Government & Politics

Sunday Afternoon Ethics Reflections, 11/20/2022, Part I: The Nuremberg Trials And Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This time I’m separating the usual intro to these ethics potpourris with the enumerated stories. I began by noting that this is the anniversary of the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials in 1945, as notable an ethics milestone as one could imagine, from several perspectives. The trials were an admirable effort to make grand statement about the line of inhuman evil that even war could not justify and that a world would not countenance. They were also significantly hypocritical, just as the post-Civil War trial of Andersonville Prison commander Henry Wirz, the sole judicial precedent for Nuremberg, was hypocritical, punishment inflicted on the losers of a terrible war that could easily have been brought against the war’s victors if the results had been reversed.

There really was no enforceable international law to base the Nuremberg Trials on, making the trials illegal if not unethical. Did they stop genocide? No, and one could argue that the show trails didn’t even slow genocide down. They did, I guess, make people think; one important result of the trials was that the films of liberated death camps, made by U.S. troops and supervised by the great Hollywood director George Stevens, were finally shown. How much the trials made people think is much open to debate. I have always been fascinated by the issues raised by the Nuremberg Trials, and Abby Mann’s 2001 stage version of “Judgment at Nuremberg” was one of the productions I oversaw at The American Century Theater. Directed by Joe Banno, it included post show discussions after every performance, some with D.C. area historians, lawyers and judges as guests. Incredibly, I felt, the show had never been produced in the Washington D.C. area, professionally or professionally. Disgracefully is perhaps the better word. TACT’s was a professional, thoughtful and excellent production, yet the Washington Post refused to review it. “Dated,” was their verdict on most of my theater’s productions. The apathy about “Judgment at Nuremberg” was a major factor in persuading me to end my theater’s 20 year-long mission of presenting neglected American stage works of historical, cultural, theatrical or ethical significance.

But I digress. While I was checking to see whether I had noted this anniversary before (I had not), I found the following post, which was the earliest Ethics Alarms entry featuring a reference to the Nuremberg Trials. Written in 2012, it makes fascinating reading today, so here it is. One nostalgic note: Among the commenters on that post more than a decade ago were Michael Boyd (last heard from on this date ten years ago), Brook Styler (final comment), Chase Martinez ( left in 2015), Julian Hung (last heard from in August of last year), Danielle (who wished me a Merry Christmas in 2016, and vanished), Modern Knight ( final comment in 2017), and several one-time commenters who never returned. But Michael Ejercito was among them, speaking of loyalty. The good kind.

The Donald’s Dangerous Ethics: Loyalty Trumps Honesty On “Celebrity Apprentice”

Continue reading →

The Great Stupid, Global Edition: Ethics Observations On The New U.N. Climate Change Fund

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I’ve let Major Clipton (from the Ethics Alarms TV and Movie Clips collection, #9 of 27) make the first observation, which is that this is nuts, and that it ought to be obvious to everyone that it’s nuts.

In case you missed it, ” Nearly200 countries concluded two weeks of talks early Sunday in which their main achievement was agreeing to establish a fund that would help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the pollution spewed by wealthy nations that is dangerously heating the planet,” according to the New York Times.

The United States has reportedly “agreed” to contribute a billion dollars to the fund. Well…

1. The U.S. diplomats can’t “agree” to give away a billion dollars. Only Congress can do that. If you want a single reason to be glad the Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives while falling on their collective, incompetent faces during the “pink ripple,” this is it. If…and it’s a big if…the new Speaker of the House can keep his troops in line, the U.N.’s Robin Hood Fund should be DOA.

2. The Biden Administration has exploded the National Debt like no other peacetime administration in history, and seems to be under the mistaken belief that taxpayer funds are just cryptocurrency—you, know funny money. The bigger the debt the more interest the U.S. pays on it, and the same regime that has exploded the debt has also created inflation that makes the debt more expensive. In fiscal 2022 alone, the federal government made $475 billion in net interest payments. It was “only” $352 billion the prior year, according to the US Treasury Department. That is more than the government spent on veterans’ benefits and transportation combined. But hey, why not just give away a billion dollars that will be mostly used to line the pockets of the corrupt and incompetent leaders of those “poor, vulnerable countries.”

Continue reading →

At Last! A Systemic Racism Accusation That I Almost Agree With. Almost.

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

CNN suddenly discovered this week that state lotteries are regressive and overwhelming exploit poor people and minorities. Too bad these inquiring, always-alert-to-new-issues journalists don’t read Ethics Alarms (but then, few do). I raised this issue in many posts, notably here (in 2010), here (1n 2012), here (also in 2012), and here (in 2016). The news media being shocked–-shocked!—that lotteries are cynical, unethical devices to deal with state budget deficits by legislators who don’t have the guts to raise taxes is like anyone who is surprised to see the cryptocurrency scam come crashing down. Welcome to the party, pals! (You incompetent morons…)

The CNN piece this week interviewed critics calling lotteries in general and PowerBall in particular a form of systemic racism that targets poor black and brown communities across America. Researches told wide-eyed CNN talking heads that despite the extreme low chance of winning, state lotteries aggressively market the lottery to sell tickets at higher rates to low-income communities, who are vulnerable to get rich quick without working schemes. Well of COURSE they market the lotteries: it makes the state millions of dollars! Why would they have a lottery and not market it? CNN also noted a report from 1999 finding that black Americans, high-school dropouts, and low-income citizens played the lottery on a more frequent basis. 

Gee, I’m stunned. Who would have suspected that, except for the fact that everyone knew this would be the case before the first state lottery was approved many moons ago. State lotteries are just the old, illegal numbers racket nationalized. Who played the numbers? Poor people. For heaven’s sake, the dirt poor denizens of Catfish Row in “Porgy and Bess’ are shown playing the numbers (and singing!) What a shock: the linear descendants of those player are also the primary targets and market for today’s lotteries.

CNN needed researchers to point this out to them?

Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Adam Frisch

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Adam Frisch, the former Aspen city councilman running to defeat hard-right, Donald Trump-backing (and Trump-backed) GOP Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, once again raises the contentious question on Ethics Alarms of whether someone can be an ethics hero by simply doing what was once understood by all to be the right, proper and civilized thing to do.

The policy here is that such conduct is not only heroic but important. Ethical societal and cultural norms are being challenged all the time, altered, edited, mutated, distorted and destroyed. It requires courage, responsibility, integrity and resilience to hold to a standard that is under attack. Once upon a time, before Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Stacey Abrams and, of course, Donald Trump and mail-in voting, it was understood in American politics that the way our system was supposed to work, and how it would work best, was for losing political candidates to graciously concede after they had lost an election, however close it might be.

Continue reading →

“Bias Makes You Stupid,” Senior Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

That’s Dustin Hoffman in “Little Big Man” above, which he narrates as “Jack Crabbe,” a 121-year-old survivor of Custer’s Last Stand.

It is amazing to me that anyone seriously argues that elected officials, judges and other individuals with challenging jobs should NOT be required to retire at a reasonable age. [Yes, I omitted “not” in the original post. Idiot.] Many do so argue, however, especially those who are past that reasonable age, whatever it may be. Here’s a letter in the New York Times today; let’s call the writer “Jerry”….

Re “Biden Facing a Big Decision on His Future” (front page, Nov. 14):

Yet another article casting doubt on President Biden’s fitness to run again because of his age: 80 this coming Sunday. On the front page no less, as we celebrate his key role in dodging the predicted red wave.

Next month I turn 84. I still work at my computer every day, practice yoga regularly and ride my bike 10 to 20 miles a week. For sure, I can’t run as fast, or recall every name with the same ease, but in my mind I still feel young most days. And I’m far from alone among my cohort.

Eighty is the new 60. We need to get used to it as the baby boomers begin to turn 80 in just three years.

When we pick a presidential candidate, age is less important than character, experience, wisdom, judgment, kindness, resilience, mental health and track record, to name a few. Every candidate will have his or her flaws, but it’s insulting and foolish that someone should be disqualified simply based on age.

Continue reading →

Weird Tales Of The Great Stupid: The 10-Year-Old’s Sexual Assault

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Is there any time in U.S. history other than the Age of the Great Stupid that this could have occurred?

NBC News reports that a fourth grader was summarily suspended from the Holly Hill School in Volusia County, Florida after he hugged a school counselor late last month and, the counselor alleged, ‘grabbed her left breast” in the process. elementary school. The child now faces a potential misdemeanor battery charge after she filed a complaint with police.

The counselor—I wonder what she’s qualified to counsel about? — doesn’t have to give her name, thanks to a Florida law that allows “crime victims”—you know, like elementary school counselors who are sexually assaulted by hormone-crazed 10-year-olds—can remain anonymous.

Continue reading →

Finally Giving Cherokee Nation A Delegate In The House Is An Ethics No-Brainer

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The  treaty imposed on the Cherokee Nation in 1835 facilitated the Trail of Tears, and was the surest sign yet that the eventual fate of North America’s native population was going to be ugly, violent, and tragic. But the Treaty of New Echota, which forced the Cherokee to relinquish their ancestral lands in the South, also included the promise that the Cherokee Nation would be “entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives of the United States whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.” It is almost 200 years later, and Congress still hasn’t made such a provision.

Well, if we searched the Rationalization List for the excuse for this disgraceful betrayal, we would find several candidates on the very first page, mutations of the hoariest rationalization of all, #1, “Everybody Does It,” but represented by such variations of the theme as, It’s done all the time,”“It’s always been done this way,” “It’s tradition,” “Everybody is used to it,“Everybody accepts it,” and  “It’s too late to change now.” The United States broke too many treaties with the various tribes to count, but this one has an especially ugly story behind it.

On Georgia lands guaranteed by the United States to the Cherokee in yet another, earlier treaty, the tribe was attempting to create a model of what might have allowed all the Native American tribes to flourish in the new European-settled nation that was clearly not to be denied. The Cherokee Nation had foresworn war, was working with white communities, creating commerce and launching a hybrid culture that could be integrated into the U.S. while preserving Indian culture. The plan was working too— too well. Georgia exercised the then-current doctrine of nullification, a states rights principle holding that a state could nullify Federal law. The Georgian legislature wanted the Cherokees’ land, and declared the Federal treaty leaving it in their control null and void. The Cherokee sued Georgia in the U.S. Supreme Court and won. President Jackson, however, even though he had earlier condemned South Carolina’s nullification attempts in the strongest possible terms (Jackson threatened to hang Senator John C. Calhoun with his own hands), hated Indians. In an unprecedented demonstration of abuse of power and raw defiance by a President, “King Andy” refused to enforce the SCOTUS decision and backed Georgia. Continue reading →

There’s So Much Wrong With This Eric Swalwell Tweet That Ethics Alarms Can’t Categorize it [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Over on his blog, Prof Turley was sufficiently disgusted by this that he has devoted two posts to eviscerating it in his usual professorial fashion, here and here. I encourage you to read both, though this is another one of those incidents where if it has to be explained to you what’s wrong, you probably are beyond help anyway. Still, Turley’s brief is impressive, and Ethics Alarms will just add a few (well, may be more than a few) points:

  • A really stupid tweet is typical of Swalwell; this one isn’t even his worst. In 2018, the same year he had the gall to announce he was running for President, Swalwell tweeted that any effort by gun owners to oppose gun confiscation by the federal government would be met with nuclear bombs. In another tweet, he wrote sarcastically, “It’s not like separation of church & state is in the Bill of Rights or anything…” This year, he tweeted, “The Republicans won’t stop with banning abortion. They want to ban interracial marriage.”
  • When I wrote last week about how there were so many unethical people running for office in 2022 that I couldn’t possibly narrow the list of the most unethical down to a mere dozen as I have in the past, I forgot to mention Swalwell. This the only member of Congress who somehow managed to have a sexual affair with a Chinese spy (in 2015, before he was elected to the House). Nonetheless, he was re-elected in his California district by a landslide. What Swalwell misses in all aspects of life and logic cannot be catalogued without devoting volumes to the task.
  • It’s astounding that anyone, even Democrats, would dare to evoke “experts” after the still unfolding pandemic fiasco and the near total failure of health “experts” to give competent advice.
  • As Turley also notes, the analogy matching teachers to doctors is absurd, though the professor is nicer about it than I am. Teachers aren’t “experts,” they aren’t professionals in the classic sense, and, to be cruelly blunt, like journalists they are nor recruited from among the best and brightest. There is no regulation of the teaching craft, just bars to entry. Professionals—those who devote themselves to the public good at personal sacrifice,  also don’t have unions, which by nature place the welfare of their members above the public’s interests…and no union has done this more flagrantly than the teachers’ union. The lawyer-client analogy is equally foolish. Lawyers are necessary because the have special training in laws and procedure. Children need to learn about how to navigate life, and parents have as much expertise in that subject as teachers.
  • Parents have been the primary teachers of their offspring, and successful ones, for eons. Comparing teaching to self-surgery is…well, it’s about what one would expect of a collectivist dim bulb like Swalwell.
  • Swalwell knows nothing about schools and little about parenting: his oldest child is just entering kindergarten, and probably at a private school. He has some nasty surprises waiting for him.
  • The educational institution culture has rotted through, with large numbers of teachers being motivated by peer pressure, ideology, and their own flawed education. It is easy to see this, unless the observer is deliberately ignoring the condition, or wants the condition to continue.
  • Parents passively and irresponsibly allowed schools to indoctrinate their children because they served as convenient child care after women finally could pursue ambitious careers. It was trust conferred by perceived necessity, not careful analysis. Now, perhaps not too late, parents are waking up and taking control.
  • Some teachers are genuinely intelligent, outstanding, capable adults who do justify parental trust. The problem is that 1) far more are not (yes, it’s anecdotal , but I find it telling that the most famously dumb member of my grade school class, with the lowest SAT scores I have ever heard of to this day,  became a career history teacher at the same school), 2) it is difficult to determine which, and 3) the administrators and school structures are overwhelmingly corrupt and incompetent, minimizing what even good teachers can accomplish.
  • That so many teachers and school administrators accepted the ideologically advanced revisionism that slavery was the primary motivation for the United States’ creation, and have engaged in the revolutionary endeavor of teaching young children to distrust other races while  deploring their own nation is strong evidence that these “experts” cannot be trusted, and that their judgment is terrible.
  • Teaching and public education has lost its way, and urgently need to be reformed and re-imagined. Those with the strongest ties to the well-being of rising generations must be the main architects of any reform, and that group is parents.

Finally, when someone of Rep. Swalwell’s amply demonstrated intellectual and ethical deficits declares anything “stupid,” the Cognitive Dissonance Scale comes into play. [ADDED: This principle should also apply to any journalist or publication who resorts to Swalwell as an authority or source. For example, we have Vanity Fair writing today, “The chamber under Kevin McCarthy, and with an emboldened right flank, may ‘exist exclusively as a vessel state of MAGA nation,’Rep. Eric Swalwell tells Vanity Fair.” ]

Ethics Dunce? Incompetent Elected Official? Unethical Tweet? Unethical Quote? Bad analogies? The Great Stupid exemplified? All these and more apply to Swalwell’s outburst. And this man is a lawmaker. Re-elected by a landslide.

It’s so depressing.

I Don’t Understand NBC’s “Misinformation” Policy. OK, OK, I Think I Really Do….

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I am tempted to conclude that it involves an official distinction between “good” misinformation and “bad” misinformation, the former being fake news that benefits Democrats, and the latter being actual facts that undermine progressive narratives.

For example, NBC has suspended veteran reporter Miguel Almaguer, who has been MIA since he reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul didn’t let on that he was in danger when cops showed up at his San Francisco home right before he was assaulted with a hammer. His scoop story went live on “Today” and then was summarily retracted hours later.

That Pelosi’s attack was proof of how Republicans were a “clear and present danger” to the nation became a prominent part of the news media/Democratic Party last ditch effort to limit GOP gains in last week’s election, so Almageur’s inconvenient facts—if they were facts, and we do not know—were apparently an intolerable injection of objective journalism into whatever it is that NBC News does now. (Whatever it is, as Harry Reid would say, “It works!”) NBC says it is “investigating.” Funny, the Pelosi attack was daily fare before the election; now it’s already dated trivia. On CNN’s Headline News this moring, Robin Meade spend almost ten minutes reviewing last night’s results on “The Masked Singer.” Omigod! The Singing Avacado was kicked off the show!!!! How is Paul Pelosi doing? Has he elucidated any of the mysteries surrounding his attack? Any news about what motivated the wacko who attacked him? Who cares? The Democrats held on to control of the Senate! Paul Pelosi? Who’s he?

Continue reading →

OK, After This Ethics Alarms Officially Condemns Cheap Shots At Senator-Elect Fetterman’s Appearance…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

I’m sorry, but that meme was just too funny to ignore, ethics or not. I’d like to think even Fetterman would appreciate it.

But that’s it for me. Mocking a political figure based on his or her appearance is the ultimate ad hominem attack, and there’s no excuse for it. The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news source that has made useful contributions to public awareness when the mainstream media is in the process of burying a story that hurts its mission, ran a story yesterday headlined,

“John Fetterman Wears Suit to Capitol, Looks Terrible….like a funeral home director on trial for desecrating a corpse (multiple counts)“

Nice.

Continue reading →