddlers.
Steve, do we know that Trump would remain defiant and boorish if the media treated him fairly. In other words would have he said the media is the enemy of the people had they not actually become agents of the Left?
Trump’s more boorish behavior seemed reactionary to attacks rather than standard operating tactics. I don’t recall him calling a member of the press a stupid son of a bitch or suggest that he would like to take Biden behind the barn an beat him up or challenge voters to push-up or IQ contests as did Biden.
Chris Marschner wrote, “do we know that Trump would remain defiant and boorish if the media treated him fairly.”
As for Trump; I wouldn’t choose to make the mistake of underestimating Trump’s ability to sink himself in the eyes of ethical, moral and common sense voters like that. There were, and still are, plenty of conservatives that didn’t, and don’t, want Trump as the Republican nomination because of his narcissistic behaviors. Remember the old saying, “don’t underestimate how stupid stupid people can get, they will surprise you every time”, now apply that sentiment to a self absorbed, defiant and boorish narcissist like Trump.
Chris Marschner wrote, “Trump’s more boorish behavior seemed reactionary to attacks rather than standard operating tactics.”
I completely disagree with this one.
Trump has shown us his spots, don’t ignore the unethical character patterns when they are revealed. Do you honestly think that Trump wouldn’t find something to spew his self absorbed, defiant and boorish narcissistic behaviors at even if the political left had been the adults in the room? Seriously? I think it reasonable to say that the same “don’t underestimate how stupid stupid people can get, they will surprise you every time” can be said for defiant and boorish narcissists – these reactionary people that appear to be non-thinkers of a sort can’t change their nature any more than they can change their spots.
As for the political left; they too have shown us their spots. I fully believe that history will eventually show that the left’s pure emotional reactions to Trump didn’t destroy Trump, instead it has revealed a core tactic, immaturity and an utter moral bankruptcy in left’s obsession of obtaining absolute, or near absolute, power over we the people. The immature rejection of American values in favor of absurdities combined with a truth be damned tactic is a loosing plan that will eventually destroy those using the tactic. In the eyes of those with any measure of logic, morality and common sense the left has destroyed itself. As much as the left would like to do so, they cannot destroy fact based truth with their pure propaganda and that’s exactly what they have been trying to do since 2008 and they kicked it into high gear with the emergence of Trump, it’s clear to me that this is an all or nothing tactic.
As much as the left would like to do so, they cannot destroy fact based truth with their pure propaganda and that’s exactly what they have been trying to do since 2008 and they kicked it into high gear with the emergence of Trump, it’s clear to me that this is an all or nothing tactic.
As I wrote in a comment on as Facebook post of my Face book friend, Stephen Michael Stirling, someone like Tom Daschle or Richard Gephardt would subtly goad Trump to picking fights with Republican leaders of Congress, Republican state elected officials, various Republican-leaning constituencies, and even his own base.
This was one of the fears of NeverTrumper v 1.0. Of course, they clearly underestimated the Dem leaderships’ ability to capitulate to the more radical factions of their base.
Steve replied that the Dem leadership let sincerity overcome rational thought.
“we are deluded to think we are done living with the consequences.” There are consequences on both sides. These so-called leaders of this country effectively do more damage than good. No trust for either one. Round pegs square holes and just the reverse on the opposite side.
For those stymied by the NYT’s paywall from reading the article linked by jack, I just discovered a bypass in Google Chrome.( It says the function is “new”, so don’t know how long it has been available.) Right-click on the page, select “Open in reading mode”, and it will provide an uncluttered text of the article on a right-side panel. The panel can be dragged open wider for easier reading. Didn’t try it on the WSJ article, since I do have a subscription for that.
As paywalls proliferate to protect digital media, methods for circumventing those paywalls develop and propagate just as quickly. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits circumventing an effective technological means of control that restricts access to a copyrighted work .
Just an FYI, I don’t really care but I don’t bypass paywalls. Isn’t it also unethical to bypass a paywall?
Sure. It’s stealing, essentially.
But as “Amy Lewis” attempted to instruct us last year (I believe that was her screed name…see what I did there?), stealing for the greater good is alright.
I would replace ‘essentially’ with ‘kind of’. There is a difference in kind between copying something and actually stealing. Any hypothetical harms caused by the former are purely an artificial construct of the law, while the latter intrinsically harms regardless of the law. Copying something someone else wrote does not deprive them of anything. They are in exactly the same circumstance they would be in if I had done nothing.
Copyrights and patents serve a useful purpose up to a point, but they are not the same thing as actual physical objects.
It deprives them of the fee they legally and openly require in exchange for the opportunity to read the article!
Hmm, I didn’t know that, but it doesn’t bother me to not read anything in the NYT. The Google tool may likely be intended as a reading aid. As I said, it isolates text, but also allows it be manipulated to be easier to read…change fonts & text size, background color, etc.
A brief check shows that there is ongoing dispute of how/if/to what extent the DMCA applies to generally available online content and things like paywalls. This may be a situation where technology has again outpaced applicable law. One argument is essentially “You put this out on the web; it’s in my computer and on my screen; I’m not selling it; don’t tell me I can’t read it.”
This may well be a topic for a future EA discussion.