Ethics Quote of the Month: “If you want to hate America, watch the news. If you want to love America, drive through it.” Unidentified German World Cup fan and first time U.S. visitor.

The conservative news media have been writing a lot about the positive reactions of foreign World Cup fans as they finally get to experience our country first hand. Because of our hopelessly biased and partisan journalism, in which one side holds that the U.S. can do no wrong and the other paints the U.S. as a racist, sexist, land-stealing hellhole ruled over by a mad orange king, I have no idea how accurate this “surprise” is. Bill Maher seems to believe it, but then who can trust Bill Maher?

“Freddy” is a young German soccer fan who has become an internet sensation as he joins Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and Alexis de Tocqueville as heavily-read foreign commentators who documented their first road trips across the United States. His viral social media posts have attracted tens of millions of readers as Freddy has raved about Americana like Waffle House , Taco Bell, Buc-ee’s, Bass Pro Shops, the size of American homes and more. Freddy the German is not the only one, however. World Cup visitors from Europe, Asia, Africa and South America have hit social media with similar shock and awe, full of wonder at Walmart and Costco, small town diners, Texas barbecue, the extravagant abundance in grocery stores and the stunning options and variety we take for granted in the most prosperous country in world history.

Writes the Jewish World Review,

“The average American rarely pauses to consider how extraordinary our country remains today. We gripe about suburban sprawl while living in homes that would be considered luxurious by the standards of much of the world. We roll our eyes at chain restaurants that millions of foreign tourists eagerly seek out. We treat abundance as ordinary because abundance is all most of us have ever known. That familiarity breeds a certain blindness.But the World Cup tourists are not blind. They see an America that remains dynamic, entrepreneurial and welcoming. They encounter strangers eager to offer travel advice. They find communities proud to share local traditions. They discover a country that is far friendlier than the caricatures would suggest.” The America they are experiencing bears little resemblance to the negative stereotypes they had long imbibed back home.”

Yeah, but that Reflecting Pool still isn’t right…

Meanwhile:

1. Somebody sent me the Google AI’s description of this blog. It reads,

“Ethics Alarms is a popular ethics and commentary blog founded by lawyer and ethicist Jack Marshall. It focuses on examining daily news, politics, and pop culture to analyze right from wrong. The site’s name originates from Marshall’s concept of “ethics alarms”—the gut feelings, twinges of conscience, and cautions that trigger when faced with an ethical dilemma. It evaluates current events, politics, pop culture, and sports through a traditional, often conservative-leaning ethical lens.

Criticism: Detractors sometimes find the author’s perspective dogmatic, combative, and inflexible.

The Tone: It is conversational yet highly opinionated, combative, and staunchly “no-nonsense”. The writer is quick to point out “Tales of the Great Stupid” and the perceived decline in cultural reasoning.

The Content: Marshall dissects everything from political bias and sportsmanship to the ethical implications of horror movies like It Follows.

Community & Rules: The site encourages open discussion. The creator has strict Rule Book criteria, often calling out “rationalizations” and logical fallacies used by both public figures and commenters. The sometimes polarizing blog is designed to help readers recognize, debate, and improve their ethical reasoning skills. It breaks down complex moral dilemmas and often features categories like “Ethics Quizzes” and “Ethics Heroes.”

Not bad! I never thought of Ethics Alarms as “popular,” however. And I had forgotten that I had written about “It Follows”!

2. Can “The View” be called a news program when it disseminates false information and rather than informing viewers, makes them less informed? Last week the ladies unanimously claimed that “no one wants voter ID laws.” In fact, a 2025 survey by Pew found that 83% of U.S. adults favor photo ID mandates. Even assuming error because polls are biased, inaccurate and generally suck, I think it’s fair to say that “no one” is untrue. And stupid. The ladies also claimed that “half” of America would be prevented from voting if the SAVE act was signed into law. Whoopi Goldberg led the discussion of the “SAVE America Act,” saying “He [Trump] torpedoed the [housing] bill because he wants another bill signed. And it seems to me no one wants to sign this bill.”

Whoopi never got out of high school, so she can perhaps be forgiven for not understanding how laws get made, but shouldn’t a host on a news show know that? Only the President signs the bills into law. It is unethical to criticize what you don’t understand. Am I being polarizing to say that?

3. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni recently published a report, “A Broadside for the Nation: Preparing College Students for Informed Citizenship,” calling for mandatory college civics courses. Teaching civics before college would seem to be a better idea, since 18-year-olds can vote and not everyone goes to college. The Council claims the requirement would help the nation’s future “schoolteachers, business leaders, professionals, and government leaders.” Gee, ya think?

[I suspect that you’re going to see a lot more of that crazy lady who freaks out on Tippi Hedren in “The Birds” over the next few months…]

Let’s see: the hysterical, Trump Deranged Axis of Unethical Conduct is rooting for Iran, calls Israel genocidal because it is fighting Gaza, is supporting a woman-abusing former (?) Nazi admirer who makes the President’s truth-telling skills seem like Honest Abe’s by comparison, has extolled a kid who stabbed an unarmed white teen to death because the killer is black, worships illegal immigrants, cheers the assassinations of Charlie Kirk and an insurance executive who was shot in the back, opposes voter ID, believes that trying to unscum the Reflecting Pool, which has been an embarrassment for decades, as D.C. becomes a national destination for our 250th anniversary as a nation is an outrage and just selected an openly anti-American, anti-Semite Congressional candidate in New York who wants to abolish borders, police, prisons and deportation even for violent criminals.

Did anyone expect the Axis to be anything but critical of Trump’s Great American State Fair, or to even try to exhibit Fair Fairness in a spirit of union, comity and national pride?

The event opened in D.C. three days ago. The weather in the area has been sweltering or rainy. Never mind: the Axis media has already pronounced it a failure. The Daily Beast—ah, how I remember the days when, as with the Huffington Post, that site was a semi-reliable source of useful news and commentary from left-of-center!—pronounced Trump’s fair as “tacky.” All state fairs and carnivals are tacky: that’s why they are fun. The Atlantic grumps, “The Great American State Fair Isn’t Very Great.” Lots of headlines about “sparse crowds”: Gee, I wonder if the rain (the planned Vanilla Ice concert was rained out yesterday), the heat, and the news media telling people to stay away might have some effect on that. This morning, a Sunday when crowds would be large under decent conditions, it’s raining. When the rain stops this afternoon, the Mall will be soggy and hot.

One of the most relentless of my Trump Deranged Facebook friends reposted this whine from a Smithsonian employee:

I should have included these in this morning’s post…

1. How desperate are Trump Deranged? This bad: a veteran lawyer, scholar and all-around good guy whom I admire and will continue to despite his extreme Trump Derangement symptoms, just wrote on Facebook: “Today’s column by Heather Delaney Reese hits the mark perfectly. The rats are increasingly deserting the Trump moral sinkhole. Not because they’re not rats, but because rats are survivors and they know a sinking ship when they see one.”

Can you guess whom he (and the columnist) is referring to? Yes, it’s Tucker Carlson. He has not been a supporter of Trump for quite a while, and has always been a dishonest, revolting hypocrite and self-serving weasel. It would be hard for me to imagine anyone who would be a worse example to cite in claiming that President Trump’s “moral sinkhole” has cost him or the Republican Party valuable support. Carlson leaving the Republican Party is approximately as much of a blow to the GOP as George Wallace leaving the Democratic Party was in 1968.

Meanwhile, this qualifies as breaking news over at the New York Times: “Images circulated by an activist group reveal bare marble where President Trump’s name once resided. The Kennedy Center previously told a federal judge it had been removed.”

2. Can someone tell me how fake caller IDs being used by robocalls and other pests are legal? I know they are unethical. The same “senior benefit” peddler has called me under false names including “Verizon,” “USMC,” “Department of Agriculture,” and “CVS,” just to name a few.

Being surrounded by raging, reflecting pool-obsessed people seems to be driving everyone around them nuts as well.

A 47-year-old woman was playing pickleball with a man on May 31 at 10 a.m. when they had an argument over who was supposed to get the ball. Subsequent to the game and the dispute, the woman, a registered nurse, jumped between her adversary and her son, who were arguing over the game and the man’s behavior. She then began throttling the man on the head and face with her racket, ostensibly to “protect her son.” She was charged with using “a weapon that can cause serious bodily injury or death,” which is a felony.

It’s crazy out there and getting crazier. Be careful. If pickleball isn’t safe, what is?

Meanwhile:

1. The rest of the story: As I expected but was hoping to be wrong, the 90% woke members of the legal ethics listserv responded to the same hypothesis I posted here with insults, ridicule, denial and ignorance. I particularly upset the mob when I told an angry California lawyer that he comments on alcoholism indicated that she didn’t know what she was talking about, because she didn’t. (She kept referring to “recovered alcoholics” as if the illness can be cured. It can’t, and everyone educated about the disease, including sufferers, know it.) Another wrote that I was “insulting” and “discriminatory” for even raising the topic, and that she wanted me banned from the listserv. (As we know, censorship is the last refuge of those who are out of facts.) I wasn’t banned, but the group’s president contacted me last night and warned me that I had been “disrespectful” because, for example, I pronounced a group of ethicists metaphorically sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting “Nananana I can’t hear you!” damning. So now the list can insult me and denigrate my position while I am effectively silenced…and that’s what they are doing. The freak-out is because alcoholic lawyers are victims, see, and need to be protected like all other “differently-abled” people. The fact, and it is a fact, that an alcoholic lawyer who does not duly inform clients of their enhanced risks when they retain him is setting those clients up for a potential disaster doesn’t trouble these hypocrites one bit. The myth is that the ethics rules exists to protect the public. They really protect lawyers by creating the illusion that the legal establishment polices its members.

I’ll keep monitoring the listserv to track emerging legal ethics issues, but I’m through trying to stimulate discussion or commenting there.The Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers is overwhelmingly partisan, biased, dominated by California lawyers, and hostile to non-conforming positions.

2. Oh…if you are wondering, alcoholic surgeons are similarly handled in kid-glove ways that reflect denial by the medical profession and that put patients at an unnecessary risk. As with alcoholic lawyers, it is considered cruel and unfeeling to hold that an alcoholic surgeon should not be permitted to practice without being tested for alcohol before every procedure if not being removed from that role completely. If you read carefully, this page makes it clear why alcoholics pose an inherent risk in sensitive jobs: “most addicted physicians have high levels of denial and are usually not receptive to interventions from colleagues.” In other words, they try to cover-up their disability and will often lie. As with all enabling groups like my legal ethics colleagues, the medical professionals deliberately blur the issue by lumping alcoholism in with other addictions. This is in the same class as confounding illegal immigration with immigration, has similar motivations.