“Some things are more important than staying in power.”
—-President Biden at the U.N., stumbling through his speech on world affairs even with the assistance of his teleprompter.
Even though our President is demented, deluded, habitually dishonest and without shame, I am still astounded that he would have the gall to say that at the United Nations. I guess he thinks the delegates are as stupid and gullible as his party evidently thinks the U.S. public is.
No, the context of that head-exploding statement doesn’t make it less nauseating:
[I also could have justifiably credited Steve with an Ethics Quote of the Week, which you will find below:“[E]thical leaders of any cause owe those they lead a duty to realize when the conflict has become unwinnable and then seek an end to the conflict.”]
***
I don’t know about unethical, but it’s surely tone-deaf, in bad taste, and divisive in light of the current situation and in light of what this symposium seems to cover. A discussion about the now almost 80-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict is certainly possible, assuming it were a balanced one. A discussion of terrorism through the last two centuries which would include the difference between political (in support of a political goal) and millennial terrorism (where the violence is the goal), changes in viability with technology, counter-terror tactics and their evolution, and so on could be very interesting. However, this sounds like a pity party for Palestine and a hate-fest for Israel. It’s allowable, just barely, under free speech and academic freedom, as long as it sticks to discussion, although I think it’s going to generate a lot of heat and very little light. If it’s going to be a seeding place for violent demonstrations, forget it.
Truth be told, trying to nail down any kind of ethical framework around terrorism is like trying to staple water to a wall. Some deliberately try to separate the two by saying things like “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Frankly that’s the lazy way out, although it IS true that our biases are going to color how we view one cause vs. another cause and what kind of tactics we can justify. Rebellions of one kind or another have been around almost as long as mankind has organized itself into this group vs. that group, and certainly since the days when mankind had empires. The Romans were often able to stymie that by making the conquered peoples into junior partners, but some peoples, like the Jews, the Britons, and so on, wanted no part of that kind of arrangement, and had to be essentially destroyed to the point where organized resistance was no longer viable. In a time when both sides had essentially the same weapons, it was all about numbers. Certain tactics like ambushes and targeted eliminations, proto-terrorism if you will, worked to some degree, but usually couldn’t win. If the rebel side had insufficient numbers or was dispersed to the point where it couldn’t get sufficient numbers together, violent resistance wasn’t viable. Rebels or bandits could give the other side a very hard time (Hereward the Wake, the Knights of St. John at Rhodes), but in the end causes like that were usually either doomed, or only went anywhere when they COULD amass numbers enough to wage something like a real civil war.
I can almost hear Rod’s voice: “You are about to enter another dimension.A dimension not only of cover-ups and lies, but of fake Presidencies.A journey into a wondrous land of manipulation and abuse of power.Next stop, the Edith Wilson Zone!“
Let’s begin with this: Did you know that President <cough> Biden hasn’t had a Cabinet meeting in almost a year? I didn’t. Isn’t this newsworthy? Nothing has happened in the last 11 months that warranted the President gathering his top deputies? Seriously? When was the last time an administration went this long without a Cabinet meeting? (I can find no record of that, but a competent journalism establishment would have told us.) We have a fake Presidency being covered up, still, by the party running the Executive Branch and its corrupt, complicit allies in the news media, while its conspirators claim to be saving democracy. The highest ranking officer responsible for the cover-up is running for President, and her role in this defiance of basic constitutional norms and the public trust has barely been mentioned.
Good question, Dana. Glad you’re engaged enough to ask: most Americans apparently don’t know and don’t care.
When I saw the story above last night, what I foolishly call my mind raced to two other related matters. One was the failed pseudo-sequel to “A Fish Called Wanda,” “Fierce Creatures,” in which the entire cast of the earlier, far superior comedy reunited to perform a John Cleese screenplay about a corrupt zoo-owner who, among other schemes, tries to pass off a mechanical panda as the real thing. The other was this story….
HBO has been running a documentary about “The Sopranos”‘creator David Chase. I rewatched his series recently: I wouldn’t call it an ethics drama, for the ethical issues are pretty clear in every episode with the possible exception of the psychiatry ethics conflicts involved in treating a gangster. That, however, is very much a tangential plot line. The series, all seven seasons, is exactly as excellent as its reputation, and Chase, as the creator and show-runner, deserves all the accolades he has received. I just wish he hadn’t stooped to the cheap and typical woke-speak that “The Sopranos” is about America, capitalism, and its decaying “dream.” Ah well. He lives in Hollywood, so I shouldn’t expect anything different.
But I digress…
As Chase talks about the series, however, a stunning fact reveals itself: he doesn’t understand his own creation, particularly from an ethical and psychological perspective. Chase keeps describing his central character, Tony Soprano, as a “bad guy,” “a monster,” and “a sociopath.” Yet the entire premise of the show is that Tony isn’t a sociopath, but a man trapped by his family background, culture and socialization into a lifestyle that only a sociopath can flourish in, and Tony has a conscience. This is why he keeps having panic attacks and is clinically depressed, and why seeks the help of a therapist. It is why he gets emotionally upset about the mistreatment of dogs and horses, and in many cases, the people he is responsible for killing.
As he does so often, Donald Trump accepted something he read or heard as gospel truth and repeated it as fact, this time in a Presidential debate, and was promptly ‘factchecked” and subsequently ridiculed. The back-ground: a large number of Haitian “migrants,” who may or may not be here legally, seem to have ended up in Springfield, Ohio. One resident complained that they were eating pet geese and cats, her claim went viral, and the meme-makers have had a field day…
Without intense preparation, without biased and complicit moderators helping her along, without being able to shift focus to an adversary, this is what Kamala Harris is. Here we have just a ten minute interview featuring soft-ball questions from a friendly Philidelphia journalist, and the result is evasiveness, gibberish and vacuous non-answers.
Some highlights:
Asked about the ephemeral “opportunity economy,” Harris says,
“For example, thinking about developing and creating an opportunity economy where it’s about investing in areas that really need a lot of work and maybe focusing on, again, the aspirations and the dreams but also just recognizing that at this moment in time some of this stuff we could take for granted years ago, we can’t take for granted anymore.”
Oh. What????
Here’s Harris filibustering the basic and easy question, “Talk about bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people. What are one or two specific things you have in mind for that?”…
Well, I’ll start with this. I grew up a middle-class kid. My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard. She was able to finally save up enough money to buy our first house when I was a teenager. I grew up in a community of hardworking people. You know, construction workers and nurses and teachers. I try to explain to some people who might not have had the same experience, but a lot of people will relate to this.
You know, I grew up in a neighborhood of people who were really proud of their lawn, you know, and I was raised to believe and to know that all people deserve dignity and that we as Americans have a beautiful character. You know, we have ambitions and aspirations and dreams, but not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions. So, when I talk about building an opportunity economy, it is very much with the mind of investing in the ambitions and aspirations and the incredible work ethic of the American people and creating opportunity for people, for example, to start a small business.
The only competent response to that babbling is to repeat the question as if Harris had a coughing fit or something, which the interviewer did not.
Here’s another Harris gem: “My focus is very much about what we need to do over the next 10-20 years to catch up to the 21st century around, again, capacity, but also challenges.”
Right. I do a lot of public speaking, and if I ever hear myself talking like that, I will check myself into the hospital on suspicion of suffering a stroke.
This is the candidate the Democratic Party believed was so superior to all other options that she was nominated by acclamation, without having to face any opposition at all. Here I would typically add, “Democracy!” but “Idiocracy!” seems more apt.
___________
Can anyone explain this? The WordPress AI bot was apparently completely confused by Harris’s blather and told me to tag this post “Harry Potter,” “Football” “Dreams” and “Fantasy.”
This is a short one, but not am easy one, because bias is so likely to be involved.
Althouse posted the [I almost wrote “horrifying,” but that would be biasing you]clip above that has “surfaced” from a podcast earlier this year. (Isn’t it fascinating that virtually no one was paying attention to Harris most of the time until she was suddenly anointed?).
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Is it fair to conclude that Harris is an idiot from that response?
Or can her supposed endorsement of astrology (which in my view is about like saying you worship the Greek gods) be excused as just typical politician pandering to a substantial voting block? Althouse links to a list of ten leaders who supposedly believed in astrology, a collection which I would take with about about a truckload of salt. The claim that Ronald Reagan “leaned on astrology for guidance” is particularly weak: he met with an astrologer once, and he indulged Nancy’s interest in the nonsense, as most loving spouses would.
One question that occurred to me as I looked at the list: what is the cut-off point before which it is fair to attribute an individual’s belief in astrology to the absence of scientific knowledge generally?
Over night, Israel’s largest labor union called for nationwide strike to push for a hostage deal, threatening to shut down “the entire Israeli economy” Tel Aviv’s international airport announced that it would halt departures and arrivals of flights for two hours, and intense protests have broken out in response to Israel’s military recovering the bodies of six hostages killed in Gaza. The protesters say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not done enough to protect the hostages. To be blunt, the protesters are ethics dunces and morons….much like the American students, Democrats, pundits and the Biden administration trying to pressure Israel into a ruinous cease-fire with Hamas.
Just because I would vote for a Muppet before I would vote for Kennedy, he accurately described not only why he has abandoned the corrupt and undemocratic Democratic Party, but why any Democrat with integrity should.
Ann Althouse chose basically the same excerpt from the speech that I would have, so I’ll give her the pointer on the official Ethics Quote of the Week:
Ethics Alarms 