Comment of the Day

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Verdict: When Your Town Is Being Overrun, It’s Not Racist To Use The Term ‘Overrun.’” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Proving that even banned commenters have their uses, Chris Marschner offered a persuasive and enlightening rebuttal of the contention by a quickly-banned new commenter here that accounts of the problems visited on Springfield, Ohio by an overwhelming influx of Haitian immigrants were tainted by racism.

Chris’s Comment of the Day combines two comments that were piggy-backed in the thread, and here they are, inspired by the post, “Ethics Verdict: When Your Town Is Being Overrun, It’s Not Racist To Use The Term ‘Overrun.’”

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Reuters did a good job spinning the actual data. Medicaid skyrocketing in the last three years; wage growth grew only after the pandemic and dropped faster than a neighboring town’s starting in 2022. Housing costs rose three times faster than in the US as a whole. Unemployment has been rising faster than in neighboring areas and the US as a whole.

Reuters makes the point that wage growth stayed above 6% longer than Dayton or the overall economy, but failed to say that it became more volatile as migrants moved in, dropping faster and farther than either Dayton or the US.

The story also makes statements like “false claims” by residents at community meetings and white supremacist protests during a jazz festival. Both statements are inflammatory and included no evidence to support the claims made.

Reuters has a progressive bias in all its reporting. Reuters wrote:
“More recently, Vance and other Republicans have amplified false claims aired by some residents at weekly city commission meetings. City commissioners in their public comments have pushed back, noting that the vast majority of Haitians are in the country legally and have a right to live where they choose”

The first statement states that locals are liars and the last statement fails to acknowledge that their legal status is exactly what the complaint is about. If Joe Biden had made an executive order giving temporary legal status for anyone in the world, anyone showing up would be here legally. At issue is the administration’s role in creating a massive influx of people who have not had to go through our normal processes to ensure they will not be a charge on society.

They continued,

“It is still a jarring increase from around 3,500 in just a few years – too fast to be reflected yet in Census data and the equivalent of 1.6 million or so new arrivals to New York City. There are growing pains – indeed outright tension – as a result, with sometimes ugly rhetoric at city commission open comment periods. A small group of white supremacists marched through town during a jazz festival in mid-August. For many local civic and business leaders, however, the advantages of having more people to fill jobs, start businesses, and buy goods and services are not lost.”

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Comment of the Day: “First Friday Open Forum of September!” (‘Comment Moderation’ Thread)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

[Tom Parker has issued a useful and perceptive Comment of the Day on a topic that has taken up too much space on Ethics Alarms lately: commenter behavior and my blog moderation practices.

A while back I predicted that “the most important election ever” would bring dedicated ideologues and partisan warriors to Ethics Alarms, and I could have predicted with similar accuracy that they would misbehave, requiring responses from me including admonitions, suspensions, limitations, probation, and banning. Sure enough, more commenters were banned in August than in any previous month in EA’s nearly 15 year history.

We have seen trolls, sealioning specialists, commenters here solely to discredit your host, and participants who qualified for “The Stupidity Rule.” Meanwhile, we have experienced repeated incursions by previously banned commenters, led by, ironically, the self-banned “A Friend,” previously EA’s resident New York Times apologist.

What readers don’t see are the first-time comments that never get out of moderation. Believe it or not, these are seldom critical comments or those that disagree with a post, unless the comment is non-substantive (“You are wrong!’). I ding insulting comments (you get some leeway in insulting me according to your status as a veteran and constructive commenter: at this point, Glenn Logan and Tim LeVier can get away with calling me “Satan”), vulgar comments, ungrammatical comments, racist, sexist and homophobic comments, ad hominem comments, and comments that are so factually wrong that I have little hope that the aspiring commenter can be trusted.

I never censor a comment from an accepted commenter, until that commenter’s banning, if that sad day comes. One famous (or infamous) commenter here, the legendary Ablative Meatshield, employed a style that mixed often abusive and obscene rhetoric with perceptive commentary. Imagine Newt Gingrich if he was addicted to adding “Eat a bag of dicks” to his trenchant observations. I allowed this to go on much too long in a misguided effort to support freedom of expression. I regret it. Blog moderation is hard; it is also an important part of defining what this space is. I continue to learn.]

Here is Tom Parker’s Comment of the Day on the comment moderation thread on yesterday’s open forum.…

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Comment of the Day: Curmie, On “On ‘the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris’: Ten Ethics Observations”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This submission by Ethics Alarms intermittent guest columnist Curmie created a categorization problem. Is it another installment of “Curmie’s Conjectures” (They are all here) ? Should I call it On “the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris”: Ten Ethics Observations, Part 2? Oh, I don’t know: I wrote and posted Part I before 5 am this morning when I woke up after a nightmare and such minutia is beyond me until I get at least two more cups of coffee in me.

Curmie’s analysis (he only stooped to “But Trump!” once) is enhanced in my eyes at least by Curmie’s mention of Christine Vole, the treacherous witness of the prosecution in the classic Billy Wilder film version of “Witness for the Prosecution.” Now, heeeeeeeeeeere’s Curmie!

***

Yesterday, in my first day of teaching (except as an invited guest) in over two years, I closed both my classes by urging skepticism, including of what I tell them. As an example of what I hope to get them to do, I used some of my current research: trying to determine who directed the production of a particular play. The play was staged before it was common practice to include the director’s name was on the program, in publicity materials, or in newspaper reviews.

Conventional wisdom, presented with only a single piece of evidence, suggests that the playwright directed his own play. Several prominent theatre historians all say so, most of them without citing any evidence at all. A couple of other scholars suggest, without explicitly arguing against the playwright as director, that the leading actress took over the function while the normal director for the company was ill and away from the city. They don’t provide much evidence, either.

Based on a number of factors, I think it’s about 98% certain that conventional wisdom is wrong, but 1). 98% is different from 100%, and 2). I’m not convinced of the counter-arguments, either. Maybe when I hear back from the company’s archivist my impressions will change. Maybe there isn’t enough primary source material to make a difference; maybe I’ll be able to prove (“beyond reasonable doubt”) that the playwright didn’t direct the play. Maybe I’ll be left with a speculative piece that claims “the preponderance of the evidence” is that he didn’t. Maybe I’ll end up agreeing with conventional wisdom. But I’m going to do everything I can to get all the evidence before finalizing my opinion, and I’m not going to say something is true if I only suspect that it might be.

CP, on the other hand, immediately loses all (and yes, I mean all) credibility by the claim that “you cannot deny the factual accuracy of what I am about to say.” Actually, yes, I can. Next.

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Comment of the Day: “As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With ‘Think of the Children!’ Porn: The Sequel”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This is an unusual Comment of the Day by Chris Marschner (on the post,“As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With ‘Think of the Children!’ Porn”), but it makes an important point, indeed, the crucial point that exposes the intellectual dishonesty of the Times’ “Think of the Children!” campaign to demonize Israel as it tries to defend its right to exist.

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I reworked the original Times story to reflect a similar situation in the mid-20th century. All I did was change the name and the players. If the Times had written its report this way, then the Brits, the French, the Poles, the Czecks and others would be goose-stepping to their new bosses and Israel would not exist.

It is obvious to any rational thinker that when a nation faces existential peril from zealots who believe they are the rightful heirs of the entire region and that no one except the devout believers of Mohammed may live peacefully there, that when they are attacked they must eliminate the immediate as well as the long term threat in order to minimize civilian losses. We did this twice in the Pacific and Europe when despots saw opportunities for empire building.

My NYT rewrite:

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Comment of the Day: “The Totalitarian Left’s Reaction To Trump’s Interview With Elon Musk Should Tell Voters All They Need To Know About ‘What’s Going On Here’”

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

I usually don’t elevate to Comment of the Day status comments that illustrate common fallacies and lack of perception. I’ve done it a few times: I know it can seem mean. But Cici’s Comment of the Day so exemplifies the abysmal level of comprehension and critical thought so many of our fellow citizens suffer from, thus making them prime targets of misdirection in this election year, that I felt attention should be paid.

Here was Cici’s comment, one of many she offered, on the post about the foreign and domestic Left arguing that a U.S. Presidential candidate should not be allowed free rein to say whatever he chose to in a discussion with Elon Musk, who owns the platform where the discussion was taking place:

“Third parties decide what you read and hear all the time. And I’m not even arguing for that so I’m not sure where you got that from. I trust that people in charge of these platforms are able to factcheck properly.

I don’t share in your mistrust of “institutions.” I think that leads to people not knowing what’s even true or not. You’re free to disagree with that notion.”

Analysis:

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Comment of the Day: “Accountability? What’s Accountability? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Still Has Her Job…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I have neglected Comments of the Day of late I know, and I am sorry about that. There have been many excellent comments, and also many I have not had time to read carefully: the responses to the “What do you believe?” post alone generated many strong COTD candidates (and they are still coming in).

I might as well start with a comment I said I would post under the designation three weeks ago, and whiffed: Michael R.’s brief arguing that the Secret Service’s epic botch in Pennsylvania that only avoided getting Donald Trump killed by the intervention of moral luck was no accident.

Is the EA post that inspired Michael moot? After all, Kim Cheatle finally resigned after the indignity of having Congress members of both parties tell her to. However, the information that has been drip, drip, dripping out about the near-assassination has not disproved Michael’s thesis; if anything it bolsters his argument.

Ultimately, the question, as it so frequently does in the Age of the Great Stupid, comes down to Hanlon’s Razor: Is it intentional malice, or is it incompetence? The COTD concludes, “To cling to an incredibly unlikely incompetence argument in light of a much more likely explanation is only required if you don’t want to acknowledge something you are unwilling to accept.”

Maybe, but I will still cling even while admitting that other recent Hanlon’s Razor mysteries that have been popping up (“Did Democrats and the media just miss the fact that Joe Biden was a proto-vegetable because they are lazy, biased and inept, or did they deliberately participate in a conspiracy to deceive the American people ‘to save democracy’?” is one obvious example) demand the malice label.

Here’s Michael R’s Comment on the Day on the post, “Accountability? What’s Accountability? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Still Has Her Job, and Only the Prominence of a Confederacy of Ethics Dunces Can Explain That.”

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You have to make a lot of hand wringing arguments to state:

(1) They didn’t put snipers on the roof that THEY identified as a threat.

(2) They didn’t secure the building despite the threat of the roof.

(3) They didn’t notice the guy on the roof despite the fact that the crowd had been taking pictures of him for 25+ minutes.

(4) They let a 20 year old kid drive up, unload a ladder, climb onto the roof spread out his blanket, assemble the rifle and take 7 or 8 shots accidentally. That is the most generous assessment. If THEY left the ladder to the roof there for access, it is worse.

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Comment of the Day: “Hello. This Is Mira!….Trump Derangement Destroyed Her Brain…”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

AM Golden has delivered a fascinating Comment of the Day describing a phenomenon I was barely aware of: the practice of paying celebrities to attend conventions that have little of nothing to do with what the celebrity does or is famous for.

The COTD was inspired by my commentary on the brain-meltingly stupid anti-Trump “X” screed by one-time Academy Award winning actress Mira Sorvino, now on the shady side of what turned into a disappointing career. (To be fair, she was black-balled in her prime by Harvey Weinstein for not accommodating his sexual demands when he was one of biggest power-brokers in Hollywood.)

Incidentally, appropo of subsequent events, Mira’s polemic proclaimed Trump as the second coming of Hitler and said that if he was elected, it would mean the end of America as we know it. And as it is beginning to look like he will be elected…what is the patriotic thing to do to save the nation, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

But I digress…

The convention practice is clearly a cognitive dissonance scale stunt in part: an organization that sponsors a generally admired and beloved public figure as a “guest” gets a boost up the positive end of the scale. Or the celebrity is more like a freak show attraction: Come meet Joey Buttafuoco! Kato Kaelin! And a convention that features a professional leach like Mary Trump (above)? Don’t expect me to register.

AM’s Comment of the Day is also something of an ethics quiz. Don’t jump to the end: that’s cheating.

Here is AM Golden’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Hello. This Is Mira! She Used To Be A Successful Hollywood Actress Until Trump Derangement Destroyed Her Brain. Won’t You Give a Tax-Deductible Donation To Defeat This Terrible Disease?”

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Comment of the Day: “Rueful Ethics Observations On This Biden Campaign Email…”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Ryan Harkins’ Comment of the Day is not so much about the inspiring post as it is a meta analysis of the dynamic of commenting at Ethics Alarms generally. I loved the comment the second it appeared, and now seems a particularly propitious time to post it, in light of some recent threads

Here it is…

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There is something I think is missing in the dialogue between conservatives and liberals. Certainly one aspect of it is that new commenters come into the fray relatively fresh, by which I mean they haven’t (as far as I can tell) spent any time reviewing Jack’s enormous output on the blog. Before I ever dared to comment, I spent time reading through a chunk of Ethics Alarm’s history to see what Jack had already previously said on certain topics. I read the comment policy. I read through the rationalization list. And I still get blindsided every now and then by the fact that I haven’t fully imbibed what Jack has written here.

I do think just jumping into the fray and shouting “You’re wrong, here’s why!” even when there are good arguments to be made is foolhardy, because it ignores the layers and layers of nuance that have been developed on the blog over many years.

And this leads to the central observation I’m making. One way of describing how any of us looks at the world is through our biases, but biases are just one part of the entire paradigm each of us exist within. Every foundational belief, every bias, every opinion, every experience, every bit of accrued evidence builds up this paradigm. Convincing someone from a different paradigm of something that runs counter to that paradigm is difficult because it involves breaking down that entire paradigm. Sometimes that does happen; that’s why people convert from one religion to another, or stop supporting one economic model for a radically different one, or change political parties, or decide that string theory isn’t the grand unified theory it has been touted as. But in an initial engagement with someone, the likelihood of getting someone to shift his paradigm from a few simple exchanges is highly unlikely.

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quote of the Month: Banned EA Commenter ‘David’” (2)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

As I just banned another misbehaving commenter who stopped off here just to show he was smarter than me and to defend Snopes (“…But for Snopes?”), it seems a propitious time to post this Comment of the Day, the second (the first is here) to be inspired by my post about another banned commenter calling me a “Trump supporting fascist.” And he was much smarter than the jerk I just banned.

Here is A M Golden’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quote of the Month: Banned EA Commenter ‘David’”:

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When I was about 11 years old, my grandparents’ church showed a movie called “The Hiding Place” about a Dutch family that hid Jews from the Nazis. I was fascinated by the idea that there could exist a country so very unlike America where people could be punished for helping others. Since I was already very interested in history, I began what is now a 40-plus-year study of the Third Reich and Hitler, in particular.

I do not consider myself an expert; however, I am certainly more knowledgeable than the average layperson. I have read hundreds of books over the years concerning Nazi Germany and not just the military build-up and harassment of Jews. I’ve read a lot about the culture, the education and the day-to-day life of Germans.

And, of course, I’ve read multiple biographies of Hitler himself. Not every biography is created equal, though (Don’t get me started on movies about Hitler. The last one I tried to watch was a TV movie called “Hitler: The Rise of Evil” starring an otherwise fine actor named Robert Carlyle. I turned it off after 10 minutes due to the blatant misrepresentations and outright fabrications of Hitler’s early life. Apparently, the expert consultant had his name taken off of it for the same reason). Some biographies are pretty bad and postulate things that are not likely to be true. A good example of this are the ones that try to push the idea that Hitler was a homosexual.

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Comment of the Day: “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: the Woke Shackles Tighten…”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

I wanted to get the previous post about artificial intelligence and the unintended consequences of technology up before this timely Comment of the Day by jdkazoo123 from yesterday regarding social media. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t consider all of the social pathogens he was loosing on civilization when he launched Facebook, or even if he foresaw some of them, he went ahead anyway. After all, there were millions of dollars to be made. The message of this COTD is, in brief, “Now what?”

The alarm as well as the puzzlement are justified. Still, one cannot pretend that the benefits that Zuck and others believed were being conferred on society by social media are insubstantial. I’ve experienced one of them very recently: through Facebook I have been able to let my friends, associates and colleagues know about the tragic sudden death of my wife, and to say that the support they are still providing me has been crucial to my sanity and survival is an understatement. Social media also has greatly reduced the power and influence of journalism, which, since journalists have been abusing those and the public’s trust for decades, is a win for truth, justice, and the American way. Nevertheless, the negative effects of the platforms are substantial, as jd notes. Are these benefits worth the costs? Don’t ask me right now: I’m biased.

Here is jdkazoo123’s Comment of the Day on the post, “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: the Woke Shackles Tighten…”

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I don’t know if this is a reason to regulate social media, but it is an example of why they are so different and troubling. I think they are a big cause of the polarization that we see here at EA and across the country. I think about my dad and his brother, my uncle. Even though my uncle was 7 years older, they were very close by the time I showed up. I grew up seeing my uncle about 1-2 a year. And as I got older, I noticed my dad and his brother joshed a lot about politics. My uncle was hard core Republican from suburban Pittsburgh, an executive in manufacturing. My dad was a solid Democrat working in military intelligence and the AF reserves. It was fun to see them josh. My uncle would say “Kid, your dad thinks I’m a Republican because I’m rich. What he doesn’t understand is I’m rich because I’m a Republican!”

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