rationalizations

Ethics Verdict: The Signal Chat Ethics Train Wreck Is Hopeless

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Perhaps none of the revolting incidents of the past several years showing how partisanship and confirmation bias have made public agreement on reality impossible—Can we agree that this is not a good thing?—is more clear cut than the Signal Chat Ethics Train Wreck.

I am morose.

On the Trump-Deranged, Axis pounces! side, we have Hillary Clinton’s op-ed for the New York Times. It is archived, for some reason: if that link doesn’t work, I put the whole thing in a comment here. The fact that Clinton, of all people, would have the utter gall and lack of self-awareness to write the thing is damning enough; that the Times would print it and that its mostly Trump deranged subscribers would read it without ending their subscriptions, going into shock or hurling themselves out the nearest window supports Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day (#2!) posted last yesterday. Note his title.

I’m going to quote the appropriately uncivil conservative assassin Ace of Spades on this for two reasons. He writes of Clinton’s critique,

“This drunken Satanic sow illegally used her own server so that her communications would be protected from exposure by records retention laws. This was a secret server until someone discovered it — she did not disclose it so that the federal government could copy all of these messages. She did not disclose it so that people fililng FOIAs would even know what records to request. And she sits her in Her Satanic Hubris and accuses others of using Signal to “avoid records retention” laws. By the way, in case you don’t know this, Biden approved the use of Signal for communication precisely because it was more unhackable than the easily-hackable federal systems.”

Reason #1 is that Ace is right, and the venom is appropriate. Talk about ethics estoppel! The fact that Donald Trump and the Electoral College saved America from this vile, dishonest, sinister and destructive woman should alone ensure the former a place in the pantheon of national heroes and the latter enshrinement in the “Best Ideas of the Founders’ Hall of Fame.”

Reason #2 is this final sentence: “By the way, in case you don’t know this, Biden approved the use of Signal for communication precisely because it was more unhackable than the easily-hackable federal systems.” Here is Ace attacking Clinton for her ridiculous hypocrisy, and in the same post citing Biden as an authority to justify the Trump team’s use of Signal, which blew up in their collective faces! For years, Ace has derided Biden as a drooling puppet, but now, when it is convenient, he cites one of “his” “decisions” to excuse the Trump Administration for a security breach, when the whole thrust of the administration since inauguration day has been to reverse, condemn or remove as much of what was done or decided during the last four years. Wow—Flagrant hypocrisy while justly pointing out flagrant hypocrisy! How can anyone trust the Right when it covers a story like that? The Trump Administration should trust in absolutely nothing the Biden Phantom Presidency left behind until it has been tested, verified and tested again. The Biden team used Signal? That doesn’t excuse Hegseth and Waltz having a high level meeting about a military operation using the platform, it makes it worse.

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An Ugly “Lookism”-Kings Pass Hybrid

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Above is a photo of then-high school pole-vaulter Allison Stokke. Stokke was made into an involuntary pin-up when the photo was posted in 2008 to a sports blog, along with the caption: “Meet pole vaulter Allison Stokke… Hubba hubba and other grunting sounds.” The image went “viral” making her an instant celebrity, and sex symbol. As I wrote in 2021, “Oh, Allison did just fine: she became a model and married a pro-golfer. But that’s moral luck. Her photo might have triggered an obsession by a sheik who had her kidnapped and brought to his harem as a sex slave. You never know.”

This is just one of the ugly pathologies social media has inflicted on us. Even more people than before the internet are obsessed with appearances, particularly since the culture now actively cultivates narcissism. (I will never take a selfie to my dying day.) A particularly nauseating example occurred this week, when University of Georgia student Lily Stewart was arrested on March 8 for speeding, Morgan County Crime shared Stewart’s mugshot with her arrest information, and the photo went “viral” to the extent that the British tabloid The Daily Mail treated it as a news story.

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Rationalization #71: Dick Wolf’s Mantra, or “They Only Want A Better Life”

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

As with all of the more recent rationalizations added to the list, #71, the first non-sub rationalization in a while, and thus the highest number so far, should have been included years and years ago. Who hasn’t been hearing and reading “They only want a better life!’ from illegal immigrant enablers, apologists and accessories after the fact for decades? Jeb Bush said it during his mercifully short Presidential run in 2015. Axis media like the New York Times may not use the exact words, but that is the underlying argument in their routine reporting of “good illegal immigrant” stories.

Why am I dubbing this annoying rationalization after Dick Wolf, the prolific TV producer and writer responsible for about a third of the dramas on TV among the reality shows quiz shows and sitcoms? It is because he drops the line into his productions virtually every time an illegal immigrant appears in the story line. I was tempted to call #71 “Mariska’s Rationalization,” because the star of “Law and Order: SVU” mouths the sentiment repeatedly throughout the show’s apparently endless seasons (after Mariska Hargitay finally dies on the job, the show will probably have her mummified corpse leading the police unit, like El Cid).

I confess: after announcing last year that I would be boycotting all Wolf shows after a particularly disgusting woke lecture in one episode I was unfortunate enough to hear, I tuned-in to an SVU re-run last night when my pathetic options were that, “Two-and-a-Half Men,” “Smile 2” and even worse junk. Sure enough, Olivia Benson was tracking down a white monster who was trafficking poor teens from Mexico and who set one of them on fire when she balked at being forced into prostitution to pay for getting across the border. When one of the other girls told Benson that she was afraid of being sent back to Mexico if she cooperated with “policia” to shut down the operation, Mariska, her face full of sympathy and her voice oozing motherly concern, said, “I know. But you you’ve done nothing wrong: you just want a better life!” At least in this episode Mariska didn’t talk about ICE like it was the Gestapo.

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Tough Call: Who Is the Greater Ethics Dunce, David Hogg or the Democrats Who Elected Him Vice-Chair of the DNC? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

David Hogg, had he not been a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when a mass shooting occurred, might have grown up to be a useful, ethical, productive and emotionally healthy human being. Unfortunately, he is likely to be a lifetime victim of the shooting, for it propelled him into the career path of being a professional single-issue fanatic, America’s Greta Thunberg but on the issue of gun control rather than climate change. In an example of the chaos PTSD can wreak on the vulnerable, Hogg has been transformed into a cynical grifter by a mass-murderer’s bullets. It’s tragic, but that doesn’t mean his unethical conduct should be tolerated, much less rewarded.

Barely two weeks after his election as a Democratic National Committee official, Hogg began using DNC contact lists to solicit donations to his own political action committee, “Leaders We Deserve.” That PAC pays his salary of more than $100,000 a year, according to Federal Election Commission records. “David Hogg here: I was just elected DNC Vice Chair! This is a huge win for our movement to make the Democratic Party more reflective of our base: youthful, energetic, and ready to win,” reads one the texts he sent out to the DNC’s vast database. The texts include a link to his PAC.

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Sen. Ernst’s Bill Is Exactly the Kind of Responsible Policy Changes Occur When a Government Stops Using “It’s Just a Drop In the Bucket!” As Its Operating Philosophy

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

And before you ask, no “It’s just a drop in the bucket!” is not currently included in the EA Rationalization List. But it will be….

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa has submitted legislation, titled the “Presidential Allowance Modernization Act.” Under its reforms, former Presidents would receive a pension of $200,000 a year and a $200,000 allowance with cost of living adjustments every year. However, unlike the system currently in place, the allowance would be reduced if the former President earned more than $400,000 a year.

One is forced to ask, what took so long to come up with this change?

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Ethics Dunces: The World Anti-Doping Agency, the International Tennis Integrity Agency & Professional Tennis Generally

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I rate this episode as pure King’s Pass misconduct by both organizations and professional tennis.

Jannik Sinner, the top-ranked men’s tennis player in the world, just got a three-month ban for testing positive for a banned anabolic steroid last March. He says he “accepted” the short ban, and why wouldn’t he? It means he won’t miss any Grand Slam tournaments. The French Open, the season’s next major, starts May 25 and the ban ends May 4. This is like baseball banning a starting pitcher for throwing a doctored ball for three games so he doesn’t miss any starts.

The International Tennis Integrity Agency had decided earlier not to suspend Sinner by buying his excuse for why he tested positive: the clostebol in his doping sample was due, see, to the player getting a massage from a trainer who had used the substance to help a wound on his finger heal quicker. Never mind that virtually every athlete caught using steroids has claimed “accidental” contamination. It is why baseball went to a strict liability system after its steroid scandal.

Ah, but professional tennis is more dependent on its big stars than baseball for its gate income and TV ratings, so suspending the #1 ranked player in the world has unpleasant ripple effects.

This convenient resolution of Sinner’s violation, however, is also causing some rippling. After the settlement was announced, three-time major champion Stan Wawrinka posted on X: “I don’t believe in a clean sport anymore …” # 8 ranked Daniil Medvedev, said, alluding to double standards (Ya think?), “I hope everyone can discuss with WADA and defend themselves like Jannik Sinner from now on.”

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“The Ethicist” Finds a Rationalization! Welcome #64 A: “It Didn’t Mean Anything”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Rationalization #64 A, The Cheater’s Defense or “It Didn’t Mean Anything” is a rather narrowly applicable addition to the list: it arises when a half of a supposedly committed couple has sexual relations with a third party. I have entered it as a sub-rationalization to the infamous Yoo’s Rationalization (“It isn’t what it is”) because betraying a spouse, partner or lover does mean something, probably many things.

The Ethicist received a question from, as always, “Name Withheld,” whose partner had cheated on her and used that phrase, “It didn’t mean anything.” She asks, years after the event, “I still don’t understand why cheaters use the phrase ‘‘(She/he) didn’t mean anything to me.’ How does one even respond to a statement like that?”

Kwame Anthony Appiah, in his usual measured fashion, says that the line “is how cheaters try to reassure their partners that their infidelity wasn’t going to lead to a serious relationship and needn’t spell the end of their existing one; that a fling was ‘just sex.’’’ But that still doesn’t translate to “It didn’t mean anything.” Having sex out of one’s committed relationship probably means, among other things,

  • The cheater isn’t as committed as he or she had led the betrayed partner to believe.
  • The cheater cannot be trusted.
  • The cheater has a drinking or substance abuse problem.
  • The cheater has some apparent needs that the supposed love of his or her life isn’t supplying
  • The cheater lacks some degree of impulse control.
  • The cheater is an easy mark for an aggressive come-on from an attractive member of the opposite sex (in other words, the cheater is a typical heterosexual male.)

Of course it meant something. The statement, like many rationalizations, is a lie. “The Ethicist” concentrates on what the use of the rationalization means: that the cheater, in addition to cheating, is manipulative jerk. “Cheaters demean the people they cheated with by dismissing them as meaningless, demean their partner by implying their pain is unjustified and demean their relationship by saying that they betrayed their beloved’s trust for a liaison they insist was insignificant,” he concludes.

Yeah, that too.

Let’s Thank Ex-Senator Menendez for Giving Us Such A Valuable Review Of Rationalizations At His Sentencing

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I find miscreants and wrong-doers who whine, grovel and weep as they face the just consequences of their crimes particularly despicable. Give me the defiant, unapologetic variety, like Ruth in “Ozark,” who when looking down the barrel of a pistol wielded by the mother of a cartel leader she had assassinated, says, “I’m not sorry. Your son was a murdering bitch, and now I know where he got it from.” As the woman aims the gun at her heart and pauses, Ruth shouts “Well, are you going to fucking do this shit or not?”

Bang.

Yesterday a sobbing Robert Menendez begged the court for mercy after being found incredibly guilty of accepting bribes from foreign governments and businessmen in exchange for cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible among other riches. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison for selling out his Senate office to enrich himself. The New Jersey Democrat and former head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wept as he argued, “Your honor, I am far from a perfect man. I have made more than my share of mistakes and bad decisions. I’ve done far more good than bad. I ask you, your honor, to judge me in that context.” Let’s see, that’s…

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Again, Hall of Fame Ethics, and Again, Ethically Inert Sportswriters Want To Elect Steroid Cheats

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I know I’ve written a ridiculous number of posts about the logical, institutional and ethical absurdity of electing baseballs’s steroid cheats to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, but I have sworn to slap this down every time it rears its metaphorical ugly head until my dying day.

The 2025 Baseball Writers’ Association of America voted Ichiro Suzuki (one vote shy of being a unanimous selection), CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner into the Hall. Three quick ethics notes on this. First, whoever it was who left Suzuki off his ballot should be kicked out of the association using the equivilent of the Ethics Alarms “Stupidity Rule.” He is not only a qualified Hall of Famer, but belongs among the upper echelon of Hall of Famers with the likes of Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Rogers Hornsby.

Second, I have no problem with CC Sabathia making the Hall, but that he was elected just a couple of months after Red Sox star Luis Tiant was rejected by a veteran’s committee, probably ending his Hall of Fame chances for good, shows just how arbitrarily the standards for Hall admission are applied. Tiant was objectively better than Sabathia, a bigger star, and while CC was a flashy presence on the mound, Tiant was more so. Luis (or “Loooooie!” as he was known in Fenway Park) died last year, and had said that if they weren’t going to let him into the Hall while he was alive, they shouldn’t bother after he was dead. Maybe the voters were just honoring his wishes…

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The Prospective Pardons Are Legal But Unethical and Dangerous [Updated Twice]

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

When Ethics Alarms decided what had been a close competition between Woodrow Wilson and Joe Biden for “Worst President Ever,” I honestly thought all of the evidence was in. There were only eight days to go, after all; it had finally been made sufficiently clear that our so-called President was on his way to becoming a zucchini, and worse, had been transitioning for years under the protection of an Axis cover-up. But then came Biden’s endorsement of censorship and the most unethical exit speech in U.S. Presidential history, followed by Biden’s embarrassing announcement that he was ruling the 28th Amendment ratified when it was not. Today, I woke up to the news that Biden had issued prospective pardons to Gen. Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who betrayed his country with unauthorized contact with China; Dr. Fauci, the perjuring, lying, Deep State hack who was significantly responsible for the disastrous response to the Wuhan virus, Trump Deranged former Representative Liz Cheney and all the other members of the Pelosi-rigged House committee that dragged out and manipulated a partisan investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.

The close call now is whether this last official act by Biden is the worst of the batch. It may well be.

To chase the metaphorical elephant out of the room, prospective pardons are legal, constitutional, and probably irreversible. Presidents have issued general pardons applying to groups of people involving many offenses yet to be proven, and many times. There have been at least thirty amnesties before puppet Joe entered the White House: Presidents Lincoln and Andrew Johnson issued them during and after the Civil War to benefit Confederates, and Jimmy Carter issued a mass pardon for Vietnam war draft dodgers. My favorite was President Madison’s 1815 pardon of pirate Jean Lafitte and his crew, who joined Andy Jackson’s American forces at the Battle of New Orleans. Madison’s grateful proclamation covered all who assisted in the defense of Louisiana in the battle (that occurred after the War of 1812 had ended), granting “a full and free pardon of all offenses committed in violation of any act or acts of the Congress of the said United States touching the revenue, trade, and navigation thereof or touching the intercourse and commerce of the United States with foreign nations at any time before the 8th day of January, in the present year 1815, by any person or persons whomsoever being inhabitants of New Orleans and adjacent country, or being inhabitants of the said island of Barrataria and the places adjacent . . .”

The fact that this vague and general sweeping Presidential pardon was issued by James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, makes it about as irrefutable a precedent as one could ask for. And thus the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the pardon power “extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency or after conviction and judgment.”

Nonetheless, just because one can do something (or get away with it) doesn’t mean it is ethical, prudent, responsible or right. Biden’s pardons for alleged crimes never investigated or proven to individuals holding his favor stretches the existing precedents to the breaking point, or perhaps gagging point is a more apt description. After all, Jean Lafitte was a pirate; the Confederate soldiers fought against their country, and the draft-dodgers were, you know, draft dodgers. Even Richard Nixon, pardoned by President Ford in what may be the nearest thing to a precedent for Biden’s pardons today, was a President of the United States whose potential indictable crimes had only been uncovered in the course of a House impeachment inquiry. At that point, the precedent could have been limited by those not insignificant details. Then came Biden’s Once and Future pardon of his black sheep son for crimes he had been convicted of committing and anything else he might have done yet undiscovered, just in case darling Hunter has been a serial killer when he wasn’t high. Today’s pardons take us to the end of the slippery slope.

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