“bias makes you stupid”

David Brooks, A Trump Derangement And “Bias Makes You Stupid” Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks should have that famous epitaph tattooed on his forehead.

He was once an independent, erudite, interesting essayist of conservative leanings. Then he accepted big bucks to be the New York Times’ token conservative pundit. Soon, after forced contact with Charles Blow, Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman, the Times version on the Stockholm Syndrome took over shortly before the election of Donald Trump, whom, to be fair, the tweedy and classist Brooks surely would have regarded as icky even before his re-education by the Times. Today’s model of David Brooks is incapable of objective analysis, He serves a neon-bright cautionary tale of what happens when bias eats away at one’s analytical abilities and credibility.

Take his latest column…please.

It is called “The Sad Tales of George Santos,” but it quickly devolves into one more gratuitous attack on Donald Trump. What it most reveals, however, is how far David Brooks has fallen.

Halfway through this mess, Brooks writes, after stating the obvious about Rep.-elect George Santos,

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Thoughts While Reading Classmate Entries In My Alma Mater’s Anniversary Report, #3

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I have just a few general observations this time.

  • I know I have mentioned this before, but I can’t get past it: it is remarkable to me, but maybe it shouldn’t be, how many of my classmates regard climate change as their greatest concern for the future.These are (mostly) smart, analytical people, yet climate change conventional wisdom has been successfully implanted in their brains by relentless media hammering and by cognitive dissonance (that is, what the “good” people believe must be good and true) so deeply that they are incapable of perceiving obvious logical fallacies. The people society trusts to devise substantive and practical solutions to our problems are stuck in the “Do something!” mode. Scary.
  • Trump Derangement rages.
  • So does wilful historical revisionism. One Democrat wrote that his wife was an “Eisenhower Republican” but had abandoned the current Republican Party because it had become too radically conservative. Eisenhower Republicans would make today’s GOP seem like the Antifa. Kennedy Democrats were more conservative than today’s Republican Party.
  • By far my favorite ethical weirdness, though, is the widespread obsession with exaggerating the significance of the January 6 Capitol rioting while referring to it as both an “insurrection” and a bleak portent of the decline of democracy. This opinion is coming from the class that overwhelmingly supported the student take-over of the Harvard administration building and cheered the students who battled riot police who tried to clear out the mob! That invasion of Harvard offices was just a microcosm of the Capitol riot, a foolish and doomed tantrum, except that the students were angry that their school was supporting a war over which they had no authority or control, while the Capitol rioters were protesting what they believed was a perversion of a Presidential election that had rendered their votes and rights effectively null and void. While the students were never held accountable for their civil disobedience, the Capitol rioters have been severely punished. After decades that should have made them wiser, the former students who never held any fantasies that their brief take-over of university offices would allow them to overthrow the Harvard administration now solemnly claim that a few hundred jacked-up idiots with bear spray and sticks thought they could take over the United States government.

Climate Change Media Hype, 2022

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The more I think about it, the more the Wuhan virus fiasco strikes me as a microcosm (not too micro, unfortunately) of the climate change hysteria. Both are “Do Something!” debacles; both have demonstrated that those who argue for lock-step compliance with ideologically driven “science” don’t understand the science they demand we bow to. And, as we have seen, the policies applied to both problems have proved to be irresponsible, reckless, expensive, and destructive. Nevertheless, a substantial portion of the population remains brainwashed by climate change hysteria, even those individuals with brains one would think are too substantial to wash, much like the once sane and competent Americans who wear masks alone in their automobiles and while walking their dogs. I am seeing this in my college reunion report, as I slog through hundreds of life stories. A majority of them express terror at the looming climate apocalypse. Their solution is massive “structural change”…you know, “one world” government, though few are bold or honest enough to say so clearly.

Aiding and abetting the hysteria that is so useful to those who find democracy an inconvenience is the mainstream media. Just as it hyped the risks of the pandemic, never clearly explaining that the virus was overwhelmingly a mortal threat only to the already sick, elderly or obese—all the better to justify shutting down schools, businesses, social interaction and the economy, the news media continued to exaggerate and misrepresent the effects of climate change in 2022. Continue reading →

Gee, What A Surprise: The Left Thinks American Education Is Just Fine

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The results of the above poll, commissioned by Yahoo News, shouldn’t surprise anyone, though apparently it surprised Yahoo. The poll, it says, reveals  “a deeper and more distressing divide. According to the Yahoo News/YouGov poll, faith in the American Dream — the ideal, embodied by education, that each successive generation will be better off than the one that came before it — is becoming increasingly polarized as well.In other words, Republicans are not only much more likely than Democrats to believe American education is getting worse. They’re also much more likely to believe that American life is getting worse.”

Here are some other “other words”: A frightening number of Democrats believe that American education is good because it indoctrinates the young into leftist belief systems, cant and ideology. They feel life in the U.S. is  getting better because more censorship, racial preferences, nanny-state programs, and restrictions on individual rights will be the inevitable result of the Left’s takeover of the entire educational establishment. Continue reading →

Stop Making Me Defend President Biden!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In his Christmas speech on December 23, President Biden said, referring to Christmas’s religious significance,

“How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is given. There is a certain stillness at the center of the Christmas story. A silent night when all the world goes quiet and all the glamour, all the noise, everything that divides us, everything that pits us against one another, everything — everything that seems so important but really isn’t, this all fades away in stillness of the winter’s evening. And we look to the sky, to a lone star, shining brighter than all the rest, guiding us to the birth of a child—a child Christians believe to be the son of God; miraculously now, here among us on Earth, bringing hope, love and peace and joy to the world.”

Many conservative blogs, pundits and celebrities “pounced,” attacking the President for not mentioning Jesus by name.

The headline at The Daily Wire was “Biden Delivers Christmas Address Without Mentioning Jesus By Name: ‘A Child Christians Believe To Be The Son Of God’” Father Gerald Murray of the Archdiocese of New York told Newsmax that it made “no sense” for Biden to omit the name of Jesus from his annual Christmas address to the country. “President Biden is always talking about his Catholicism and how it inspired him,” Murray said. “If you’re going to honor the birth of Jesus, you should mention his name. I was very sad to see that. That’s not anything that should be imitated in the future.” Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican and former member of the House,said, “Not saying the name of Jesus—look, there are other holidays to celebrate, but Christmas is the birth of Christ. When we celebrate the birth of Christ who came and gave us the gift of life. That’s what we celebrate and to take that out is just sad.” The Heritage Foundation’s Kara Frederick, complained, “America’s lost its sense of God, it’s Judeo-Christian values, and I think this is just a manifestation. This speech not mentioning Christ, talking about how divided this nation’s been for so long, it’s all part and parcel of the secularization of America and we need to return to our faith.”

The United States is not supposed to have a stated “sense of God,” and for the President of the United States to officially espouse the beliefs of any particular religion is, according the the line of judicial interpretations of the Establishment Clause and the First Amendment, a violation of the Constitution.

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Fad Ethics, 2022

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Fads occur when the culture embraces a concept for emotional, selfish, foolish or otherwise irrational reasons. Usually they are harmless; sometimes they are not. This meme crystalized the reality of a current fad, an especially destructive one being advanced in pursuit of a social and political agenda, so deftly that Ethics Alarms is momentarily suspending its opposition to memes.

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Pointer: Powerline

From England, A Great Stupid Christmas

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Looking on the bright side, it’s heartening to know that after all these years, the United States is still less censorious than our cousins across the pond.

Two British radio stations ( Heart FM and Magic Radio; the BBC is said to be considering following their lead) have censored a line of Johnny Mathis’s song “When a Child Is Born” because of listener complaints that it is “racist.” On the recording of Mathis’s Christmas song that he introduced in the Seventies, the African-American singer speaks about the significance of Jesus’s birth:

And all this happens because the world is waiting–waiting for one child…black, white, yellow, no one knows. But a child that would grow up and turn tears to laughter, hate to love, war to peace, and everyone to everyone’s neighbor. And misery and suffering will be words to be forgotten forever.

What’s the racist part, you well may ask? It’s “yellow!”

“Black”‘s OK for blacks, thought they aren’t really black, and “white”‘s fine for whites, but “yellow” is racist. What is the vernacular for Asian skin-tone, then? Wait, is calling Donald Trump “orange” also racist? Who can keep up with these rules. much less the floating, ever flexible definition of “racist.” What an amazing word: it’s there anything it can’t do? It’s like duct tape or Silly Putty! A black singer speaking about how skin-color is irrelevant can be racist!

Amazing.

Incompetent Headline Of The Week: “Report: Joe Biden Realized His Mistake With Kamala Harris Very Early On” (Red State)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’m sorry, but I can’t resist.

What’s “early” is a case like this? Anyone who watched and listened to and watched Harris during the Democratic Presidential debates could tell in an instant that she was a dolt, and obviously unqualified to run for President or be one, which means she has no business running for or being Vice-President either. The headline is the equivalent of “Early on as he attempted to shave using his power mower, he realized his mistake.”

What are we supposed to conclude from that statement? Admiration for Joe that he was so quick to pick up on what was wrong with his entirely race and gender-based pick for a running mate? That’s not quick. Someone who is competent, has good judgment and knows which end of the trumpet to blow on doesn’t make an epic mistake like picking Harris to be a heartbeat from the Oval Office.

I saw this story and couldn’t restrain myself.

Carry on…

Institutional Ethics Dunce: The U.S. Congress

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The House of Representatives passed legislation last week ordering the Capitol’s bust of Roger Taney, the Supreme Court Chief Justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision, to Hell, or someplace. It will be replaced by a new bust of Thurgood Marshall, the first black judge to serve on Court.

Of course it will. This naked political grandstanding wouldn’t be complete without installing a black judge’s image as a rebuke to the evil white judge. The legislation now heads to President Biden’s desk to be signed, probably followed by a victory jig.

The pandering legislation says that Taney’s bust is “unsuitable for the honor of display to the many visitors to the Capitol.” It currently sits at the entrance of the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol where the Supreme Court met from 1810 to 1860. Taney led the court from 1836 to 1864.

“While the removal of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s bust from the Capitol does not relieve the Congress of the historical wrongs it committed to protect the institution of slavery, it expresses Congress’s recognition of one of the most notorious wrongs to have ever taken place in one of its rooms, that of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s Dred Scott v. Sandford decision,” the legislation says. I wonder how many of the members who voted for the legislation know anything about Taney or have ever engaged in an objective reading of his opinion. My guess: not many. Maybe none.

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J. Robert Oppenheimer Is Finally Proven Innocent Of Being A Communist Spy. A Lot Of Good It Does Him Now…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Sixty-eight years after he was disgraced and his reputation ruined, brilliant physicist and atomic bomb architect J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose security clearance with the Atomic Energy Commission was revoked on the grounds that he was a supporter of Communism, has been finally declared innocent of that charge. Declassified documents, the Department of Energy has ruled, show that the investigation that rendered the American hero a broken man (he died 12 years later at the age of 62) was biased and flawed.

Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm said in a statement that  “ evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed.”

That’s nice. My immediate thoughts when I read this: Continue reading →