This one nearly got me!
The USA Today headline: “National parks cut free entry for MLK Day, add Trump’s birthday.” I almost leaped for my keyboard. Sure, trolling the “No Kings” Trump Deranged is fun for POTUS, but this crossed the line. It also seemed like a deliberately racially provocative act: substituting his own birthday for MLK’s among the days commemorated by the National Parks? This mandated an Ethics Dunce post that would write itself!
It was not until the end of the story (by USA TODAY hack Kathleen Wong, who “covers travel news with a passion for sustainable tourism and human-focused storytelling” —gag/ack/yecchh!) where the full list of days when admission to the National Parks will be free of charge to American citizens is listed, that I recognized the nasty partisan con.
The new list of 2026 free admission days to the National Parks during patriotic holidays: President’s Day (Feb. 16), Memorial Day(May 31), Flag Day (June 14) Independence Day weekend (July 3–5), the 110th Birthday of the National Park Service (Aug. 25) Constitution Day (Sept. 17) Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (Oct. 27)—Teddy launched the National Parks— and Veterans Day (Nov. 11). I had forgotten, as I suspect many readers have, that Flag Day happens to be Trump’s birthday, but the holiday fits naturally into the category of non-interest group, non- divisive patriotic commemorations that was clearly the motivation for “patriotic fee-free days” announced by the Department of the Interior.
I’m now surprised USA Today didn’t describe July 4 as “commemorating the death of racist slave-holder and rapist Thomas Jefferson.”
I can see legitimate criticism of Trump excising Juneteenth and MLK’s birthday from the list as well as Labor Day and Columbus Day. But all of those are arguably divisive and not honoring the nation generally or the National Parks. The list also doesn’t include Easter, Christmas or Thanksgiving. But the paper just couldn’t report the story straight; it had to distort the facts to trigger Trump Haters—Racist! Autocrat!—as much as possible.
There’s a refrain being repeated regularly on Glenn Reynolds’ conservative blog Instapundit in reference to our despicable biased journalists: “No matter how much you hate these people, it isn’t enough.”
This episode validates that analysis. Meanwhile, I am just waiting to see which among my, oh, 50 or so Trump Deranged Facebook friends will be the first to post, “Can you believe this? Trump just replaced the Martin Luther King’s birthday holiday with his own!”
Ethics Alarms 
USA Today was wrong in its headline, and in the article by not mentioning Flag Day until the very end. But, the Administration invited this by citing Trump’s birthday along with Flag Day, which detracts from the importance of that holiday. Sure, it might have been the work of a butt-kisser in the NPS, or maybe a ‘soldier’ in the ‘resistance’ trying to stir up trouble, but, either way, it should have been swatted down by now.
I am reminded of the obscene display of the Trump banner on the Agriculture Building several months ago.
This cult of the leader belongs someplace like North Korea; it is not a part of American culture.
Ethics zugzwang for the administration, no?
Options:
1. Omit Flag Day because someone in the Axis will make the Trump birthday connection and attack him for secretly doing the whole project to make the National Parks celebrate his birthday, being a king and all.
2. Leave Flag Day on the list but not mention the Trump connection, hoping nobody will try the above attack, knowing full well they will.
3. Leave Flag Day on the list with the note that it is Trump’s birthday, which is what was done.
4. Leave Flag Day on the list with a note that says that by coincidence this is also the President’s birthday, but the free days at the park only celebrate Flag Day and not his birthday, triggering the obligatory “Me thinks he doth protest too much” response.
5. Say to hell with the free days because there’s no way to leave out Flag Day without being criticized for that, and no way to include it because of 2, 3, and 4.
Which would you pick?
Two. Yes. They will, but then they are more readily identified as Trump haters.
One. No. The flag is the most significant symbol of the country.
Three & Four. No. Calling attention to the birthday plays into the meme of Trump as king, one who must be recognized always and all ways.
Five. No. See #6.
Six. Forget what I said about #2. This is better. All days are free days.
How did you manage to miss the Ethics Quiz about that banner on the DOA building in May?
(I’d say “obscene” is bit strong, no?)
I manage to miss a lot of things. Kind of a dumbass that way.
Obscene? I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it. I could go with grotesque, if you prefer.
My choice in the post was “stupid.”
Really, it would be a little MORE on brand to cancel all of them EXCEPT “Flag Day” don’t you think?
Anyone want to speculate about which National Park will be the first to get the Institute of Peace treatment?
No matter how much you hate these people, it can’t be enough?
Really?
Like, you should hate them more than Nazis? you should hate journalists more than murderers? Serial killers? Pedophiles?
Take it down a notch, Francis. Breath. Think. Calm the fuck down. Don’t be an avatar for hate and lose your shit.
It’s not meant to be taken literally. It’s a rhetorical device indicating extreme disapproval, usually of repeated behavior, that has achieved sort of meme status.
I think a lot of the rhetoric that Jack sees as DTS has similar excuses–it’s a meme, we don’t really mean “behead the president”, we don’t mean he’s literally Hitler and on and on (not all of it)…so if you give grace and a pass to hate rhetoric on one side, shouldn’t it be given to the other?
Don’t think it’s quite the same. “No matter…” can be used by any group referring to another; it’s not specifically tied to one part of the political spectrum, nor does it attempt to tie together or suggest an equivalence between those addressed and any particular despicable person, act, etc.
”so if you give grace and a pass to hate rhetoric on one side, shouldn’t it be given to the other?”
In a word, “no.”
A more verbose would be:
I do not think the two groups are on the same level.
First of all, the Left has been relentless in its criticism of Trump. When Biden was elected, I resolved to be just as obnoxiously critical of him. I think I lasted 3 days.
I think many of the people calling him Hitler do not believe the comparison. They use it as a form of demagoguery for the Great Unwashed who actually think it is a good comparison.
And, to a great extent, it is unclear how many of the “smarter” people actually don’t believe he is akin to Hitler or Putin. The impeached him for an “insurrection” that not only was NOT an insurrection, but was not incited by him. Don’t get me wrong, as I watched those idiots break into the Capitol Building, I was furious, just as I had been at all the rioting the summer before, riots that included an invasion into my law office and disabled the building in which I worked. What was even more galling was that the people who excused those rights acted as if January 6 was a completely different kind of even. Hypocrites!
BUT, even if I were to give you the benefit of the doubt (“behead the President” is hyperbole, the Russian collusion hoax was run of the mill politics as usual, “Hitler” comparisons are common fare in political dialogue, the impeachment was just for show, etc.), I do not think you can defend the common refrain that Trump is creating a Constitutional Crisis. It seemed that for a period of time, there was a new Constitutional Crisis every other day. Such statements (like the act of the second impeachment) threaten to undermine the political system. It is something too serious to joke about.
And, frankly, I believe that undermining the system is exactly what many of them want to do.
So, “no.”
-Jut
Thanks, JD, we haven’t had a pure Rationalization #22 comment show up for a while. That one, my all-time favorite for “The Worst Rationalization Ever,” is The Comparative Virtue Excuse: or “There are worse things.” There are always worse things, which is why “It’s not like he killed somebody” is the classic of the form. But we know there are worse things than killing someone, so we can play the minimizing game to the vanishing point. So I could retort that it’s possible to hate Hitler “enough,” because we should hate Stalin and Mao more.
The truth is, and what Instapundit is getting at, is that the constant partisan bias and misleading spin being applied to the news by “advocacy journalists” and reports with partisan agendas has done and is doing terrible damage, perhaps permanent, existential damage, to the functioning of democracy in the U.S., a process that depends on a fairly informed electorate. We don’t have one now, and cannot have one, which means that the public is being manipulated into acting against its own self interests.That biased media may have given the election in 2020 to Joe Biden, for example, leading to all of the disastrous policies and anti-democratic trends over the following four years. The resulting continued collapse in the public trust, the exploding debt, the open borders, the attempted censorship, the tribalism, the discrimination against men and whites—yeah, its probably not as hate-worthy as killing 6 million Jews and starting a world war, but crippling the USA and undermining public belief in democracy by making our system of government malfunction is a more sweeping wrong than, say, Minnesota Somalis stealing billions of dollars, or even a mass shooting, so I guess we should be limited in how much we should hate those acts too? I don’t think so. We’re operating in the region of indefensible acts here, and absolute hostility is appropriate throughout that region. Saying that there are more worthy objects of hate is just a way to help bad actors duck accountability.
I think when you criticize the Left so harshly for their rhetoric, you often point out that Trump isn’t as bad as they say, and you point out other things that are worse. How is that not your #22? Also, words mean things, right? So if you call something fascist, or use a Nazi-linked term like Axis, which is inaccurate, inflammatory, and tends to make you look like a spittle-flecked rage-filled ignoramus, the kind of person that if they were on the other side, you’d say they had TDS….I think pointing out that the AXIS media aren’t really comparable to the AXIS is not error #22, but rather…a plea that before you criticize the speck of dust in someone else’s eye, look at the log in your own? You can call the Democrats Communists, for example, but if you do, and someone points out that they aren’t, factually, because communism is actually X and Y, that’s again, not error #22. As I interpret it, Error 22 is more like–I say jeez, the Gaza War is awful, the way Israel is massacring civilians, and someone else says…well, but look at what’s happening in Sudan, so much worse! Here, by contrast, I’m arguing not to ignore a situation because something else is worse, I’m saying–the word you are using isn’t the right word, factually. That it describes something far worse. So to say it’s impossible to hate our journalists enough….speaking as someone who just appeared on the media and got a right-winger expressing a hope that my son dies in my arms and then I get two to the head…well, maybe I’m a little sensitive about people who call for extreme hate towards “the media”…it’s not a good thing to do. So please just stop with the AXIS bullshit. Because if the media is like the AXIS media, then why not put two bullets in their heads? You say the left is encouraging assassination attempts by using Nazi language, and then, you call tens of thousands of people AXIS…and contribute to their demonization. Things can be very wrong, bad, immoral even, and not merit Nazi language.
Each ethical breach is its own, and what anyone else has done, including acts that may have inspired it, are not made better or worse. I will often cite the principle of ethics estoppel, when a party or individual that has engaged in the conduct by Trump or others they are criticizing or condemning loses the right to be taken seriously or have that attack regarded as sincere. Should Trump, for example, start criticizing Jasmine Crockett for using unprofessional and uncivil language, he should be soundly mocked for it. Similarly, the one who breaks the norm cannot then complain when Trump proceeds to exploit that norm’s destruction: as in, for example, political and partisan uses of the criminal justice system.
EA uses the term Axis as a direct reference to GW Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address referring to
Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as nations supporting terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction by tagging them the “Axis of Evil.” “Axis” remains a perfectly descriptive word for an imaginary line around which something rotates. Domestically, unethical conduct in political discourse and ends-justify-the-means conduct rotate around “the resistance,” the Democratic Party, and the captive news media. That “axis” was also used to describe the alliance among German, Japan and Italy in World War II doesn’t make it an automatic Godwin’s Law violation: I don’t intend it that way, never did, and a correct use of the axis metaphor shouldn’t be assumed to be that. in contrast, the Axis directly calls Trump and his supporters Nazis. That’s a pretty clear destibction, no?
The reason Bush’s speechwriting team won such acclaim for the Axis of Evil speech was that it so deftly brought the Nazi metaphor into the discourse.
So not that big a distinction at all. Barely one at all. Calling them the Axis media makes a comparison to Goebbels. It’s profound pettifoggery to argue otherwise.
I’m tempted to say, “If the shoe fits, wear it.” But you get bonus brownie points for “pettifoggery”!
I wonder, how many Americans under the age of, say, 50 immediately associate the term “axis” with World War II rather than our spinning planet?
What’s divisive about Labor Day?
It’s an interest group holiday: organized labor, unions. Very much a partisan holiday in its origins, signed into law by a Democratic President (Cleveland) after several years of union-organized marches. The Federal Holiday is widely viewed as originating as a conciliatory gesture towards the labor movement, which was on the rise in the late 19th century.
It’s an appeasement holiday, like Juneteenth.
As for Trump’s birthday, they already played that card last summer with Trump’s military parade on his birthday: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trump-is-throwing-himself-a-birthday-parade-while-veterans-and-military-families-face-cuts/
-Jut