You don’t need to hit this analyst over the head with a 2×4, no sirree! I’m on these things like a shot. It only took me two-plus years, a fake House investigation, Tucker Carlson and rote news media lies to put it all together.
Yes, the disgusting aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol is now one of those national ethics fiascos in which everyone who touches it (or boards the train) breaches ethical standards one way or another. The riot has been unethically distorted by Democrats for political gain, weaponized and spun by the Trump Deranged like Liz Cheney, used to justify a blatant violation of House tradition and bipartisanship by Nancy Pelosi, nauseatingly misrepresented and mis-characterized by most of the news media, frighteningly used to justify political show-trials by the Justice Department, exploited to execute an unconstitutional impeachment (probably rendering the process useless going forward), epitomized double standards in the treatment of the riot narrative and the rioters compared with the far more destructive George Floyd riots, and launched more demagoguery and anti-historical nonsense than any event in memory.
And what a passenger list! Donald Trump, Cassidy Chivers, Nikki Haley, Mitch McConnell, Tom Manger, Chief of the Capitol Police, Kevin McCarthy,prosecutors and defense attorneys, Pelosi, baskets of Senators and House members, enough talking heads and pundits to re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg, which, you know, was but dust in the wind compared to the cataclysmic rumble that had no substantive effect on anything except in the imaginations of Machiavellian partisans.
Yet it took smug, cynical, ethics-disabled Fox News fomenter Tucker Carlson to penetrate my thick skull and make me realize that this isn’t just an extension of the endless, disastrous, 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck but its own, ugly thing.
Last night Carlson decided to go “Nyah, nyah, nyah!” at the mainstream media hacks who treated his selective use of the security footage to bust at least part of some false narratives as if he had released another pandemic virus:
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 8, 2023
How absurd of them; how puerile of Tucker. But the most spectacular First Class train wreck boarder was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Read his entire rant from yesterday here; meanwhile, regarding some highlights:
In describing to lawyers what deceit is in my ethics seminars (it is amazing how many layers don’t know what deceit is, though it is forbidden in the ethics rules), I often say that deceit is the official language of Washington, D.C. It’s a reliable laugh line, but it’s not funny. Using linguistic tricks to deceive and mislead the public is a tool of dangerous and untrustworthy governments, movements, leaders and politicians. I don’t know if this age old practice has become worse in recent years; to me it seems that way, but it could be an illusion. In the Sixties, leftists like Abbie Hoffman liked to use “liberate” as a synonym for “steal.”
The success of “Black Lives Matter” relied on a linguistic disorientation, like the old gag about a lawyer asking a witness, “When did you stop beating your wife?” What has been dismaying is how few people have the wit and courage to call out the trick and refuse to back down. The use of “immigrants,” “migrants,” “undocumented workers” and other deliberately misleading terms to hide the reality that the subject is law-breaking aliens has also been largely successful in bamboozling the public. “Affirmative action,” a nice and deceptive way to say “racial quotas,” is finally going down, but it kept the Constitution at bay for half a century. The all-time most sinister linguistic cheat, perhaps, is the use of the benign word “choice” to describe the right to kill unborn children.
Lately, the most prominent verbal deceit is embodied in the “Diversity-Equity-Inclusion” mantra, with “equity” serving as the cornerstone of the cheat. Most Americans—hey, thanks, public education system!—think that equity is just another word for equality. Now that Democrats and progressives are fully committed to socialism (while denying it—that’s not deceit, it’s just lying) they have been bombarding the public with the word without clarifying its implications. Equality means equality under the law; it means that every citizen has the same opportunity to accomplish what his or her talents, effort, ingenuity, determination, laws and the vagueries of fate and fortune allow without obstruction by the government. Equity means that every citizen should be guaranteed the same success to the extent government power can make such “equity” possible. It is based on the socialist/communist ideal that it is unfair that life provides unequal benefits , ability and advantages, so central power must ensure fairness by artificially eliminating as many disparities in these benefits , ability and advantages as possible.
This is signature significance. I shouldn’t have to point out that such a public declaration of bigotry, hypocrisy and ethics duncery is signature significance for an utter asshole, so I’ll just add that it is also signature significance for anyone who reads Saltz’s Instagram post whose immediate reaction isn’t, “Wow. What an asshole.”
To be fair, Saltz is an art critic for New York Magazine. I personally think art critics are worthless, even more worthless than drama critics and movie critics, but as art critics go, he could still be as reliable and trustworthy as any despite this “I am a hateful idiot!” announcement. Stephen King has made an ass of himself repeatedly during his own descent into Trump Derangement; he’s still the best horror novelist around. Mark Ruffalo’s a fine actor; Rob Reiner might even still be a terrific director; presumably Bette Midler can still sing. If I don’t hold artists’ flawed character and Swiss Cheese brains against their art, I certainly am not going to going to let a blathering critic wildly out of his lane convince me that his astuteness in a dubious pursuit like art criticism is undermined….unless, of course, when he’s judging the art of a Republican. Based on that Instagram outburst, I presume Saltz can never again review the creation of a registered Republican.
.@TuckerCarlson releases January 6 videos that undermine knowingly false Pelosi/DOJ narratives designed to jail Biden political opponents. pic.twitter.com/1jPFmbkdtb
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was given access to more than 44,000 hours of video from the Capitol rioting on January 6, 2021. Carlson and his staff reviewed the video for three weeks (that’s not enough) and last night began showing footage that he believes exposes the false narratives about the event being pushed by the House’s partisan J6 Committee and the news media. He will continue tonight.
Observations:
I do not endorse Tom Fitton’s characterization of the video because I have not seen it all, nor do I know what was “knowingly false.” Bias does make one stupid, after all, and regarding January 6, 2021, its hard to be more biased than Democrats, the Trump-Deranged and the mainstream media.
Whatever benefits Carlson’s expose may have (other than boosting his ratings), choosing him as the messenger guaranteed that the footage will be dismissed, ignored, and get less attention from those who need to consider it than if Speaker McCarthy had chosen a reliable media figure (true, there may not be any) who has a well-earned reputation as a two-faced weasel. Just last month, emails were revealed in which Carlson ridiculed claims that the 2020 election had been corrupted while be was aggressively boosting such theories on hos show. Elon Musk handled the “Twitter Files” the correct and wise way, entrusting them to independent commentators like Matt Taibbi, whose agenda appears to be the old fashioned, out-of-date, ethical journalism mission of finding the truth.
For what it is worth, Carlson’s video clips cast doubts on three stories that were accepted as truth by the J6 witch hunt and the media. Jacob Chansley, who is in federal prison for being the absurdly garbed “QAnon Shaman” that became the symbol of the riot, is seen being given a personal escort through the Capitol by police without indicating any violent intent at all. At one point, the officers are seen walking Chansley past seven other police officers outside the Senate chamber. They then escort him to various entrances of the chamber that appear to be locked, and eventually help him open a door to enter the chamber. Chansley, a 33-year-old Navy veteran, has been jailed for almost two years years for “obstructing an official proceeding.” In a jailhouse interview he tells Carlson, “The one very serious regret that I have [is] believing that when we were waved in by police officers, that it was acceptable.” There is now a question of whether this footage was presented at trail in Chanley’s defense.
Carlson next showed a video of Officer Brain Sicknickwearing a helmet and walking inside the Capitol among the “insurrectionists” after media reports described him as being fatally bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher by the rioter. President Biden repeated this falsehood. Sicknick died of a stroke the next day, and there has been no credible connection established between the riot and his death. No officers suffered fatal injuries on January 6.
Next to the totalitarian, censorship-obsessed, indoctrination-pushing ideology of current American progressives, the inability of American conservatives to observe basic intellectual integrity and avoid disqualifying themselves as trustworthy defenders of democratic principles may be the greatest threat to the U.S.’s existence as a free republic.
The Washington Free Beacon, often a helpful source of conservative analysis, apparently thinks that everyone, especially members of Congress should be condemning Ticketmaster because it sold tickets to a Louis Farrakhan event:
The ticketing giant hated by Taylor Swift fans and everyone else who has ever tried to buy concert tickets is now under fire from Jewish activists for selling tickets to a Louis Farrakhan event in which the minister defended Adolf Hitler and predicted another Holocaust against Jews. But many of Ticketmaster’s biggest critics on Capitol Hill don’t seem to care.
Ticketmaster, which charges service fees on each ticket it sells, raked in money selling tickets to Farrakhan’s annual Saviours’ Day conference in Chicago last weekend. During his speech at the event, Farrakhan assailed the “stranglehold that Jews have on this government” and claimed “Jewish power is what has all of our people of knowledge and wisdom and talent afraid.”
The event was met with crickets on Capitol Hill, with almost no one in Congress speaking out against Ticketmaster for making money off of the Farrakhan event. The reaction is a stark contrast to lawmakers’ response when Ticketmaster bungled sales last year for Taylor Swift’s much-anticipated concert tour. That fiasco was in the news cycle for weeks and led to a Department of Justice investigation as well as a Senate hearing. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say Ticketmaster and its parent company, LiveNation, have a monopoly over the ticket industry, leading to price-gouging and a failure to crack down on automated scalping.
“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in [sic],” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) in a Twitter post in November. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) called on the Department of Justice to investigate. None of their offices responded to a request for comment on Ticketmaster’s Farrakhan sales.
Only Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.)—who also spoke out about the Taylor Swift debacle—weighed in on the Farrakhan controversy when contacted by the Washington Free Beacon.
“It is extremely concerning that Ticketmaster is choosing to use its platform to elevate and promote a well-known anti-Semite. The targeting of the Jewish people has gone on far too long and must stop,” she said.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), a Ticketmaster critic who serves as the chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also sent a comment after this story was published.
“Anti-Semitism has no place in America,” said McMorris Rodgers. “Ticketmaster should be completely transparent on why it chose to profit off of Farrakhan’s abhorrent history of hatred and violent threats of genocide against the Jewish people.”
The author is Alana Goodman. Naturally, Republicans (and conservative websites and pundits) took the bait. Democrats don’t like democracy, Republicans are dumb as eels. Morons. Ethics dunces. Hypocrites.
I was very pleased that the post on personality testing triggered the lively discussion it did. The topic is a long-time source of irritation to me. Reducing the infinite variety and complexity of human character to any test should obviously set off ethics alarms, and making life-changing decisions based on such lazy short-cuts to assessing character is a bright-line Golden Rule breach. Anyone who wants to start understanding my character should read all of the posts on Ethics Alarms, and even then should prepare to be surprised.
Before I get to Sarah B.’s Comment of the Day, let me relay the link to Extradimensional Cephalopod‘s website and its basic mindsets section in his Foundational Toolbox for Life.
I know a manager who believes strongly in personality testing, and focuses heavily on the Clifton Strengths profile. He has convinced everyone that it is the way to go and has every one of his employees list their five strengths in order on their work emails, just like some places want preferred pronouns. Everyone I have talked to about this seems totally bought into it. I volunteer here, and thus don’t have to have my Clifton profile done, but when I was introduced to my supervisor (T), he introduced himself as a strategist, which means that he knows how to get from point A to point B in the best possible way, but has a weakness with communication, so we should just all do what he says without question, because he knows better than we do and he doesn’t have time to communicate. If you want someone who is good at communicating, talk to person H. Another of my supervisors (D), introduced herself with her main strength, the ability to think out her problems very well, but as a down side, she must have time to think, so don’t bring her a problem and expect a solution that week. She needs quiet time to work it out.
This is not a way to introduce yourselves, in my opinion. Frankly, I’d rather be known for who I am and let you determine what you think my strengths and weaknesses are, rather than a self reported test that gives me, however accurately, an assessment of those things I am strong at and tells me to make them stronger. I’d rather work to be a well rounded person. I’d also rather think of myself, not as a combination of personality traits, but as a whole person, a person who may have strengths and weaknesses, but who can work to overcome weaknesses and may let certain strengths founder as a choice.
Even if strengths are good things to have, we have to work on our weaknesses too. Frankly, T lets his “strength” in strategizing be an excuse for acting like a controlling jackass. If something doesn’t work perfectly, he blames it all on others, and says we didn’t listen enough. He cannot handle changing conditions, because they throw off his plan, so he gets stressed and pushes people badly. I have nearly quit because of him, but am too stubborn and want the experience for later in life. D uses her “strength” as an excuse to not organize or prepare for anything, all with the excuse that she didn’t have adequate time to think through the problem. If a problem arises needing a quick solution, she shuts down totally, claiming that there is nothing to be done, and won’t accept anyone else’s solution to the problem. We go from about to do our work to completely cancelling our work in moments.
For the second time this week I find myself grafting substantial sections of an archived Ethics Alarms post to a new one. (I promise not to make a habit of it.) The occasion is the appearance on one of my Alexandria, Virginia neighbors’ lawn the idiotic sign above. Once again I was seized with the desire to ring the house’s doorbell and cross examine the residents. Can they explain and justify what’s on that sign? I am almost certain that they cannot, just as my other neighbor who STILL displays a medieval suit of armor next to a 5 x 4 hand-made, painted wooden sign reading BLACK LIVES MATTER in block letters could not justify that obnoxious lawn ornament, since it is, after all, more indefensible than ever now that the movement it stands for has been exposed as cynical hustle.
In 2021, New York Times’ woke propaganda agent Amanda Hess was given a rare slot on her paper’s front page to opine on the sign above, which was apparently the beginning of the the viral Announce to your neighbors that you’re a smug, simple-minded idiot!” epidemic. Ethics Alarms has had several posts about similar signs, but I did not realize that I had missed Patient Zero.
Hess’s analysis by turns informed readers that the sign has “curious power” (to make me detest the homeowner?); that the mottoes are “progressive maxims” (so progressives really are that facile and shallow!), that “Donald Trump is out of office…But nevertheless, this sign has persisted” (Oh! It’s all Trump’s fault?), that the sign is “directed at the adults in the room, reminding them of their own mission” (Really? Open borders? Man-boy love? Anti-white discrimination? Marxism? Why is a sign aimed at adults so naive and childish? ), that it is “the epitome of virtue signaling: an actual sign enumerating the owner’s virtues. There is something refreshing, actually, about the straightforwardness of that.” (There is something refreshing about smug idiots placing signs on their laws that say, “I am a smug idiot”?).
“Ridiculous…“We would never even discuss something like that. How many 30-year-olds could travel to Poland, get on the train? Go nine more hours, go to Ukraine, meet with President Zelensky? So, look at the man. Look what he’s doing. Look what he continues to do each and every day.”
—First Lady Jill Biden, after being asked during a CNN interview about Nikki Haley’s proposal that politicians over the age of 75 undergo mental competency testing.
In related news, Lance Armstrong declared that testing competitive cyclists for doping is “ridiculous,” and O.J. Simpson opined that DNA technology was “ridiculous.”
Fortunately, all we need to do to determine the competency of First Ladies is to analyze a cretinous answer like that one to a flamingly easy question. We are looking, Jill. And it’s not pretty. The words the First Lady was searching for were not “ridiculous,” but responsible, necessary, and “a matter of common sens
The United States has already courted disaster with Presidents continuing in office after their mental faculties have been damaged or declined. President Pierce was impaired by grief, crippling depression and alcoholism during his single term in office, which occurred at a crucial point in the deadly run-up to the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson infamously remained President after being crippled by a major stroke. There is evidence that President Reagan’s cognitive stability was declining during his presidency.
As for Jill’s human meal-ticket, no modern President has shown so many signs of mental decline and confusion, and this frightening development has come after a career in public office unmarked by intellectual acuity at its zenith. Every responsible Presidential candidate should be required to pledge to take such competency tests on a regular basis and agree to resign from office once a thorough, non-partisan diagnosis confirmed by multiple physicians concludes that there is significant cognitive decline.
I regard the siege of the Alamo one of the signature ethics events in U.S. history, both for what it was and what it came to represent. There have been many posts on the subject as well as many references to the Alamo in other posts, all of which are accessible here.
Today, March 6, marks the fall of the converted mission. Ethics Alarms has two pieces from its archives to present:
I.Last year, Texan and Ethics Alarms stalwart Michael West’s provided Ethics Alarms readers with a day by day account of the Alamo’s the final days, March 5 and March 6. Here it is:
March 5, 1836
After the previous day’s war council (on March 4), Santa Anna was content that his glorious assault would occur. But evidently, according to several reliable Mexican sources, a civilian woman from the town, who had retreated to the Alamo with the Texans, made it out of the Alamo during the night and gave dire information to the Mexicans. Evidently the Texan garrison was increasingly despondent. According to the lady who escaped, Travis and the garrison had discussed their options and one of the more forceful arguments made was that they should consider surrender.
Santa Anna wanted none of this, and accelerated his assault time-table (which he hadn’t necessarily meant for the 6th of March but for the 7th or even the 8th).
The Mexican soldiers would have received their orders in the morning and spent the rest of the day making preparations. There was little physically they had to do other than check the locks of their muskets, ensure they had the requisite number of extra flints (which would occasionally break in battle – testing the coolness of even the most experienced soldier), or assist in the production of several ladders Santa Anna had commanded each battalion to have prepared.
No, most of the preparation would have been mental. A deeply Catholic people, the Mexican soldiers would have spent their energies on prayer and confession. New soldiers would have been nervous about how they would perform under fire, simultaneously trying to hide their nerves from the experienced soldiers, who would have recognized the unique challenge before them. Almost none had been asked to climb tall walls after traversing several hundred yards under fire against an enemy who had, in the previous 12 days, proven that their rifled muskets out-ranged the standard Mexican issue musket by nearly 300%Some of Santa Anna’s soldiers were eager to get into the fight – to uphold the honor of the Mexican nation against, not only rebels, but rebels seemingly motivated by pro-American attitudes. Some of Santa Anna’s soldiers had been farmers pressed into service only months before, who would have had a partially begrudging attitude and were mostly leaning towards “let’s get this over with so I can get home.” Some of the dictator’s soldiers were convicts for whom the upcoming bloodshed was just one more act of brutality to endure in an already brutal and brutalized life. For a large number of the soldiers, for whom soldiering was life, this would be a terror that they knew would be expected of them. Regardless of their motivations, there would be no getting out of the upcoming ordeal and every single one of them would be in the same peril when a Texan cannon roared out at their formation.
Set to wake up at midnight to begin movements to their attack positions, the few soldiers could fall asleep would have tried to do so by twilight.
Inside the Alamo, evening would draw a miserable day to a close. Earlier that day, according to Enrique Esparza, aged 8 (who’s father, Gregorio, was fighting with the Texans), the faeful courier entered the Alamo with news that despite all the hopeful reports, no immediate help was on its way. Travis would have discussed with the men their options – a break-out attempt in case of a successful assault would be their best recourse. A break out during the day would be impossible and one at night would be extremely risky. Whatever was said, it appears all but perhaps one of the men decided to stay
For the Texans, sleep would come quickly that evening. For the first time in 12 days, Santa Anna’s cannons didn’t create chaos inside the compound. It was silent. There could be no doubt that the defenders knew what this meant, but they were exhausted. They would have kept watch and pure anxiety might have boosted their necessary alertness. Nonetheless, they began succumbing to sleep deprivation and may have been deep in dreams of life after the war – or perhaps of life before the war.
Before collapsing in whatever position suited rest, most would have reviewed their plans in their minds of how to get out once they’d done what they could to slow or halt the Mexican advance. No shame in that: when a battle is clearly lost and standing your position doesn’t buy anyone else on the battlefield any opportunity to turn the tide, there’s no principle of warfare that requires that a soldier die on principle.
Most would have recognized that with San Antonio immediately to the west, and several Mexican artillery batteries to the north and south, the east would be the best direction to break out for should the situation so demand. That was also where the gathering Texan army could be found, eventually.
Right after dusk, Travis dispatched the final courier on yet another appeal for assistance. Then, as in each night during the siege , Travis assigned several men outpost duty beyond the walls of the Alamo to provide an early warning before turning the watch over to another officer.
I don’t understand this episode at all, and it also makes me angry. As it should you. Or anybody.
In Newton, Massachusetts, once considered a gem of the Bay State’s public education crown, the race-obsessed, woke and irresponsible fools (I’m not going to be diplomatic or restrained in this post) in charge of the school and school district allowed the school’s Theater Ink program to put on a student show titled “Lost and Found: Our Stories as People of Color.” According to the show’s audition packet, the production was designed to be “a reserved safe space for this exploration and for people of color to be vulnerable and support one another.” Not only is that wokey gibberish (schools should not be encouraging students to speak gibberish), it is also illegal, as in “unconstitutional.”
When time for auditions came around, and all the young theater geeks, aspiring singers and hopeful chorus line members licked their collective chops for the annual event, the show’s Asian-American student director posted a video to the show’s website declaring that “All BIPOC [Black, indigenous and people of color] students at North are invited to audition,” clearly meaning “No whites, Irish or dogs allowed.”
Ah, yes…”good discrimination.” Assholes. Bigots. Virtue-signaling bigots. All green-lighted by adults with degrees in education.
Yet they pretty much got away with it. The show went up as scheduled in January; the somnolent parents of Newton (my Arlington High School chess team used to play Newton North; we usually beat its team too; they weren’t as good as Newton South) apparently just stood by with their fingers in their noses and let this insulting, racist fiasco occur, their children excluded from a school activity because of their color. The first complaint came in when the director’s discriminatory video went live, but the matter was allowed to crawl through the Department of Education’s investigation process—it is still crawling—and you just know that Joe’s gang sees no reason why public schools shouldn’t favor “BIPOC” theater-loving kids over those racist white snots who are part of the evil race that brought slavery to our shores and voted for Donald Trump.
Naturally, the school’s first line of defense was “it isn’t what it is,” the favored rationalization (#64 on the list) of progressives, Democrats and anti-white racists for quite some time now.
School district flacks told the media that Newton North..
“is committed to encouraging all of its students to participate in the theatre program, particularly students of color, who have been vastly underrepresented in our programs….While centered in the stories of the lives of our students of color, no one is turned away or excluded from participating or having a role in the ‘Lost and Found’ production of Theatre Ink, Newton North’s teaching and working theater program. The Newton Public Schools do not exclude students based upon color, race, ethnicity, or religious background.”
Then these weasels turned around in their fur and mouthed their support for the exclusionary exercise, saying,
“We are proud of our students for the hard work they do to not only assemble a diverse group of performers, but also to challenge each other to have difficult conversations around societal issuesTheatre Ink has consistently provided opportunities for students to tell and celebrate the narratives and stories of those who have been historically underrepresented. Amplifying the stories, experiences, and history of students of color is just one component of our diverse fine and performing arts programs,’ the statement continued, additionally offering that it fully supports ‘the premise and educational value of this performance.”
Ethics Alarms 