As I turn the topic choice over to you, I’m going to choose now to mention the astonishing gaslighting going on yesterday at Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing and on CNN and MSNBC as they did their best to echo the nonsensical fantasy version of the FBI being painted by such hucksters as Senator Amy Klobuchar. Patel has been a harsh critic of the FBI, as anyone who has paid any attention in the past decade or so is forced to be. The organization is political, frequently incompetent, and untrustworthy. Yet over and over yesterday I heard that it was completely non-partisan, had no agenda but to serve justice, and is staffed by heroes. Even though Patel’s opening statement documented many examples that contradict this idealized image (which is promoted in the entertainment media to an absurd, indeed boring extent), the same message kept coming: the FBI is wonderful. How dare anyone criticize it?
Given the ugly history of the agency, this “It isn’t what it is” defense is especially weird.
There. Whew! As Jimmy Durante used to say, “I’m glad I got that out. On my last X-ray, it showed up as a safety pin!”
Ethics Alarms 
https://x.com/newswire_us/status/1884261849757372920?s=46&mx=2
Wow. Been about 4 years since we’ve heard about this. Has something changed in four years?
The Babylon Bee must have a good headline for these guys.
A very interesting and enlightening discussion of the rise and fall of the “gender affirming care” industrial complex: (21) Abigail Shrier: How the Gender Fever Finally Broke
The author concludes with an observation that brought to mind Jack and EA readers and commenters, or frankly, anyone trying to make sense of the current “information” environment:
“Harmonizing one’s views with the powerful reflects the oldest social survival instinct. We are engineered to stay within the herd and get along. Disagreeable contrarians who resisted gender fever are the real oddballs. Some combination of personality quirk and conviction that occasionally makes us obnoxious employees and intolerable cocktail-party guests also inoculated us against gender madness. There is no reforming us.”
I’m sort of surprised Jack hasn’t teed this one up yet:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/29/rapper-dank-demoss-denied-lyft-weight/78019302007/
Who’s in the right, here? Does the law apply to independent contractors and/or countervene physics and the driver’s concerns?
Responses to the “victim’s” Instagram post on the incident are running heavily against her description of the incident and subsequent actions.
“Dank” states she weigh 500lbs (who knows; many people lie about their weight, and almost always on the downside).
As usual with most of these we only have one side of the story that’s told in a way to paint their side in the best light. What isn’t mentioned is the Lyft driver’s liability – can she wear a seatbelt (required by law for every passenger in my state)? Are the components rated to be safe for someone of her size? Is he responsible to make sure she can get back out of the car?
This reminds me of something I’ve seen more lately – people using a handicap or limitation to treat everyone around them poorly and claim ableism for any slight. They use their condition as a get out of jail free card. It reminds me of those who see racism under every rock. I feel for you and your condition, but that doesn’t mean Six Flags has to make sure you fit on all their rollercoasters or that you weren’t hired for a job that requires climbing ladders. But because of the fear of lawsuits, businesses are afraid to say no to them as customers or to discipline a badly behaved employee who has any sort of accommodation.
As usual the Bee is on the job:
https://babylonbee.com/news/airlyft-now-available-for-plus-sized-customers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane
Interesting debate with my daughter about the institution of marriage. She says it’s outdated, that being with one person for a lifetime isn’t necessary – I think I’m summarizing what she believes correctly – and that ancient notion of tribal groupings make for a better method of going through life.
I think that’s wrong on it’s face, but if society were to embrace that sort of thing, wouldn’t we have to do away with a few ethical concepts?
Loyalty comes to mind, the golden rule, and I’m sure quite a few others would need definitions changed?
I think abandoning “traditional marriage” is a fools errand, because like the song “Imagine” (I’ve always HATED the lyrics to that song, I think I’m in good company here… I digress) it seems to ignore some fundamental truths about humanity.
But as an exercise in thought, marriage is in trouble in the Western world, is there a better alternative to what I believe is the fundamental building block of society?
The group here is way smarter than I am, and maybe it’s the stupidest question ever asked, but, curious to see any responses.
This is not a stupid question, but one of fundamental importance. If the Catholic Church, for example, is correct that the family (husband-wife-child) is the fundamental building block of society, then the breakup of that basic unit is intrinsically detrimental to all of society. If instead the fundamental building block of society is the uninhibited, unhindered individual, then anything that constrains that individual is detrimental to all of society. And we can pose a number of other possibilities, but I think we can work with these two to begin with.
There are a number of questions that have to be asked. Why does she think marriage is outdated? Does the human heart yearn any less for lifelong love today than millennia ago? Don’t we want someone who will be there standing next to us no matter what, until only death can finally separate us? Usually I find assertions of the obsolescence of traditional marriage reflects a despair at finding such lifelong love. We don’t want someone to walk away from us because we’re getting too old, or we’re getting less physically attractive, or less sexually interested.
Traditional marriage — the lifelong union of one man to one woman, who are both free to marry, and who intend fidelity and are accepting of fecundity — provides the framework in which that lifelong love can exist. An agreement to a temporary arrangement fails to accomplish that, because there’s always the worry, and the danger, that the partner will decide to walk away. Such a relationship cannot reach the depths of full self-giving that our hearts yearn for, so it will always be a pale imitation.
The unhindered, uninhibited individual may not be tied down, but to what end does he even exist? He pretty much only exists for himself, for his own desires, and any relationships he forms are self-serving, and end when they are no longer satisfying. That is a brutally lonely, sad way to exist.
And we can then ask what recent history show us about the success of traditional families versus families that have fractured due to the more unhindered, uninhibited lifestyle. There are reams of data about crime, abuse, failure in school, poverty rates, and so on when we look at the devastation our “sexual revolution” has wrought.
The last question I’ll raise is that of children. Under which view — traditional marriage or the unhindered individual — are children viewed as vital, and under which view are children view as optional at best, and more often a hindrance? Does the human race survive without children?
My understanding of life, the universe, and everything posits that alternatives to traditional marriage can only exist in small quantities, riding on the benefits of traditional marriage. Society can tolerate some amount of these alternatives, but once they reach a critical amount, society falls apart.
I put this in the category of the topic of conversation during my fortunate 90 minutes alone with Herman Kahn. He said that throughout history, whole societies and cultures periodically forget why a particular institution, value, practice or tradition exists because they can’t recall when it didn’t exist. Then they discard it, and learn why it was needed. Marriage is an essential building unit of civilization. All sorts of variations and alternatives have been tried, and none of them work as well, or in most cases, at all. Cultures and societies can render themselves extinct by taking bad roads that lead over cliffs. This is one of them.
Chesterton Fences.
Most of what you wrote I did posit to her. She was short on specific rationale, and long on general theories.
Now, her perspective is very colored by the incredibly tumultuous relationship I had with her mother (we are divorced) and, if she were honest, about some relationship mistakes she made early in her life.
I think in her case, less the despair at not finding a lasting love than finding it and losing it, since she just got married herself – and they’ve made an interesting living arrangement; exclusive, as far as I can tell, but not domiciled together.
Still, in the interest of trying to see where she’s coming from, I thought I’d pose the question here to see if some of the commenters with a less conservative focus might weigh in, such as Curmie or MrsQ.
And, frankly, I don’t think they’re terribly far away from any of us in terms of viewing the world for what it is, but they do think of things I don’t. Trying to check my biases, I guess.
If I were to put brackets around what she thinks, I believe she has the idea that a more “communal” state of living would provide all the benefits of a traditional marriage without the downsides of divorce. The less intimate the relationship, the less intense the damage if it does disintegrate.
For everyone, presumably, but I don’t think the heart and soul operate that way. I don’t want to dismiss her concerns or hope for a stable future in the world, but as you note I think the damage she sees comes from the sexual revolution, of which fruits she has partaken of. Sex is incredibly powerful, and it provided the closeness and exclusivity within the bounds of marriage and help sustain it. That’s been lost.
I think she’s among the group discovering what Jack wrote below.
This is all of Christianity’s view. Not just the Catholic Church.
Michael,
I think there are some Episcopalians that disprove that…
Anyway, I feel pretty confidant about talking about the Catholic Church. I don’t feel I can speak for non-Catholics.
Mainline denominational submission to a progressive ethic foreign to cultures generated around the praxis of long established Christian Traditions are an entire phenomenon of affirmatively “non Christianity”. A progressive ethic, I might add, pollutes plenty of catholic entities.
No, I speak only of Christian ethics derived from a time before atheistic political movements consumed society and eventually infiltrated people’s brains who were only nominally associated with a variety of Christian traditions primarily for the good feelings they had but not vigorously devoted to their disciplines or 2000 year-hard-wrought-ethical systems.
“I think that’s wrong on it’s face, but if society were to embrace that sort of thing, wouldn’t we have to do away with a few ethical concepts?
Loyalty comes to mind, the golden rule, and I’m sure quite a few others would need definitions changed?”
None of the above. I had the benefit, at 18, of being put in charge of a staff that included a 60 year old grandmother. Gina was weird; proudly Christian, and professionally raided in Guild Wars…. Which isn’t per se a contradiction in terms, but was kind of unique. I loved our conversations.
One of which I remember talking to her about how people, even back then, had sex before marriage, and how she didn’t understand how any relationship could have trust unless two virgins found themselves for the first time.
The answer, to me, was obvious: Why wouldn’t you trust them? Where’s the lie? Now… She was thoughtful enough to lean back and have a think on that, because that’s who she was, and didn’t necessarily like it, or agree with it, but she accepted the truth of it: There’s no betrayal if there’s no lie.
There are cultural differences in play here, and realities that people your age grew up with are fundamentally different now, and it’s hard to wrap your head around them.
Religious beliefs, at least pre-Lutheran, tended to evolve over time to fit the realities of life: At the times the food prohibitions were active, those foods were almost as likely to make you ill as to nourish you, and by the time Jesus told the masses they could suck back pork and shellfish without sin, sanitation improvements had made those foods relatively safe.
We aren’t living in times where humanity or the faith teeters on the brink of extinction from external existential threats. It’s not important, and in fact, it’s probably not great, for the average family to have ten kids anymore. Sex doesn’t carry the risk of pregnancy that it used to. Sexual disease is significantly less common and much more preventable and treatable. I honestly wonder if, had condoms and penicillin been discovered before the printing press, whether the teachings of Jesus wouldn’t have broadly laxed the sex laws.
This takes me back to Hillary Clinton’s fatuous, “It takes a village to raise a child.” No, sorry Hill, it takes two parents first and foremost, and other adults in the community are very helpful as well, but two parents are the sine qua non.
I do watch videos on You Tube by young relationship posters. My goodness, relationships seem to have become completely transactional and entirely void of affection or desire or concern for anyone else. Aren’t these people lonely? Don’t they desire companionship. Don’t they have any interest in having a family and kids to leave something to? How has the sexual revolution gotten society to this point?
I think you have to ignore the entire world to say sex doesn’t have large emotional impact between two people, married or not. All you have to do is listen to conversation in an open space long enough, read in any online forum about relationships and see the betrayal, hurt, bitter divorce stories, etc, ad nauseam, even after a half century of “free sex” in the Western world.
In looking online a bit, I saw some statistic that nearly half of all divorce involves some kind of infidelity.
So to say free sex doesn’t impact what’s happened in the world of marriage feels very myopic.
Loyalty has to contain exceptions if it’s going apply to marriage or family in that case.
Given what you’ve written, how would you alter the definition of marriage?
Would you say the current concept of marriage is “necessary” in the modern Western world?
“Given what you’ve written, how would you alter the definition of marriage?”
I probably wouldn’t. I’m just saying that the current reality is that they’re probably not necessary in most cases. Not all, I’m not going to argue against a stable, two-parent relationship as the best environment for a child. But if you’re a single person with no intent, or no ability, to ever have kids? What’s the marriage for? Tax writeoffs?
HT, It appears that your construct is predicated on the fact that as a society we no longer have to fear external existential threats because we have learned how to mitigate the damages associated with behaviors once taboo in the eyes of the church. The implication is that our scientific achievements render religious dogma unnecessary and outdated.
There is no doubt that the church has evolved over the millennia as scientific knowledge has grown. The first priests were those who made observations, formed hypothesis, tested there theories and made pronouncements based of what the gleaned from nature. Power was conferred upon the priests for being able to predict outcomes from specific events. They did not know that trichinosis was a round worm parasite in pork. They just knew eating it made you sick. My point is that all religions originated from the foundations we now call science. When theories stand the test of time they become scientific laws. The benefits of monogamy and marriage are not just religious relics they are grounded in science.
Even accounting for divorce the benefit of two parent families cannot be dismissed. Remarried monogamous couples are better for children than the alternatives. It is the exception not the rule that single parent families are successful. The rise of alternative lifestyles is correlated to the rise in mental illness and suicide in teens. Is it the cause? I don’t know. For all I know it is from additives in our food. Nonetheless, we cannot assume that no societal damage is occurring with the rise of non-monogamous relationships. The problem with our science today is that politics often dictates what we study and what we don’t.
OB takes issue with the “it takes a village” notion. He does not explicitly say why so let me. That concept fails when not everyone in the village who influences the children see things the same way. This causes confusion in children who will be easy to manipulate by adults who provide the child with immediate gratification. A child’s mind is not yet developed enough to know when they are being manipulated. At some point the children need a trusted influencer who can explain why the child should do x instead of y based on their own adult understanding of the world. More to the point, a child raised by the village absolves the members of the village any responsibility for the behavioral outcomes exhibited by the child. There is never any accountability for the village as a whole.
One of my pet peeves is when people commit to something then bow out at the last minute because an opportunity believed to yield higher satisfaction manifests itself. The person failing to follow through on the commitment ignores the costs borne by the other. The existential threat we face is our own unwillingness to follow through on long term commitments. If this trend continues, at some point in time we will stop committing to anything to minimize costs or negative personal satisfaction and will have to relearn how to work together as a society.
My kids and I have had interesting discussions on relationships too, but not marriage exactly. Marriage as it is today though isn’t a lifetime commitment, is it? You can still divorce and many do. I think people, particularly the group of Gen Z who spent part of college and high school cooped up, are desperate for connections we don’t really have right now and would prefer a tribal setup to society. Family, sure but also friends you can depend on and frankly they are cynical and guarded and refuse to attempt a deep relationship. Church used to fulfill this community role for some, but most of us don’t do that. So then you have bars, like the idea of Cheers, but they don’t do that either. The kicker is they’re mostly flaky and will not commit to anything, you can’t even rely on them to show up for lunch nor do they actually expect it so… in my opinion it’s not that they don’t want that, from what I’ve seen is that a lot of them don’t have the emotional ability to trust someone else enough to have deep meaningful relationships.
Ask the 20 somethings about their close friendships or past relationships and how they worked out. If they can rely on anyone in their friend group… my kids certainly can’t. They can’t even rely on them to show up for something fun never mind something critically important. To them a long term marriage or children seems like too big of a risk to take. It’s much safer to keep things casual.
She’s not wrong that the idea that a “tribe” can replace marriage.
But she’s gonna have to accept everything else comes with tribes.
Endemic warfare
Perennial raiding
Seasonal starvation
Unstable childhoods
Extreme violence for inner-tribal leadership
Ritual violence against figurative and likely innocent scapegoats to expunge collective guilt while never changing what leads to the guilt
Elevation of animal life to equal or greater than humans
No ability to trust any of the relationships you’ve made are lasting
Your only value to others is your ability to fight or your ability to have empty meaningless but temporarily physically pleasurable sex (hope you’re good at one of them)
I mean- go for it! Open licentious relationships are so great!
I mean… the list goes on when you exchange Christian-values based society for pre-Christian Pagan based society.
And make no mistake. Those are the only two choices.
Moderns would like to think that history will progress-
1) Paganism
2) Christianity
3) post Christian enlightenment
They’re wrong the progression is this:
1) Paganism
2) Christianity
3) Amoral civilization running on Christian momentum
4) Paganism
There’s only two options. Not three.
We embrace the other at our own peril.
This entire discussion has been outstanding…and Michael, this comment is especially good. Thanks!!
(what Jack wrote above… Thought that comment would be in between Ryan and Jack…)
Not that I have any right to request a topic, but any chance of a “Breaking Your Nose To Spite Your Face” ethics post about tariffs?
Maybe a bit premature on that HT. Debating who is most affected and how may be ultimately irrelevant. Trump’s tariff threats are not necessarily about getting tariffs in place at all.
I don’t think so. In “concession” for temporarily removing the tariffs, Canada pledged to spend the 1.3 billion on our border that we’d pledged to spend a couple of months ago, and Mexico to deployed the same 10,000 troops to the border that they deployed months ago.
The problem is that, as you might have noticed, is neither of these pledges are new, and in the case of Canada, our parliament is in recess so the Liberals can have a leadership race in advance of a new election, the 1.3 billion isn’t approved, so there’s functionally no chance of us approving new spending before April… So what changed between last week, when Trump said there was nothing Canada or Mexico could do right now to avoid the tariffs (“we have a deficit, you know”) and Monday?
Well… The markets have spoken, The DOW shed 1000 points (2%) from the high on Friday. The S&P 500 shed 200 (3%). And the markets aren’t like individual company stocks that can be effected by noise trading by retail traders, they’re non-partisan: They respond positively to positive things, and negatively to negative things. Why did the market think this was negative?
Because despite Trump saying that America has unlimited energy and all the trees they could chop, neither of which happens to be actually true, at least not in the short term. In the short term, American refineries are set up to deal specifically with Canadian crude, and you don’t have the infrastructure to cut the trees or move them to market, because up to now, you haven’t had to. Trump is whining about all the trade deficits America has… That’s true, they exist, but they exist because of poor federal management, and you have gutted your manufacturing sector. These tariffs will force American companies to pay an import tax on things you need – Energy, building materials, food.
Tariffs are an import tax, the people of the nation imposing them pay them. They are inflationary, period. They are best used as a discrete tool to protect going concerns of markets that are uncompetitive, domestically. A great example is the Canadian dairy market: Our dairy is expensive, mostly because of our winters, and so we have an import tariff on American dairy because if we didn’t, American dairy farms would blow our farmers out of existence, and we believe that having dairy farms in Canada is a national importance.
So it took Trump literally less than 24 hours to cave completely. He accepted what Canada and Mexico had put on the table literal months before, got absolutely nothing new in concession, and did nothing but cause market chaos. It is absolutely one of the dumbest things I’ve seen him do.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1886602262916817083
It’s all so embarrassing. Complete unforced error.
I haven’t followed the border troops thing very closely, except to note that Mexico has sent some (including to their southern border) off and on. Were there any there recently, or just promises? Did we also have “commitments” but no real action from Canada? Still think we need to wait and see how it shakes out before calling this one.
Market drops from daily peaks are common and generally meaningless (though they don’t like uncertainty). The S&P is still up about 200 points since election day.
When I say nothing new was added to the offer after the tariffs were announced, I mean literally nothing. All the wins being crowed about: Our border czar, labeling the cartels are terrorists, the 10,000 agents, the budget, literally all of it was on the table 6 weeks ago.
And don’t get me wrong, I like it. I think there’s a benefit to having a manned border, and I like the focus on security, Trudeau needed a shake up. But actually signing the tariffs after logging the win was petty and stupid, and then pulling them back without an iota of additional concession was weak.
like I said: Unforced error, literally one of the dumbest things he’s done in office.