Leadership

Ethics Quote of the Month: President Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“We’re all people of religion, but there are evil people. And we have to confront that. I just give my love and hope to the family of the young woman who was stabbed this morning or last night in Charlotte by a madman.”

—President Trump yesterday in remarks at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., referring to the horrific random knife murder in Charlotte that was not considered newsworthy by the Axis media because it didn’t involve a gun, which would have been exploited to make more gun control demands, and didn’t involve a white person killing a black one, which would have bolstered the “America is racist” narrative.

I want to note that an “Ethics quote” is not the same as an ethical quote, but rather a statement that raises ethical issues that are worth pondering. This one raises many. Such as…

1. As one wag on Instapundit said this morning, “I guess now the legacy media will have to cover the story.” And, I hope, try to explain why an event with so many hot button issue touch points was deemed unworthy of national news for two weeks.

2. Issues include Black on white crime. Democrat-run big city violence as Trump raises the issue of federal force bolstering law enforcement. Lack of security on public transportation. Society’s handling of the mentally ill. The victim was a legal Ukrainian refugee, as the Left’s support of the Ukrainian (hopeless) war continues in the absence of logic and reality. The social activist-driven revolving door system of arrests, releases and mild or no punishment to reduce “over-incarceration.” And more…

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What’s In A Name?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Axis is so consistent in condemning everything President Trump does that it is becoming difficult to define what is really right and wrong. “Who did it” is not a valid or reasonable basis for making the distinction, but I swear, the Left has been so relentless with its warping of language and standards that even I am getting confused.

The current question is this: “Is there anything wrong with re-naming the Defense Department the Department of War, or the War Department, which is what it was called for before 1947 without the mountains falling and the seas boiling?”

As usual, there is a substantial chance that this is Trump Trolling, as he tries to make people’s head explode. I can also conceive of some value to the name change. I see nothing wrong with the U.S. projecting an image of strength and of a nation that is not going to tolerate international outrages because it’s reluctant to use military force. Yet focusing on “defense” has its advantages too.

They are two sides of the same metaphorical coin, one seeming more aggressive (oh-oh! That pesky testosterone again!) and the other more typically feminine: making the priorities accommodation and compromise over conflict and violence.

Is there any basis for ruling Trump’s branding decision unethical? I don’t see one.

Ethics Verdict On President Trump and the Silly Cracker Barrel Episode

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Verdict: President Trump abused his position, power and influence by weighing in on a private company’s choice of logo and continuing to make declarations about it as if it is any of his business or a proper matter of concern for the President of the United States.

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I Don’t Know What Presidential “Approval” Polls Mean

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

…which means they are misleading, manipulative, and useless, except to be misleading and manipulative.

I just saw a Rasmussen Poll that measured Trump’s approval split at 49%-49%. Which side of that split would I belong on? I’m not sure I know. Hmmmmmm….

Do I approve of Trump’s character? Do I like the fact that someone like him is the symbol of the United States to the world? Do I think his conduct as President is likely to have a positive effect on the United States society and culture over the long term? Do I think his conduct as President is likely to have a positive effect on the office of the Presidency over the long term? Do I approve of his social media postings and his unrestrained outbursts on whatever topic engages him at a particular moment? Do I approve of his extreme narcissism, his cruelty, his misogyny, his exaggerations, his constant resort to ad hominem attacks?

Nonononononononononono! I do not approve. Not only that, but I don’t approve of anyone who does approve these aspects of Donald Trump.

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Wow…Not For the First Time, President Trump Doesn’t Know What the Hell He’s Talking About…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The topic, fortunately, is baseball, not the economy, foreign policy, or making America great again. Still, it is not a good sign when the leader of the free world spouts off like an ignorant fool professing absolute certainty without any genuine expertise whatsoever. If he does this about baseball…well, you can complete that sentence.

President Trump now demands that Roger Clemens be admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame despite enough evidence that he used banned steroids late in his career to put him in the Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Sammy Sosa et al. Rogues Gallery of cheaters with great stats who fail the Hall’s character requirements. In a post on Truth Social today, Trump said that he had just played golf with the 11-time All-Star pitcher, and apparently this makes him an authority on The Rocket’s dubious past.

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Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Three weeks after I inflicted a giant hematoma on (in?) my leg, I’m still having trouble getting past the two-post-a-day barrier, in great part because I’m hopeless on a laptop, and sitting at my desk in the office is still painful. I’m sorry: I’m missing a lot; the EA runway looks like a Reagan National flight stop due to high winds and thunderstorms.

A needed observation on the Trump Presidency so far: wow. That wow isn’t about what Trump and his team are doing, but the fact that they are doing it. I’ve compared Trump II to Andrew Jackson, but I now believe he is channeling my favorite President of all (again, in terms of Oval Office conduct, not policy), Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy, like Trump, was a Presidential activist and believed in using the power he had to do things, fix things, and project American power abroad. He also believed fervently in American exceptionalism, as all Presidents (and citizens) should. Like TR, Trump is trying to stop international conflicts that don’t directly involve the United States: Roosevelt was the first U.S. President to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and Trump has already exceeded his accomplishments in that sphere.

You would think he could get some praise from the Axis for this. Nah. The news media is still relentlessly attacking him and everything he does, and there are enough Stage 5 Trump Derangement victims and gullible, manipulated fools among the public to keep Trump’s polling numbers under water.

To his great credit, President Trump doesn’t seem to care. Among the many ways his second term is breaking with conventional wisdom, he has turned his lame duck status into a weapon. Fascinating. There is so much to see and learn from going on. Those who refused to pay attention are missing a great show and a transformational Presidency, as Trump joins the lofty company of Washington, Andy, Honest Abe, Teddy, FDR and the Gipper.

Over to you…

Ethics Dunce: President Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

[My leg is still killing me, I hope not literally, and sitting at my desk is excruciating, but I have to post this, truncated though it may be.]

The President should not cave to the “Think of the Children!” lobby that wants the United States to send aid to a rogue, terrorist state that is also the enemy of a just combatant the U.S. is supporting. It seems that he is. That is asinine and cowardly.

If children are starving in Gaza, the Gazans, and specifically Hamas, are responsible. Not Israel. Not the United States. The mission in warfare is to win the war, and one does not win a war by making warfare less unpleasant for the enemy. Frankly, it astounds me that I, or anyone, should have to make this point.

The last time the United States won a war (I do not count Grenada) was World War II. The Pentagon did not allow the publication of photographs of dead babies and malnourished Japanese and German children for exactly the reason we are seeing now, and have seen many times since 1945. War is ugly, and winning a war requires acts that in any other context are rightly regarded as immoral and unethical. This what a professional military is for: it (theoretically) doesn’t become sentimental about the necessities of warfare.

[Footnote: This was one of my late father’s objections to “Saving Private Ryan.” He said it was an insult to George Marshall and a deliberate effort to confuse the public to claim that the General would feel obligated to reduce the sacrifice of any single family while his army’s mission was to win a war.]

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Into the “It Isn’t What It Is” Hall of Fame Goes L.A. Mayor Karen Bass

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Video has “surfaced”—where do these surfaced videos go to, before they surface?—of Los Angeles’s incompetent, smug, ridiculous mayor Karen Bass answering a question about her city’s ICE riots by replying that “they never happened.” See?

The response on social media has been swift and terrible…

I just don’t understand.

How do politicians like Bass keep getting away with this? Democrats during the Biden Administration set new records for “It isn’t what it is” gaslighting. The border was secure. Inflation wasn’t really excessive. Men who declared themselves women while keeping all their junk were…POOF!…women. Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack.” War is Peace. Oops, sorry, that last one was Big Brother. How does Bass and her party live with themselves? How can they look themselves in the mirror? Why do Democrats tolerate it?

Have they no sense of decency, at long last? Have they left no sense of decency?

Apparently not, or they would be hiding their heads under paper bags.

[Of course, it helps that virtually no Axis news sources have reported on the video. But we know that journalists have no sense of decency…]

President Trump: The Kennedy Center, NPR, PBS…Now Fix The Smithsonian

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I knew there was a reason I hadn’t been to the Smithsonian Institution for so long. Like so many other crucial institutions the apathy of sane and patriotic American allowed to become leftist propaganda weapons over the last 50 years or so, the Smithsonian, along with most of the major museums across the country, “stress on narratives over artifacts.” That’s a quote from Jonathan Turley in his annoying understated mode.

White House official Lindsey Halligan condemned the new National Museum of American History’s Entertainment Nation exhibit, writing, “American taxpayers should not be funding institutions that undermine our country or promote one-sided, divisive political narratives. The Smithsonian Institution should present history in a way that is accurate, balanced, and consistent with the values that make the United States of America exceptional.”

Gee, ya think?

That Star Wars exhibit above would have prompted me to walk out of the building. Turley comments, “I was one of those who went to the movie when it came out, and I cannot recall anyone thinking, let alone connecting, the film to Nixon or Vietnam.” Nor can I, because nobody thought that, even the most politics-obsessed. Even film reviewers, always mostly left-leaning and desperate to find hidden messages in the most apolitical films, didn’t think Jabba the Hut was meant to suggest Spiro Agnew, or something.

We’ve known this about the Smithsonian for a long time, of course, but just shrugged it off because so many other example of insidious political corruption are worse. The Institution tried to slap a war crimes narrative on the Enola Gay. It left Clarence Thomas out of the National Museum of African-American History because being conservative means that he doesn’t count.

Among the flagrant propagandizing noted by Turley:

  • The commentary tied to a 1923 circus poster, reads: “Under the big top, circuses expressed the colonial impulse to claim dominion over the world.” Ah. So those clowns were supposed to be scary…
  • The Smithsonian declares “One of the earliest defining traits of entertainment in the United States was extraordinary violence.” You know, because United States BAD. One of the earliest traits of HUMAN entertainment for thousands of years was “extraordinary violence”! That one would have also had me running for the exits. Gladiators? Bull-baiting? Public executions? Grimm’s Fairy Tales???
  • The Lone Ranger display states: “The White title character’s relationship with Tonto resembled how the U.S. government imagined itself the world’s Lone Ranger.”

Oh for God’s sake…

Fix this, Mr. President. Fire the administrators and curators, all of them. Start from scratch.

Ethics Alarms Encore! “July 3: Pickett’s Charge, Custer’s First Stand, Ethics And Leadership”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Picketts-Charge--330-to-345-pm-landscape

July 3  was the final day of the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, reaching its bloody climax in General Robert E. Lee’s desperate  gamble on a massed assault on the Union center. In history it has come to be known as Pickett’s Charge, after the leader of the Division that was slaughtered during it.

At about 2:00 pm this day in 1863, near the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg,  Lee launched his audacious stratagem to pull victory from the jaws of defeat in the pivotal battle of the American Civil War.  The Napoleonic assault on the entrenched Union position on Cemetery Ridge, with a “copse of trees” at its center, was the only such attack in the entire war, a march into artillery and rifle fire across an open field and over fences. When my father, the old soldier, saw the battlefield  for the first time in his eighties, he became visibly upset because, he said, he could visualize the killing field. He was astounded that Lee would order such a reckless assault.

The battle lasted less than an hour. Union forces suffered 1,500 casualties,, while at least 1,123 Confederates were killed on the battlefield, 4,019 were wounded, and nearly 4000 Rebel soldiers were captured. Pickett’s Charge would go down in history as one of the worst military blunders of all time.

At Ethics Alarms, it stands for several ethics-related  concepts. One is moral luck: although Pickett’s Charge has long been regarded by historians and scholars as a disastrous mistake by Lee and in retrospect seems like a rash decision, it could have succeeded if the vicissitudes of chance had broken the Confederacy’s way.  Then the maneuver would be cited today as another example of Lee’s brilliance, in whatever remained of the United States of America, if indeed it did remain. This is the essence of moral luck; unpredictable factors completely beyond the control of an individual or other agency determine whether a decision or action are wise or foolish, ethical or unethical, at least in the minds of the ethically unschooled.

Pickett’s Charge has been discussed on Ethics Alarms as a vivid example, perhaps the best, of how successful leaders and others become so used to discounting the opinions and criticism of others that they lose the ability to accept the possibility that they can be wrong. This delusion is related to #14 on the Rationalizations list,  Self-validating Virtue. We see the trap in many professions and contexts, and its victims have been among some of America’s greatest and most successful figures. Those who succeed by being bold and seeing possibilities lesser peers cannot perceive often lose respect and regard for anyone’s authority or opinion but their own.

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