Ethics Dunces

Ethics Dunce: Conservative Website “The American Thinker”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

monkey-thinker

It’s not just progressives who shut down dissent.

The American Thinker, a conservative website that Ethics Alarms has referenced from time to time, announced that it is shutting down its comments section, a move quite a few political sites have taken in recent years. Then, the next day, it published a jaw-dropping justification (or something) that justified nothing. I’m posting the whole, awful, self-indicting thing, and interjecting my comments as it proceeds:

Yesterday, we announced that we are closing comments at American Thinker.  We immediately received a couple of hundred very unhappy, angry, and sometimes insulting emails about that decision.  Without divulging why we made that decision, here are a few points to ponder.

Without divulging why? What’s the big secret? Why the tease? Why write this whatever it is and not explain the reasoning for cutting off debate and feedback?

First, 90% of the assumptions in the emails were wrong.  This meant that a lot of people were theorizing in advance of their data.  America is currently deeply destabilized, and things are happening that most people can’t imagine.  Sometimes, those things hit close to home.

I don’t know what this is supposed to mean either. What is The American Thinker saying? That its posts are unclear? That its readers are idiots? That those who disagree with its authors are too biased and emotional for their opinions to count? These would be important questions to answer on the site if anyone could ask them…

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/15/2021: Tapper, AOC, Fox, And The Brick

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Trump inaug riots

I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to finding out how the media and Democrats distinguish the “mostly peaceful protests” in Washington around Biden’s inauguration next week and the equivalent in 2017, when the antifa was going around punching “Nazis” in the face. Funny, the fact that Hillary Clinton stated that she was part of “the resistance” and that the sainted John Lewis said that Trump was not a “legitimate President had no influence on that riot whatsoever…

1. I’m sure this is just a coincidence. During the shutdown which effectively killed the economy that was President Trump’s primary argument for re-election, I successfully fought off the nagging little voice in my head that said that this was a deliberate effort by Democrats to use the pandemic as a excuse to wreck the Trump administration’s record. I mean, who would be that Machiavellian to put millions out of work just to win an election? Then the teacher’s unions used their influence to keep the schools closed—but I still ignored that little voice.

And I’m still ignoring it now, but I have to say, the timing of this would support a conspiracy theory…

stephen_miller_lockdown_narrative_changes_01-15-2021

Nah. Can’t be.

2. Is it possible that Fox News doesn’t understand why it exists? Fox has had a catastrophic ratings crash since election night, when it called Arizona for Biden ahead of several other organizations, seemingly pointing to a Trump defeat. This, combined with Chris Wallace’s questionable fairness to the President when he moderated the first debate, caused an avalanche of conservatives to abandon Fox News for NewsMax, which is surging. Last week Fox News finished third behind MSNBC and CNN, which hasn’t happened since the Clinton administration.

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Comment Of The Day: “Why Don’t College Students Believe In Free Speech? Because They Are Taught By Totalitarianism Advocates…”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Reich

Commenter Crella’s brief observation, which I just now read, is notable for many reasons. First, it was news to me. I spend a ridiculous amount of time (during much of which, my wife and business partner reminds me, I should be making money, writing one of the books on the drawing board, creating a new ethics seminar, writing legal ethics parody song lyrics, etc) tracking ethics developments, and I still miss so much. Second, it’s an example of so many themes here: the totalitarian tilt of the Left, the criminalization of politics, the beyond insane partisan divide, the Great Stupid. Third, the story is a collision of so many ethics train wrecks, its hard to sort the carnage out. I’ll be back at the end, but here’s Crella’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Why Don’t College Students Believe In Free Speech? Because They Are Taught By Totalitarianism Advocates Like Duke Professors Bill Adair and Philip Napoli. That’s Why”:

Robert Reich (just typing his name makes my blood boil) has a new video out, calling for prosecution of Trump supporters for infecting Congressmen. ‘They should be charged with involuntarily manslaughter if any of the Congressmen they infected dies! Two more tested positive as I taped this’

Greeeeeat idea! Prosecuting people because you think they might have given you a disease. The liberals on my Facebook page are lapping it up: “ I agree they should be prosecuted!”. So much for having any standard of proof. If they can prove unequivocally that any of the congressmen and women who get corona now and have tested positive this week didn’t have Christmas parties didn’t have New Year’s parties never left their homes didn’t have big gatherings, didn’t travel, then I might think it possible they were infected by the people who stormed into the capital. Otherwise, seriously!?

I’m back.

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Does Anyone Understand How Twitter Could Post This?

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

Twitter Tweet

Twitter has been on a banning binge, including the President of the United States, and it chooses now to grandstand about open internet principles?Forget hypocrisy; this is closer to satire. What’s going on here?

Some theories:

  • Twitter Public Policy missed a crucial memo.
  • Some rogue intern is trying to make Twitter look ridiculous.
  • Twitter is gaslighting us.
  • The company is incompetent.
  • The company thought it would be funny to post a misleading tweet that would, under its own policy would mandate suspending Twitter’s account.
  • It literally believes that Donald Trump is an exception to all standards and principles.
  • Emulating the President it just helped elect, it has concluded that the American public only pays attention to what you say, not what you do.

Anything else?

Wait..A Company Did WHAT To Its Own Employees??? WHAAAAT?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

KABOOM!

Head explodes

I know there have been companies that treated their employees worse, but still, this story is truly horrible.

Internet service and website company GoDaddy apologized to its employees for not having a Christmas party this year—pandemic you know—but announced with a cheery card that the company would make it up with a holiday bonus instead.

Go daddy fake

Who wouldn’t prefer a bonus to a party? All they had to do, they were told by the email from HappyHoliday@GoDaddy.com,

Go Daddy 2

…was to click on a a link asking them them to verify their identity by entering their company login credentials. About 500 eager employees signed up.

A few days later, they received another email from the company informing them that they had flunked a company phishing test. The bonus offer was fake, and because they had fallen for it, they would have to attend a remedial class on Internet security.

If fact, GoDaddy didn’t give out any bonuses this year.

What’s wrong with GoDaddy’s conduct?

How about…everything?

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From The “Scared Yet?” Files…Ethics Dunce: Cumulus Media; Ethics Hero: Mark Levin

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

zipping the lip

It’s interesting, isn’t it? The Washington Post, which has been suppressing news unfavorable to progressives and Democrats for years, delivered a thorough and competent report on conservative Cumulus Media muzzling its hosts regarding doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

The Post reports:

Cumulus Media, which employs some of the most popular right-leaning talk-radio hosts in the United States, has told its on-air personalities to stop suggesting that the election was stolen from President Trump — or else face termination.…

“We need to help induce national calm NOW,” Brian Philips, executive vice president of content for Cumulus, wrote in an internal memo, which was first reported by Inside Music Media. Cumulus and its program syndication arm, Westwood One, “will not tolerate any suggestion that the election has not ended. The election has been resolved and there are no alternate acceptable ‘paths.’ ” The memo adds: “If you transgress this policy, you can expect to separate from the company immediately.”

Some comments, in no particular order:

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Unethical Tweet Of The Month—But Funny!: The Biden Transition Team

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Biden tw

Huh.

What am I missing here? Biden promised last week,

Biden Promise

Now, I could be wrong, but when you give “priority” to some groups of Americans over others, that doesn’t seem like being a President “for” all Americans to me. That sounds like bias, favoritism, and discrimination.

I know: objecting to white, male second class citizenship makes you a sexist white supremacist, but I just can’t reconcile these two tweets. Can you?

All facetiousness aside, I think this is hilarious. The Democrats don’t even think they have to try to make sense, be consistent or not blatantly lie. The arrogance is magnificent. They really think everyone is stupid. They need to read more Greek tragedy. Hubris kills, and the joke will very likely be on them.

Pelosi’s Unconscionable “Snap Impeachment,” Part I: Welcome to Plan T

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

T

In Ethics Alarms’ compilation of the previous 19 attempts at removing President Trump since his election had been stalled at Plan S, the unconstitutional, cynical and non-substantive impeachment of President Trump on spurious grounds in 2019. It’s lack of validity was demonstrated by the fact that neither the news media nor Democrats mentioned the sham during the 2020 Presidential campaign. In the introduction to the list, I wrote,

When Plan S, which late novelist Robert Ludlum might have called “The Ukrainian Perversion” if it had been one of his novels, fails like the rest, or if President Trump is re-elected, the list will keep growing. As scholar Victor Hanson Davis has pointed out, the sheer number of these successive plans belies the claim that this is not an ongoing attempt at a soft coup.

As it turned, out I was more right than I intended to be. Never did I suspect that Democrats would continue to try to remove the President before the end of his term even if they won the 2020 Presidential election, but they are doing so because the other 19 attempts failed. Since this cannot reasonably be called a soft coup, since the Democrats have already won the White House, Plan T must be recognized for what it is: an act of pure hate and vengeance, and a deliberate, calculated insult to Trump’s supporters as well as those citizens who believe that that their government should not behave like third-world failed state.

The rest of this post will be added to “Presidential Impeachment/Removal Plans, 2016 to 2020”:

Plan T (added 1/9/21): Trump should be impeached for “inciting a riot” with his speech to supporters on January 6, as Congress gathered to officially approve the states’ electoral college vote making Joe Biden the 46th President. The transcript is here.

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Further Observations On The Pro-Trump Rioting At The Capitol

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments

Capitol riots

I wasn’t able to track everything that was going on yesterday, at the Capitol, in the media, and in cyberspace. I confess: I didn’t even try to listen to the news networks. I know their biases, assumed, correctly, that the rioting would just give the news media perceived license to unleash all of the hate for President Trump they might have left unexpressed over their four years of resistance. I don’t respect these people, I don’t trust them, and I don’t care what they think or say. They are at least as responsible for the violence as the President; I would argue that they are more responsible.

Here are some ethics observations on matters that came to my attention since the post on this topic last night:

1. I’ll repeat this one:

First and foremost, anyone who did not condemn all of the George Floyd/Jacob Blake/Breonna Taylor/ Black Lives Matters rioting that took place this summer and fall is ethically estopped from criticizing this episode.

That covers almost all of the mainstream media, Joe Biden, “The Squad.” and many others. Now that I have checked, virtually all of the conservative media and its pundits have unequivocally condemned those who invaded the Capitol yesterday as they should.

2. The President’s statements about the rioting following the one I quoted were irresponsible, but about what I would have expected. Conservative writer Tyler O’Neil, who, like me, has chronicled the wretched way Trump has been treated by the AUC since his election, wrote (in part), in an admirable post titled, “Trump Needs to Forcefully Condemn the Rioters, Not Coddle Them”:

Never in my life did I expect to see the president of the United States refuse to unequivocally condemn a mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol. There is no place for political violence in America, and the president needs to be the first person to always insist upon that. Tragically, President Donald Trump not only failed to denounce the mob but even praised some of them, essentially coddling rioters….

Trump’s comments remind me of the way Joe Biden responded to the Black Lives Matter and antifa riots over the summer. Biden asked protesters to remain peaceful, but he also repeatedly praised the protests that devolved into riots and condemned America’s “systemic racism,” repeating the arguments that inflamed the riots in the first place. Biden refused to full-throatedly condemn the noxious ideology behind the riots. Like Biden, Trump has called for peace even while suggesting that this political violence followed from a legitimate grievance. Yet even at his worst moments, Biden did not say “we love you” to antifa and he did not insist that riots were the natural response to systemic racism.

He continued,

The 2020 election was not a pristine exercise of democracy, as many legacy media outlets have claimed, but it wasn’t a “steal,” either. As Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) pointed out, it is unlikely that the very serious irregularities and mistakes in the 2020 election were responsible for Biden’s win. Trump’s legal team had many chances to present evidence in court, and when push came to shove, they caved.

It is important for Americans to demand election reform after 2020, but it is also essential for them to accept that Biden won…President Trump decided he would fight the loss, which is his right. Yet the president did not just call for recounts or raise specific problems — he repeatedly claimed that he won by a “landslide.” He also cited the 74 million Americans who voted for him as an achievement. That 74 million number is indeed an achievement — but if the president says the election results are in doubt, he should not brag about the election results. Tragically, Trump’s supporters were primed to listen to him, rather than the legacy media and other sources, because the legacy media has proven itself heinously biased against Trump, again and again. … a Media Research Center poll found that many Americans who voted for Joe Biden said they would not have done so if they had heard about one of eight key election-related news stories that the legacy media suppressed (like allegations of Joe Biden’s personal connection to Hunter Biden’s corruption). If these Americans had not voted for Biden, Trump would have won the election.…

Trump did not win, however, and his rhetoric after the election has been dangerous. The president never encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol, but he did support various schemes to overturn the election results, including crackpot theories about the vice president’s ability to reject Electoral College votes from certain states. (Mike Pence wisely refused to take this course.)

When Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Trump had a moral duty to vocally condemn their lawless attack. This situation also gave him an opportunity to demonstrate that he supported law and order more than Joe Biden had over the summer.

Instead, Trump arguably proved himself worse than Biden. The president coddled violent elements among his supporters, even when they broke into the People’s House. This was despicable. Trump’s comments were beyond the pale.

The president needs to reverse course. He should follow the lead of Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who called for the mob to face “prosecutions to the fullest extent of the law.” He should not equivocate or suggest that it was natural for some of his supporters to break into the Capitol. He certainly should not praise them or declare his “love” for them.

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Ethics Observations On The Pro-Trump Rioting At The Capitol

/ Jack Marshall / 82 Comments

DC riots

1. First and foremost, anyone who did not condemn all of the George Floyd/Jacob Blake/Breonna Taylor/ Black Lives Matters rioting that took place this summer and fall is ethically estopped from criticizing this episode.

That means I can, and will, condemn it as stupid, useless, self-destructive and anti-democratic violence, but most Democrats, progressives and media pundits cannot.

2. Representative quote of the day: “Stop this bullshit right now…This should be condemned. I’m saddened and disappointed by what I’ve seen.”—Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R).

3. From the President: “You have to go home now. We have to have peace. I know how you feel, but go home in peace.”

4. The President did not “incite” this riot, but those who have essentially blamed him for everything imaginable for four years of course are saying this now. I seldom quote Glenn Reynolds, who is quite a bit too doctrinaire Right for me, but I will this time, because he’s right:

“With 40% of the country thinking the election was stolen, this was to be expected — especially after the unified voice of the media saying for years that if you feel disenfranchised it’s okay to riot. Our ruling class, and particularly our media, have been playing with fire for years and I hope that this will be enough to shock them into more sensible behavior. But so far they’ve not lived up to my hopes.”

With the nation facing what was going to be an unusually bitter election, Democrats deliberately pushed through a mail-in ballot scheme guaranteed to make a Biden victory, if it occurred, suspicious, and the news media exceeded even past extremes in refusing to give both candidates fair coverage. This placed the President and Republicans in the position of meekly accepting a corrupt fete accompli or risk inflaming anger that could easily burst into violence by challenging it legally and rhetorically. On Ethic Alarms, I have advocated the former approach, unsatisfactory as it is and contrary to my nature, for exactly the reasons made clear today.

5. More than anything else, the rioting was stupid, stupid, stupid. It didn’t even have the beneficial effects (for the activists) of the Black Lives Matter riots. This fiasco undercut the also ill-conceived GOP protest in Congress of the election results. Of course it did.

6. The Democrats who are calling for impeachment or a 25th Amendment removal of the President based on this just show how obsessed and unmoored to reason and reality so many Democrats are. But look at the list: Ted Lieu, Gwen Moore, Ayanna Pressley, Ed Markey, Illhan Omar… these officials spewed hate at the President and his supporters for four years, and when the violence finally erupted, they are shocked and outraged.

7. And let me give a special call out to the Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, a nearly unparalleled ass, who declared a curfew in Northern Virginia just to make the D.C. disruptions seem more ominous than they were.