rationalizations

Trump Derangement Update: A Conversation With a Sufferer

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I had another long debate with a Trump Derangement victim whom I know well, love and respect. This individual is a lawyer, mostly informed, but, like an amazing number of Americans who should know better, gets most of her news and commentary from MSNow. I have explained that this is bats, is making her biased and therefore stupid, and that her favorite platform has no interest in conveying objective, fair news and cannot, must not, be trusted. I have pointed this out before, though she has a good retort: MSNow reports news that reflects badly on President Trump before almost all other outlets, and way ahead of Fox News. She was the one who pointed me to the unconscionable self-dealing IRS law suit settlement that I first wrote about here. Of course the partisan hacks at MSNow were on that in an instant: if all you care about is potential sticks to bash the President with, you are likely to find them first.

Other revelations from the conversation (yes, I believe my debate partner is typical of the Trump Deranged, except that she is more reasonable and analytical than most of them) :

1. The Trump Deranged are incapable of talking about the Administration without getting furious and shouting. Incapable! My friend almost never shouts, but the yelling commences immediately when the topic gets near the White House. It’s a Pavlovian response.

2. The discussion always ends up on non-substantive outrages. The Kennedy Center. The Ballroom. The reflecting pool. The proposed arch. None of these will be significant in the historical assessment of this Presidency. The Trump Deranged default to these because the smart ones know they are just wrong on the important policy issues, or no longer have metaphorical legs to stand on. They can’t defend illegal immigrants. They no longer have climate change hysteria and fake “science” to fall back on. They know DEI is illegal. They don’t buy the “men with naughty bits who call themselves women should be able to throttle biological women in sports” lie. They can’t defend the Biden dementia cover-up, and they know Kamala Harris was, in James Carville’s immortal words, “like a seventh-string quarterback starting in the Super Bowl.”

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OK, Maybe Bill Maher Is Sincere In His Criticism Of Democrats and Progressives…MAYBE, Part II: Why Bill’s “New Rule” Is Not As Ethical As He Thinks It Is

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In Part I, I published Bill Maher’s surprising slap at Democrats and progressives for their unethical drift into anti-Semitism. It’s pretty good—for Bill. The 18 paragraphs are numbered so I don’t have to repeat them here, especially since WordPress nearly sent me to the woodchipper when I was trying to compose the first post. I’m sorry that you’ll have to jump back and forth, but so do I, to write this.

And away we go…

1. Everyone has a right to be anti-Semitic, just as everyone has a right to lie, or commit adultery. Advocating anti-Semitism, promoting it, and acting on it is still unethical. These ethical nuances, rights vs. law vs. ethics, are beyond Maher’s comprehension.

2. See? Bill immediately defaults to a Rationalization #22 defense of Israel. It isn’t the worst country! Wow. Talk about a back-handed compliment!

3. Not quite as bad as China, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, and North Korea, eh? Way to make anti-Semites feel ashamed, Bill….

4. Ezra Klein is nothing to be proud of. He has been a leader of Axis bias for a decade.

5. A “They’re just as bad” (Rationalization #2) cheat by Maher, and he’s cherry-picking. Carlson has been excoriated by conservatives for his anti-Israel stance. He is not representative of the Right at all, and I, for one, never thought he was.

6. Bill managed not to mention the Times’ “dog rape” libel.

9. Maher likes the #22 rationalization so much he comes back to it. This is because Bill doesn’t get ethics. He also evokes “Everybody does it!” here, the hoariest rationalization of all. Jeez Bill…read a book.

10. The “new rule” is about Democratic Party anti-Semitism, but the candidate he writes the most about is an obscure anti-Semitic Republican. Huh.

11. Israel overwhelmingly has the “right-wingers” on its side, and it has the President of the United States on its side in particular. Maher never mentions President Trump at all. He’s only willing to infuriate his audience so much, apparently.

12. Trying to continue his false equivalence argument regarding anti-Semitism on”both sides,” Maher pairs two typical leftist academics with…Candace Owens? She is persona non grata among conservatives, a true embarrassment, and she is the opposite of an academic, as she is illiterate.

13. Again with the rogue Republican joke in a statement about Leftist anti-Semitism, and again, Bill is cherry-picking. There is a reason that Margery Taylor Greene isn’t in Congress any more. Representing her idiocy as mainstream Republicanism is despicable. Rep. Fine’s sharp quip after one of Mayor Mamdani’s Muslim minions derided dogs was, in my opinion, undiplomatic but defensible. No dogs in the U.S. have engaged in any mass shootings or terrorism.

14-18. Bill finishes very strong, almost making up for his rationalizations and weasel words on the way to his conclusion

Ethics Update On the Axis Freakout Over Virginia and Tennessee’s Redistricting Results

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

[Note: I apologize for the funky formatting here, but it’s not my fault: WordPress again messed with its (terrible) “block system” with no warning and I’m trying to figure it out.]

I’m posting the graphic above again because it is res ipsa loquitur, rebutting on its face what so many of the hysterical Democrats, elected officials, pundits and partisan reporters are screaming as they survey the results of their own corruption and hypocrisy.

As Ethics Alarms has been asserting (and proving) for a decade now, the Left cheats. Its “they go low, we go high” mantra has always been cynical gaslighting, but the somnolent Right allowed them to escape accountability (and their just desserts) far too long. Donald Trump, whatever his ethical flaws may be, has always understood the concept of fighting back. This time it really paid off, and all Americans should be grateful. Yes: we should fervently seek fair districting in every state. Maybe the current chaos will eventually lead to that. However, letting one party rig the system unanswered while the other party just sits and shrugs is worse than the chaos.

Scott Greenfield, defense lawyer, blogger, Jack-hater and progressive legal pundit, deserves praise for a nearly completely ethical and unbiased analysis of the Virginia Supreme Court decision striking down the dastardly gerrymandering trick Virginia’s “moderate” governor and its corrupt Democrats tried to inflict on half the state’s voters. He writes in part,

“The confluence of a few unfortunate circumstances resulted in the Virginia Supreme Court holding that the state constitutional amendment to allow the redistricting plan as a counterbalance to other states’ legislative redistricting plans to eliminate congressional districts deemed “safely” Democratic was unconstitutional. Wags and cynics will imagine this ruling to be the product of radical rightist activists. It was not…Neither the majority nor dissent took unprincipled positions, both having some merit to their position, but the point of a ruling is to reach a determination. The Virginia Supreme Court did so, in a principled fashion, and it ruled the redistricting amendment unconstitutional under the state Constitution. It was a crushing defeat for Democrats, but that doesn’t make it partisan or radical. Sometimes, you lose. While the combination of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision and this Virginia ruling has set in motion a partisan war that serves to make congressional elections a by-product of widespread cynical gerrymandering rather than a reflection of the will of the voters, perhaps one of the most noxiously anti-democratic efforts to rig an election possible, don’t blame the Virginia Supreme Court for “losing” safe districts for Democrats. The court did its job and its ruling, no matter what outcome you would have preferred, was grounded in a principled reading of the state Constitution.”

Good for Scott. He is still, however, a Trump Deranged, biased progressive (like most trial lawyers), so he also wrote…

“If you want to find blame, it’s in the legislatures that decided to sell out their citizens, their voters, at the open and notorious behest of Trump. For all his baseless bluster about rigged elections, we’re finally going to have one and Trump demanded the rigging.”

Bad Scott. Bad. Look at the damn chart above. Democrats had already rigged Congressional elections. Did you wonder why the predicted “red wave” in 2022 never materialized? Wonder no more. Nine Democrat-dominated state legislatures made it virtually impossible for Republicans to get elected. President Trump, that kingly fascist, had the sense and combative instincts to get his party to try to even the odds. The “red” states that did that through redistricting (gerrymandering) followed their constitutions. Virginia did not. Naturally, the losers blame Trump.

Former DNC chairwoman and current ABC contributor Donna Brazile naturally took the same dishonest path. Remember, Brazile was the Democrat who first tipped me off to her party’s cheating ways: as a paid CNN “contributor” in 2016, she used her insider status to tip-off Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton regarding the questions she would be asked at a CNN “town meeting.” This was so unethical even CNN couldn’t tolerate it, and she was fired. Yesterday Brazile joined GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw and HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher to give a masterclass on double standards and leftist gaslighting. Republican redistricting efforts are, she said, “immoral,” while Democratic efforts are what “voters decided.”

Voters in Virginia “decided” on the gerrymandered map based on the referendum’s false statement, indeed exactly the opposite of reality, that the new map would “restore fairness.” Remember?

“Restore fairness” by making sure that a 50-50 party split would be represented by a 10-1 Democrat district map. Sure.

Then Brazile played the race card, as Democrats inevitably do when the facts aren’t in their favor. “I come from one of those states that all of a sudden, the Supreme Court said, ‘Well, we don’t like partisan gerrymandering. No, we don’t like racial gerrymandering.’ So, one out of three voters in Louisiana is a black voter. One out of three. And they are now thinking of eradicating. So, that says people from some parts of Louisiana can represent New Orleans better than the folks who are representing—or Baton Rouge. It is wrong, it is immoral, and it is unjustified.”

Well-said, mush-mouth. “They” are thinking of “eradicating” black voters? I think Donna was trying to say that the Jim Crow laws that were still in effect de facto if not de jure in Southern states in the early Sixties justifies “good racial discrimination” in 2026, 60 years later. You can read her logic- and law-free rant here.This is, however, apparently the fake narrative the Axis has decided to run with, proving with its attempted cover-up just how desperate and unprincipled it is.

On yesterday’s MSNOW propaganda-fest “The Weekend,” Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) compared the 1857 Dred Scott ruling to the SCOTUS decision that the 1965 Voting Rights Act could no longer justify anti-white discrimination in the Southern states, and declared the Roberts Court “one of the most racist courts in American history.”Got it. If the Court doesn’t allow the Democrats to rig its Congressional maps to pack the House with as many blacks as possible, it’s racist. Morelle also parroted the “will of the voters” lie in attacking the Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of redistricting referendum. Did the MSNOW host point out for its viewers that Morelle was misrepresenting both decisions? Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

This how House minority leader Hakeem Jeffreys reacted to his party being foiled in its unconstitutional, dishonest power-grab in Virginia:

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Ethics Quiz: The Student Exposé

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

A high school student in Philadelphia made series of videos, posted on TikTok, showing how exposed how some of his classmates could not read well nor comprehend relatively simple sentences. “whatthevek” posted a video showing single high school-aged students was unable to read the sentence, “She wore a silhouette of clothes that were extraordinary but somewhat gauche.” He made a follow-up video a day later in showing students unable to make sense of the sentence, “The colonel asked the choir to accommodate the governor’s schedule.” The videos were filmed at the city’s Preparatory Charter School of Mathematics, Science, Technology and Careers.

How surprised are you? I’m not.

The two videos went “viral,” accumulating 1.7 million likes and thousands of comments. The student says he won’t be posting a third, however. “I would post a part three, but the school board is trying to expel me, stop me from going to prom, and stop me from walking at graduation,” he revealed on Instagram last week.

South Philly-based Prep Charter has yet to conform or deny this. State test scores show that just 53% of students at the school tested proficient in reading, and 19% were proficient in math. Roughly 71% of Philadelphia’s fourth-graders cannot read at grade level, according to statistics from Philadelphia-based social justice group Achieve Now. The group also holds that about half of all adults in Philadelphia are functionally illiterate, one of the highest rates among large US cities.

Let us assume that the student, whose name is not yet known, is indeed facing punishment for his videos.

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Oh For Heaven’s Sake! The Answer To This Question For “The Ethicist” Is EA Rationalization List #13…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Too bad Prof. Appiah doesn’t read Ethics Alarms…

A particularly clueless inquirer of the Times Magazine advice columnist “The Ethicist” asks…

“I volunteer for a small nonprofit organization picking up free food from pantries and delivering it to an impoverished local community. Recently I learned that one of the directors of the organization lied to food pantry personnel to obtain more food for our clients. The pantry normally allocates one bag of food per week for each family. Our director said we were delivering to twice as many families, so each family actually received two bags a week. When asked to provide the names of the clients we were delivering to, our director gave fake names.

“I’m uncomfortable with lying to sister organizations so we can procure more food than our families would receive under the established rules. And I worry that the extra bags for our families mean that other needy clients don’t get what they need.

“When I discussed this with another volunteer, they reminded me that one bag of food could never feed our large client families and that the director’s intentions were good. Please help me sort this out.”

Both the fact that anyone would ask such a question and that a philosophy professor thinks enough readers wouldn’t know the answer makes me again wonder if I’m wasting my life trying to advance the cause of ethical decision-making.

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Ethics Quiz: Investigative Reporting Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

In this article, (Gift Link) a New York Times investigative reporter explains how he has cultivated a source that he knows is distributing illegal drugs that may be fatal.

He writes in part,

“It was a small-time operation, but one that illuminated a big point for our reporting: A single person, without cartel backing, can order and redistribute potent chemicals.

I wanted to verify his account with others. But I also had to make good on my commitment not to reveal his identity. So I compared the information he was giving me with reporting I’d done with dozens of experts and law enforcement officials who told me what they understood about this market. I also spoke to people in his circle of friends and associates.

All along, I was keenly aware that the drugs Chemical Analyst was selling can be fatal. I asked him about this — as I’d asked other dealers and suppliers — and he professed here to be a libertarian. As a human, I find it terrifying the drugs he sells could kill people. It was painful to watch him use drugs himself, and I often feared for his safety. But as a reporter, I have a responsibility to explain to the public what’s really happening on the drug frontier.”

This is different from most Ethics Quizzes here, because my position is set and unshakable. The reporter’s duty “to make good on [his] commitment not to reveal [the drug pusher’s] identity” must be subordinate to his duty to society as a citizen and responsible human being. Even lawyers are authorized to violate a clients’ confidentiality to prevent death or serious bodily injury to a third party. How many people should die so that the reporter can explain what’s happening on “the drug frontier?” My verdict: none.

The reporter says he’s talked to lawyers and other journalists as well as “experts” and law enforcement officials. I doubt that he has talked with any ethicists.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day(that I have already told you my answer to..) is…

Would it be ethical for the reporter sic the police on this criminal? Could it be ethical not to?

I’m Shocked…SHOCKED!…That Mayor Mamdani’s Wife Is A Flaming Anti-Semite!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I have a very good friend, an actor, a lawyer, a Jew and a “useful idiot” for progressives, who recently wrote a passionate and articulate Facebook post about however one felt about Israel, there was no excuse, justification or salvation for people who hated Jews. And I recalled that he had been among my misguided and ethically-crippled Facebook friends who actually celebrated the election of Communist Zohran Mamdani, as had others of my friends as well as Democratic Party Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and this august crew (from Mamdani’s website):

But it’s even worse. With the exception of the disgraced ex-Governor of New York who was running against Mamdani, not a single national Democratic leader would say publicly, “What???? Are you all out of your minds? This guy hates Jews! What has our party become?”

What indeed.

Of course there was plenty of evidence that the Mayor-to-be’s wife was a Jew Hater, but the Axis media went to its usual great lengths to bury that fact like a cat buries its turds in a cat box. Today the Washington Free Beacon did the public a favor with a metaphorical bucket full of ice water to the faces of all of Mamdani’s enablers, deniers and useful idiots. The post is headlined, “Zohran Mamdani’s Wife Celebrated Palestinian Terrorists, Including Plane Hijacker, In Social Media Posts From Early Adulthood…Rama Duwaji also boosted a post that said Tel Aviv ‘Shouldn’t exist in the first place.’” There’s no paywall: read it. Send it to your Trump Deranged friends, and all your blind Facebook friends who thought this Marxian demagogue was so charming and passionate.

Better yet, shake the Free Beacon story in front of their smug, stupid faces like a Jack Russell Terrier shakes a rat—you know I love that image—or even better YET, do this..

Now, they will huminahumina that just because someone marries the love of his life who happens to want Jews wiped from the face of the earth doesn’t mean Mayor Mamdani feels the same way. Right. Heck, we don’t know that Eva Braun was bad, do we? Riiiight. Mayor Mamdani just used St. Paddy’s Day to compare the Irish Republican Army to Palestinians, who want Jews wiped from the face of the earth. This isn’t hard.

As for the Mamdani-chering Jews, like my friend, a smart and compassionate man, who celebrated Mamdani because he opposes Donald Trump, there are no excuses. They should be ashamed of themselves. He should be ashamed of himself. I am ashamed of him. People should turn their backs on these ethically corrupted fools like the jurors in “Twelve Angry Men” turn their backs on Juror 10 (Ed Begley) when he erupts into his final bigoted rant..

The irony? I cast that pro-Mamdani actor-friend in one of my productions of “Twelve Angry Men.”

“A representative for Mamdani did not respond to a request for comment,” notes the Free Beacon. Of course not. What would he say?

Cesar Chavez, the Imperfect Icon Dilemma, and the Duty to Founders

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I feel kind of bad for using Nelson on this story, but my self-restraint failed me, the sooner everyone recognizes Gavin Newsom as the creep he is, the better off everyone will be.

A lot of good people are hurt, disillusioned and confused by the revelations, published by Axis stalwart the New York Times, that United Farm Workers and Mexican-American icon Cesar Chavez raped women and girls. All of the headlines will say “allegedly,” but the evidence is very strong, and you know the Times, which happily covered up not-quite so convincing evidence that Joe Biden sexually assaulted a staffer when he was in the Senate and never fully investigated the darkest accusations against Bill Clinton, would have done the same with the Chavez revelations if they could find the slightest justification. Read the Times story here, on my gift link. I won’t waste time repeating it, as this post will be long enough.

Ethics Issues:

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Welcome To Unethical Rationalization 31A, “The Hypocrite’s Balm,” or “Any Port in a Storm!”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This is the first new rationalization added to the rationalizations list in a long time, though I have at least two others I have been pondering for a while. Rationalization #31 A, however hit me like Pete Buttigieg’s imaginary maul when a respected legal ethicist wrote on the listserv for the Association of Professional Liability Lawyers today that “Lefties” like him were suddenly embracing state’s rights in response to the need to “resist” President Trump, and attempted to justify this reversal by shrugging, “Any port in a storm!”

And there it was. I could hardly believe that wasn’t on the list already, but it wasn’t. I assigned “The Hypocrite’s Balm” as a sub-rationalization to the infamous #31, The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now.” I also could have placed it under #25. The Coercion Myth: “I have no choice!,” but it is distinct from both.

#31 stands for brutal Utilitarianism, “the ends justify the means.” #25 is the whine of someone who is too cowardly to make the kind of tough ethical choice that has unpleasant non-ethical consequences. But “Any port in a storm” is the motto of activists who decide that their minds are made up, facts and logic no longer appeal to them, and they are willing to ally themselves with beliefs, organizations, individuals and missions that they have previously reviled in order to avoid admitting they may have been wrong, or that they should reassess their position based on new information, experience, or the metaphorical ice water of reality being thrown in their faces.

Rationalization #31 A describes the warped, desperate and destructive mindset of the Axis of Unethical Conduct today along with the Trump Deranged. So obsessed are they with their hatred of Donald Trump and the fact that he has at least temporarily derailed the Mad Left’s march to single party, nanny state, multicultural, anti-American DEI dominance that they are willing to anchor themselves in “ports” sane liberals would have avoided like ebola in the recent past.

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Comment of the Day: “’Is We Getting Dummer?’ The Primaries This Week Tell Us ‘Yes’”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Master commenter A M Golden had a stand-out week, with several COTD-worthy posts, including this one, and a Guest Post that arose out of yesterday’s Open Forum.

I am also grateful any time I’m given an excuse to re-post one of my favorite—and, sadly, most relevant—clips from the Ethics Alarms archive.

Here is A M’s Comment of the Day on “Is We Getting Dummer?” The Primaries This Week Tell Us “Yes”:

…

“Is We Getting Dumber?”

There is some evidence for that. Beyond statistical proofs that we are failing to properly educate generations of students in basic skills, there is a sort of – shall I write it? – malaise about being responsible adults in this country. I don’t know where it came from. Maybe it’s our high standard of living that emboldens it. Maybe is a misapplication of American individualism that has turned into the oft-unethical slogan, “My way or the highway.” It may, in fact, be a broader misapplication of the also oft-unethical slogan, “The customer is always right.” Because, in fact, the customer is not always right.

It is a rationalization that encourages a form of classism (customers consider themselves socially, educationally, financially above the ones who are tasked with serving them), incentivizes unethical behavior, such as fraud, theft, demands for special treatment and, occasionally, results in horrific behavior like sexual harassment, assault and/or battery.

We have started to commoditize large aspects of our lives. Whatever you may say about poorly-educated, biased teachers, there are plenty of good teachers out there who cannot run their classrooms because the administration acts like the store manager who allows customers to abuse the employees under some misguided notion that this is how to run a successful business. The teachers who can teach but are expected to look past misbehavior and abuse while still doing their jobs eventually leave and what are left are the ones who can’t and won’t teach. That’s what happens in a poorly-run business such as the one I described above. Eventually, you have only the employees who don’t care about their jobs.

Some reasons for this lack of maturity and growth include what (commenter) Steve Witherspoon pointed out above – laziness. We have large swathes of the population who can’t be bothered to do very basic things. They are manchilds and womanchilds, prioritizing their shallow wants over their very real responsibilities. Expecting them to pick up a broom and sweep the floor rather than playing four hours of video games per night is tantamount to crushing their souls. Expecting them to be fiscally aware, to save, to monitor spending, means they can’t spoil themselves with destination weddings and pricey vacations.

I am also going to add distraction to the list. Prior to mobile phones, we had to memorize important telephone numbers. Now, there are people who cannot even provide their own numbers without looking them up. The internet and the capabilities of the internet have made brain muscles weak. It has also contributed to the collapse of the work ethic and civility in general. Restaurants routinely have to put up with people on their phones while ordering in person which often leads to miscommunication and to the aforementioned abuse of staff when the order is wrong. Increasing numbers of restaurants will not serve customers until the phone is put down.

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