Comment of the Day

Comment Of The Day: “Is It Too Late To Call It “The Wuhan Virus” Or Better Yet, ‘The China Virus’?”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
China Lied

Too strong?

Extradimensional Cephalopod, as is his (it’s?) wont, chose to approach the question of what to call the pandemic virus (I am unalterably devoted to calling it what it is, as a deadly pathogen that developed in China and allowed to infect the world BY China “the Wuhan virus” in order to ensure that accountability, blame, and, if possible, liability attaches now and forever) by seeking an ethical process that has applications in other contexts. Below is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Is It Too Late To Call It “The Wuhan Virus” Or Better Yet, “The China Virus”?

Recent news has reinforced the unavoidable conclusion that China is a corrupting influence on the world and it culture. Disney, which like so many, indeed most—all?—major corporations has no ethical principles it is willing to lose profits from hewing to if at all possible, censored an episode of “The Simpsons” that satirized the nation and its government. Disney eliminated the episode from the package it sold to Chinese media. Let’s be clear: this means that Disney is assisting China in government censorship of creative expression arising in Disney’s own nation, and also assisting China’s totalitarians in controlling the minds of its population. I regard the “Covid” cover word being used to avoid connecting this regime with the disaster its habits created to be a similar form of complicity.

Now here’s “the Squid”: I’ll be back ever so briefly when he’s finished:

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Comment (s) Of The Day: P.M. Lawrence And Steve-O-in NJ On “Stolen Lands”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

BLM Thanksgiving

It’s not as if a racist, Marxist, anti-American organization like Black Lives Matter has to try to be obnoxious, but nonetheless, it treated Thanksgiving celebrants with that holiday message this week. Normally Comment of the Day posts that arrive in an Open Forum are accorded guest blogger honors, but I couldn’t figure out a clean way to unlink the two comments presented here. I apologize to P.M. and Steve.

The “stolen lands” indictment has rankled me for a long, long time, and the two Ethics Alarms regulars between them have done an excellent job of covering the issue.

First up is Steve-O; P.M. Lawrence will take over later.

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steal [stēl] VERB [stolen (past participle)}: 1. take (another person’s property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it. “Thieves stole her bicycle” ·
synonyms: theft · thieving · thievery · robbery · larceny · burglary · shoplifting · pilfering ·
2. dishonestly pass off (another person’s ideas) as one’s own. “Accusations that one group had stolen ideas from the other were soon flying”
synonyms: plagiarize · copy · pass off as one’s own · infringe the copyright of · pirate · poach · borrow · appropriate

conquer [ˈkäNGkər] VERB 1. overcome and take control of (a place or people) by use of military force. “The Magyars conquered Hungary in the Middle Ages”
synonyms: defeat · beat · vanquish · trounce · annihilate · triumph over · be victorious over · best · get the better of · worst · bring someone to their knees · overcome · overwhelm ·

So tell me, which of the above definitions more accurately reflects what happened here in the US? To steal something from someone, the other person must first possess it. Can you really steal from those who don’t believe anyone can own land? Not really. But you can conquer that area.

Unfortunately, history is almost nothing but conquests. It’s not the story of people becoming friends. History has been about conquests since Sargon of Akkad conquered the Sumerians and since Joshua led the Hebrews over the Jordan to attack and take the city of Jericho. In fact, if you go all the way back to the earliest Biblical stories, the Hebrews first came to be when and because a sheik in the Bronze Age Mesopotamian city of Ur answered a call that came directly from the man upstairs promising him the land originally promised to Caanan, grandson of Ham, because Ham proved himself unworthy by seeing Noah drunk and uncovered in his tent and doing nothing about it. Most of the rest of the Old Testament is about the Hebrews getting, losing, and getting back the land promised to them by God. Most of us grew up reading of Joshua bringing the walls of Jericho down and cheering on David as he stood up to Goliath, giving Saul’s army the chance to defeat the Philistines, and never once asking the question of whether they were right. However, come to the modern state of Israel, and suddenly it’s stolen land, stolen from the Palestinians, who were never a nation to begin with, and at any rate were Johnny-come-latelys since the Caananites, Hebrews, Seleucid Greeks, Romans, Persians (briefly), Byzantines, Crusaders, and Turks had the territory before them.

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Comment Of The Day: “Comment Of The Day: A Rittenhouse Verdict Inventory…Part III: Facts Don’t Matter”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

jojo

Russian dolls-style Comments of the Day can be the best feature of Ethics Alarms, when erudite commenters do a tag-team job on complex issues. So it is in this case, with Humble Talent taking off from Steve-O’s astute chain reaction observation.

What is remarkable to me is that the conversations about Rittenhouse’s travails somehow never explored the fact that all three of those he shot were felons with significant criminal records. The first I realized this was when I was directed to Ann Coulter’s piece.

While it is irrefutable that this information should not have been brought to the jury’s attention because it was inherently prejudicial, it is also irrefutable that the fact that the three men were 1) violent lawbreakers and 2) white fatally undercuts much of the Left’s narrative, as mapped out by the news media. It is particularly weird that now, after the verdict and when the proclivities of the three men have finally been widely revealed, the Rittenhouse-Deranged are still talking about them like they were peaceful demonstrators who wanted nothing more than to ensure racial justice, social equity, rainbows and moonbeams for all humankind. Actor-activist (good actor, fatuous activist) Mark Ruffalo’s tweet was a classic of the genre: “We come together to mourn the lives lost to the same racist system that devalues Black lives and devalued the lives of Anthony and JoJo.”

Huh? “Jo-Jo” raped five boys. It’s awfully hard to “devalue” the life of someone like that, who has had negative value to society. If Ruffalo knows this, then his tweet is demented. If he doesn’t, then it’s irresponsible. Either way, shut up and act, Mark.

Here is Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day on the post (by Steve-O-in NJ), “Comment Of The Day: A Rittenhouse Verdict Inventory…Part III: Facts Don’t Matter”

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I don’t know if it makes any difference, but I was thinking about the left’s newly beloved “JoJo” and the narrative that Kyle didn’t have any business being on scene.

We knew, previous to this, that “JoJo” Rosenbaum had just been released from a mental health institution. We knew that he was off his meds. We knew that he had several prior convictions for molesting children. We knew that the bag that he threw at Kyle was filled with toiletries that he took home from the mental institution, and that he had that in part because he hadn’t even gone home to change. He was released the night of the riot and immediately went on about the business of rioting. We know that he appeared hyper-aggressive all night, we know that he called some of the people in Kyle’s group, quote, “niggers”.

Aside from that last sentence, Kyle knew none of this, so it really shouldn’t factor into the actions of Rittenhouse on that fateful August night. But if we’re going to armchair quarterback the plays that Kyle was making, maybe it makes sense to ask questions like “What was “JoJo” doing there?” Because there are a whole lot of reasons to believe that he wasn’t even aware the Blake shooting had occurred.

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Comment Of The Day: A Rittenhouse Verdict Inventory…Part III: Facts Don’t Matter

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

dominos

I’m sorry about the apparent obsession here with the Rittenhouse case, but I believe that the episode has ethical significance on many levels, particularly in the way it demonstrates that toxic progressive bias has headed into end game territory, sort of like with rabies when a victim becomes afraid of water.

What we are seeing and hearing is ugly and would be frightening if it wasn’t so self-evidently irrational. I guess we have seen other examples where political fanaticism causes vast numbers of previously functional Americans to blow out their critical reasoning fuses for all to see, but right now I can’t think of one so striking. Groups that cease to be capable of reason tend not to do very well after a while.

Yes, Steve-O-in NJ has another Comment of the Day, and yes, it’s long, but it touches perceptively on too many important matters to let go by. I especially admire his description of the “chain reaction.” (I could not disagree with his last sentence more, however.)

Here it is, on the post, “A Rittenhouse Verdict Inventory Of Ethics Heroes, Dunces, Villains And Fools, Part III: Facts Don’t Matter”…

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So, the verdict is in and Kyle Rittenhouse walks on all charges. I thought about it, and as an attorney who has occasionally worked civil rights cases I do not see any bases for federal civil rights charges against him. Most of the federal civil rights statute has to do with punishing those who act under color of law to deprive individuals of their constitutional rights. Those statues are generally designed to bring down law enforcement officers who abuse their authority for no good reason. There is also the question of a hate crime, however, there has been no allegation nor proof that anyone he killed was a member of a protected class killed because they were a member of protected class.

The Federal statutes are simply not designed to give the federal government a second bite at every state murder prosecution that fails to make. I suppose the Feds could try to cobble together gun charges or terrorism charges (but that’s a very long stretch). However, they would still have to draw a jury pool from Wisconsin, and all of Wisconsin has now seen this trial and knows this would be just an attempt to punish someone for a crime he was already acquitted of. Jerry Nadler should have known better then to suggest this, but he was simply pandering to his base and his party’s base.

This was another classic domino situation of one breach of the law leading to more as described by the Hon. Guido Calabresi, senior judge of the Second Circuit Court of appeals, in an address at my law school graduation. Things were already tense in this country because George Floyd decided he would break the law and pass fake money, then resist arrest while high as a kite, then Derek Chauvin decided he would break the law and press George Floyd against the ground with his knee until he was fatally injured, then a huge number of people decided they would break the law and riot, then a whole lot of public officials decided they would break the law and fail to do their sworn duty to protect the people. While the nation was still reeling from this, Jacob Blake decided he would break the law and resist a lawful arrest, officers got heavy handed, and still more people decided they would break the law and riot, set fires, and destroy and ransack property that was not theirs to destroy or ransack. Kyle Rittenhouse unwisely decided to get involved in this mess, while armed. Three individuals with lengthy criminal records decided they would break the law and violate common sense and attack Kyle and try to kill him while he was armed for the rifle. Finally Kyle found himself with no alternative but to open fire, killing two and wounding a third.

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Comment Of The Day: “…Andrew Sullivan Finally Sees Clearly That The News Media Is Completely Corrupt And Untrustworthy”

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

idiot meme

This latest opus by Steve-O-in NJ probably qualifies as a rant; I picture him furiously scribbling on paper in a trance, as in “automatic writing” when a medium is channeling Jean Dixon from the beyond. But it’s very good and thoughtful rant. I hope I edited it properly. Oh…I should mention that the tweets above echoing the meme Steve mentions at the start surprised me. I really didn’t think those celebrities could possibly be that stupid.

This is Steve-O-in NJ’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Well What Do You Know! Andrew Sullivan Finally Sees Clearly That The News Media Is Completely Corrupt And Untrustworthy.”

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I saw a meme yesterday that kind of says everything about where the mainstream media and the left (but I repeat myself) are coming from now. It had no picture, it simply said “I want to live in a country where Colin Kaepernick is regarded as a hero and Kyle Rittenhouse is regarded as a terrorist.” I bit my tongue and didn’t say what I was thinking: that ostentatious disloyalty doesn’t make you even close to a hero and let’s let a jury decide what Rittenhouse is, because 1. I wasn’t changing the poster’s mind; and 2. The problem was bigger than those specific examples. Anyone who writes or reposts something like that is in effect saying “I want everyone to think like me and agree with me.” The left and the media have been thinking like that since probably the Clinton days. There’s a reason CNN was then called “the Clinton News Network.”

I have to ask, though, why is Andrew Sullivan just getting this now? Oh, that’s right, the right was opposed to a sudden and seismic cultural shift involving one of the basic building blocks of society, and nothing else mattered, it was all about the belief that heterosexual and homosexual couples were exactly the same and should be treated exactly the same. Single-issue voting is short-sighted, single-issue partisanship is just stupid. Like any other bias, it makes the objective inobjective, the wise foolish, the smart stupid, and the truthful liars.

Dutch missionary Andrew van der Bilj, aka “Brother Andrew” and “God’s Smuggler” used to pray “God, you have made blind eyes see, please make seeing eyes blind,” when he crossed the borders into Communist countries, carrying Bibles and other religious literature that would be considered contraband. Bias seems to do a far better job than God ever did blinding people to a lot more than a few Bibles being brought into an atheistic country.

I wrote three years ago,

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Comment Of The Day: “PEN America’s Ignorant And Sinister Support For School Indoctrination”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Pen

I have a lot to say in response to Curmie’s excellent comment regarding the large writers association somehow deciding the the government threatens free speech by regulating itself. For once, however, I think I’ll take my issues up in a separate post, and perhaps in the comments.

Meanwhile, here is Curmie’s Comment of the Day on the post, “PEN America’s Ignorant And Sinister Support For School Indoctrination…”

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Comment Of The Day: “On Climate Change Fearmongering”

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Climate hysteria

Sarah B. graced Ethics Alarms with a thorough and valuable discussion of the practical weaknesses of the climate change religion, or cult, or whatever it is. Here is her Comment of the Day on the post, “On Climate Change Fearmongering”…

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There is a massive problem with climate change solutions proposed by this summit and many others, and they all come down to an attitude that electricity is as magic. All solutions to climate change seem to ride on the attitude that if we can just get everyone on perfect electricity and have them drive a Tesla, that we can get rid of nasty coal, natural gas, and oil. There are better options (nuclear) and worse options (wind and solar) for that approach, and while I could point out why replacing all fossil fuel electric production with nuclear, wind, or solar would fail to provide adequate electricity at all times from a technical standpoint, that is really unimportant to the discussion, as they all have one existential problem. Electricity cannot replace fossil fuels.

When it comes to replacing fossil fuels as the energy source of transportation, there are several obstacles that have to be overcome, and currently we don’t have any ideas of how to overcome them. Climate change activists are depending on revolutions that may or may not materialize. But something would have to dramatically change to address the fuel needs of heavy machinery, supply chain vehicles, and long-distance travel.

First, we can look at farming equipment. Tractors and combines cannot run long enough or far enough on battery capacity. Batteries just do not have the adequate power to mass ratio to allow these big machines to do their job.

Next, we can look at semis. A group ran a test by driving an unloaded electric semi truck across 1-80 in Wyoming in the summer. That stretch of road is known for three major troublesome spots: the Summit between Cheyenne and Laramie, the greater Elk Mountain Area, and the Three Sisters close to Evanston. These sections are especially difficult for traditional semis in the winter, so a summer trial without a load is somewhat of a joke. However, the report exuberantly exclaimed how well the semi did on the Summit (going down that steep grade, not up it) and the Elk Mountain area was handled with ease (coincidentally without the 60+ mph winds that make that region well known in energy circles for its wind farms on the day in question as they are found mostly in the winter time), but the desperation of the authors was clear when they discussed how the semi completely failed going up and down the mountains referred to as the Three Sisters. The truck struggled up the hills at a maximum of 5 miles an hour, draining the battery and blocking traffic as it dropped an entire lane out of service from a supply chain artery of our nation.

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Comment Of The Day: “KABOOM! Rachel Maddow’s ‘Bias Makes You Stupid’ Classic”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

jounberger2013 filed a Comment of the Day that helpfully dissects the thinking of journalists who have convinced themselves that what Ethics Alarms properly (constantly, perhaps repetitively) classifies as unprofessional bias is merely rational, compassionate thinking.

Here it is, in response to the post, “KABOOM! Rachel Maddow’s ‘Bias Makes You Stupid’ Classic.”

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Our Esteemed Ethicist asked, “Is it possible, as I mused in the last post, that these people don’t know they are biased, dishonest, partisan blights on the culture and enemies of a functioning democracy?”

No, they don’t think they are biased. They think they are reasonable, well-informed, and mainstream. That is the scary part, as their mindset is “you’re either with us or you’re against us”. For example, most Ethics Alarmists here know of my incontrovertible and immutable deep love for Rush, the Canadian Triumvirate. There is a certain media person who worked at WMMS in Cleveland, in the 1970s who had the good fortune of receiving their debut album and playing “Working Man” which exploded in Northeast Ohio, setting Rush on the path toward their inevitable and rightful dominion over modern music. In that one instant, she recognized raw talent and what the known universe would (finally) come to realize as their future influence. Prescient she was. Yet, she considers herself a liberal, as evidenced by her blog posts. She is a wonderful person, having met her and spent time with her – she is really bright, highly educated, engaging, and quick-witted.

I have followed her on social media since the early 2000s, and I think I have posted links to her blog on here before, mostly because her posts drive me nuts in that her reasoning and argument are superficial and sophomoric. Yet, I understand where she comes from, and it is this: She thinks that her positions are middle of the road, based in/on compassion and goodwill. How could you argue with that? She doesn’t want anyone to suffer injustice or inequity. She is not evil and does not intend ill will on those who disagree with her. She thinks she is a centrist or moderate because she has redefined her concepts of what “progressive”, leftist, centrist, right-wing, or fascist mean.

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Comment Of The Day: “More On The Obama-Springsteen Exchange, Since Apparently Its Significance Isn’t Sinking In…”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Since the mainstream media and the blogosphere seems to be paying little attention, I think Ethics Alarms can be forgiven for doing its best to try to keep what is being buried by apathy above ground a little longer…

Here is Curmie’s Comment of the Day on the post, “More On The Obama-Springsteen Exchange, Since Apparently Its Significance Isn’t Sinking In…”:

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I suspect there aren’t too many regular readers of this blog who actually lowered their opinion (as opposed to having it confirmed) of Obama and Springsteen as a result of this exchange, but I’m one.

I actually see this as the flip side of some of the antics of James O’Keefe and his lot: that by exaggerating a real problem beyond recognition, he loses the opportunity to actually make an important point. Imagine if instead of the quotation you cite, he’d said “But most of your audiences were primarily white. And they loved Clarence when he was onstage, but if some of them had run into him in a bar [note past tense!], things might have been very different.”

That would be a true statement, worthy of consideration by all of us. No, not all white Springsteen fans, but some; not certainty of the response, but plausibility; and not the n-word, at least spoken aloud–but perhaps a tension, a distancing that ought not to be there and is worthy of addressing.

That Obama, with something of a reputation as a wordsmith, would say something so profoundly stupid and insulting is indeed deeply problematic. Does this one incident legitimately characterize him as an anti-white racist? Perhaps not… but perhaps so.

As for Springsteen–certainly the working class persona he tries to exude felt a lot more authentic back in ’70s, when it was authentic. I haven’t paid a lot of attention to his more recent stuff, but I still consider myself a fan of the music he wrote and performed a generation or so ago. I’m a bigger fan, though, of the late Warren Zevon. In one of my favorite songs of his, we get this:

“They say, ‘Everything’s alright.’
They say, ‘Better days are near.’
They tell us, ‘These are the good times.’
But they don’t live around here.
Billy and Christie don’t,
And Bruce and Patti don’t.
They don’t live around here.”

What Warren said.

Comment Of The Day: “The New York Times Uses Its Sunday Front Page To Extol Progressive Virtue-Signaling Lawn Signs…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

obxoxious sign

Here is Extradimensional Cephalopod’s Comment of the Day on the post, “The New York Times Uses Its Sunday Front Page To Extol Progressive Virtue-Signaling Lawn Signs…”:

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Here’s the first problem: with the exception of “kindness is everything,” these statements are vacuous. Each one is trivially true when read as written. For most intents and purposes, nobody in their right mind is going to disagree with the statements’ literal interpretations, even though some of them are normative (subjective value judgments) rather than descriptive (objective observations).

The second problem is that many humans are blurred-brains who haven’t developed the ability to use or recognize critical reasoning, so they skip directly from a vacuous statement to, “and therefore I’m right that we should do this thing, and if you don’t agree then you’re stupid and evil, QED.” Whether or not I agree with their conclusion is irrelevant, because they’ve demonstrated their reasoning process is not to be trusted.

This process is how we get things like moral certitudes and “objective scientific truth.” I need to start giving humans lessons on existential epistemology (and charging for it).

First off, moral certitudes don’t exist, but that’s not the same thing as saying that there is no right or wrong. In place of objective morality, I submit the constructive virtue of ethics, which I approach as follows.

People want things, but physical reality limits our ability to get everyone everything they want. There are different things we can choose to do in response to those limitations, so that more people can get more of what they want. There are also principles that help us make choices that are more constructive for society. When we abide by those principles, the choices we make are not only sustainable over time, but even get more and more of us more and more of what we want. That’s what makes ethics a constructive virtue. The choice isn’t “right or wrong” so much as it’s figuring out which options and principles are most constructive in the short and long terms, by its effects and by the precedent it sets.

Secondly, objective scientific facts are a myth, but that’s not the same thing as saying that all statements are equally true. The process (and mindset) of science is about saying, “We did this experiment and this was the result. Here’s the simplest hypothesis that’s consistent with this result, and here are some other hypotheses which we think are also fairly likely.”

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