I saw this ridiculous article on the front page of the New York Times: “Climate Change Enters the Therapy Room/Ten years ago, psychologists proposed that a wide range of people would suffer anxiety and grief over climate. Skepticism about that idea is gone” by Ellen Barry. I wasn’t going to post on it, though I was tempted to ask, “Why is this pathetic, paranoid women made crazy by exactly the kind of climate change hysteria propagated by the Times worthy of such attention, or any attention at all?” However, I’m buried in more useful issues already. Then Ann Althouse, for some reason, blogged about it, with a long quote including “They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children. She longed, really longed, to make less of a mark on the earth. But she had also had a baby in diapers, and a full-time job, and a 5-year-old who wanted snacks. At the age of 37, these conflicting forces were slowly closing on her, like a set of jaws…”
As she often does, Althouse just teed up the thing for her commenters to swing at. Had I written about it, I would have concentrated on how the Times, like the rest of the media, takes no responsibility for its role in driving once normal people like the woman in the story nuts. The exact same phenomenon is occurring regarding the Wuhan virus. The mindless terror the news media seeded about Donald Trump–still is seeding–is another example.
I was going to comment on the photo above anyway, not realizing that it had set off an online controversy. Abrams is one of the most shameless power-seeking phonies among the many phonies America is inflicted with right now; the hypocrisy in the photo is hardly unique. President Biden had such an episode over the weekend; Democratic mayors, governors and other officials have made their “rules are for the gullible peons” photos and videos an art form. Most have had the sense to say, “I’m sorry,” or “I forgot,” or “I won’t do it again.” Not the Abrams campaign (she’s running for Georgia governor again).
It responded to criticism of the photo by—guess what!—accusing critics of being racist:
“It is shameful that our opponents are using a Black History Month reading event for Georgia children as the impetus for a false political attack, and it is pitiful and predictable that our opponents continue to look for opportunities to distract from their failed records when it comes to protecting public health during the pandemic.”
Wait, is there a law that says you can’t criticize a black politician during Black History Month? I did not know that! Boy, I wish that my people—you know, bald Anglo-Greek lawyers—had a month like that! Continue reading →
I probably don’t pay enough attention to right-wing conspiracy theories, but I mostly find them so silly that it astounds me that anyone takes them seriously. Alex Jones? How could anyone take Alex Jones seriously, especially after he stated in court documents that he didn’t take his own stuff seriously? Long ago, I learned a lot from a fun tome called “Web of Conspiracy” by mystery writer/historian Theodore Roscoe. It was a detailed account of the evidence assembled by many Lincoln assassination conspiracy buffs, and I loved it, racing through its 800 pages or so and thousands of footnotes as fast as I could. But I was 11; my Dad warned me that the author was cheating, and I couldn’t see it. After the book was out of print, I paid a fortune to acquire a used copy and tried to read it again. I couldn’t get through the damn thing, it was so full of innuendo, and dishonest arguments.
I thought about that book when some well-meaning readers sent me a substack essay by Emerald Robinson asserting in Theodore Roscoe prose that Mike Pence was really trying to get Trump kicked out of office so he could take over. Let’s say I’m dubious, and I’m no Pence admirer. VP’s have been accused of that since John Adams; I walked out of “JFK”—and I’ll sit through almost anything—when Oliver Stone started telling audiences that LBJ was behind Kennedy’s assassination. Moreover, Robinson has long been on my “don’t waste time reading” list, as I view the tweet that got her fired from Newsmax as signature significance. She tweeted,
“Dear Christians: the vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked. Read the last book of the New Testament to see how this ends.
Twitter removed the tweet as a violation of safety rules, which is the kind of stupidity that explains why I quit Twitter. Everyone needs to see tweets like that. Highlight them, don’t hide them. Otherwise you might take a nut like Robinson seriously.
… is the hysteria over the fact that President Trump wanted Mike Pence, his VP, to refuse to perform his ministerial role of receiving the sealed Electoral College votes, opening them, and presiding over the joint session of Congress in which they are made official and the election result is certified. Pence had no power to do what Trump wanted, and he knew it, because the VP only has a few required duties and Pence had four long years to read up on them. So he said no, because he isn’t nuts. That may be the nicest thing I’ve ever written about Mike Pence, a bland, low-profile VP in the old mold of dozens of forgettable men you never heard of or have forgotten, like Henry Wilson and Thomas Hendricks.
Trump’s idea, like a lot of his crazy ideas, was based on bad information and poor impulse control, though I’m certain some creative lawyer told him the VP has the power to halt the election count, just like John Yoo told George Bush that water-boarding wasn’t torture. Trump sincerely believed that the voting had been marred by fraud, and yes, as an official who had pledged to protect and defend the Constitution, if that were the case, a President would have good cause to try to fix the problem.
In 1936, human rights activists unsuccessfully argued for the U.S. to boycott the Berlin Summer Olympics to protest the Nazis’ ongoing persecution of German Jews. However, foreshadowing the “Holocaust? What Holocaust?” stance that preceded the U.S. entry into World War II, FDR gave Adolf the propaganda bonanza he sought, and no, Jesse Owens couldn’t spoil it. Now the Biden Administration is similarly engaged in contrived ignorance regarding China, which is making Hitler’s Olympic Games look like Oktoberfest. All right, there’s a “diplomatic boycott,” but that’s meaningless since spectators are mostly banned anyway. This tweet is apt:
The main reason we are there, as many have pointed out, is to accommodate the giant broadcasting companies and corporate sponsors who view the Games as a money-making opportunity. It’s a dilemma: my refusal to watch a second of the Games prevents me from knowing who to boycott. But then no ethicist, or anyone who cares about ethics, should watch the Olympics wherever they are being held. We know they are corrupt; they no longer celebrate “amateurism,” and U.S. athletes continue to use them to insult their own country, which paid to let them compete.
Nancy Pelosi got the Games off to a rousingly unethical start—wait—can one behave unethically regarding Olympics in China? Isn’t this a case where Bizarro World ethics apply, which hold that in a Bizarro World culture, normal ethics often don’t work, and may be futile? It’s unethical to be ethical in a place like China! That seems to be the Speaker’s position. the Pelosi said, “‘’”
“I would say to our athletes, ‘You are there to compete.’ Do not risk incurring the anger of the Chinese government, because they are ruthless. I know there is a temptation on the part of some to speak out while they are there. I respect that, but I also worry about what the Chinese government might do.”
If they are so ruthless, why is the United States participating in their Olympic Games? The U.S. Olympic Committee always muzzles, or tries, our athletes, but Pelosi is a high government official telling Americans to shut up because it may make a totalitarian government angry. If I were competing, Pelosi’s statement alone would be enough to make me speak up. We shall see if any of our athletes have the courage to speak up for real human rights abuses when they know the nation they are criticizing, unlike their own, might take serious action against them.
My guess: no.
In response, Joy Behar, the reigning moron on “The View,” stepped up in the absence of Whoopi and reached new idiotic heights, defending Pelosi with this:
“She’s being maternal I think. You know Nancy is momala. You know she’s always like ‘I think about the children. It’s for the children.’ She cares about the kids. That’s her.”
The New York Times clearly has its marching orders. Right around the time the opening ceremonies were starting in Beijing, the Times published an article highlighting the upside of China’s totalitarian response to the pandemic—yes, it was even tougher than in Michigan. The strict lockdowns and other acts of state coercion have been a major success, the article told readers. (Not like the wimpy, mildly Constitution abusing measures those conservatives are whining about!) China’s strategy, it says, shows what a society can do when it makes the prevention of “Covid” its “No. 1 priority.”
Really? And how would the Times know that? The Times knows dictatorship is successful with viruses because China says it has one of the lowest pandemic death rates in the entire world, though the story notes that the Chinese data “can be suspect.” Ya think??? Never mind: China has “almost certainly” done better than the democracies, even if the official numbers are “artificially low.” No kidding: China has reported 3 deaths per million from COVID, compared with almost 2,700 in the United States. Do you believe that? Does anyone? The Times doesn’t believe it, and still is publishing this bootlicking junk. Continue reading →
Help. I need a new designation. Long ago, I began using Ethics Dunce to describe individuals whose ethics alarms failed to work when they were most needed, resulting in clearly unethical and indefensible conduct. Later, EA began using the label “Fick,” after the recently departed Leroy Fick, to describe someone who was unethical and defiant about it. Since the American Left began going, as Bill Maher said recently with unusual perspicacity, “mental,” “Ethics Dunce” has seemed increasingly inadequate.
Many of the assertions and actions we have seen aren’t the result of malfunctioning ethics alarms, they arise from a deliberate attempt to redefine what is right while abusing power, position and influence to do so. “Dunce” is too mild; dunces can’t help themselves. The new breed are nascent totalitarians: should I add “Totalitarian of the Month”?
The past week was an unusually lively one, both ethics news-wise and in the comments amphitheater, though my own attentions were more divided than usual. And AS usual, when I believe Ethics Alarms has been particularly useful and interesting, it lost subscribers.
This trend has puzzled and annoyed me for years. Well, the runaways can bite me. Their loss.
If no one discusses here the “Let’s silence Joe Rogan!” story of last week, when two ex-hippy iconic artists decided to use their economic power to try to censor someone whom they disagreed with—that’s what being “progressive” means today, somehow.
Yes, I think I’ll just sit around among the pieces of my ruined head for the rest of my life. It will be safer that way.
There were almost three explosions.
The first, a near miss, is that “The Masked Singer,” easily the most moronic TV show in decades and perhaps ever, is still on the air and millions of human beings watch it. The idea of the show, an update of the late 50s panel show “Masquerade Party,” in which a group of B celebrities tried to guess the identity of other celebrities, almost always actors and actresses, who were wearing masks and costumes. So “The Masked Singer” isn’t even original. I have, luckily, learned to suppress TMS head eruptions, or had, until I learned that…
…in the taping of the first episode of that show’s new season, the garishly, ridiculously costumed (I know this without seeing the clip, because ALL of the show’s costumes are garish and ridiculous) performer turned out to be Rudy Giuliani. KABOOM! #1.Continue reading →
The NFL had a downturn in TV ratings after its stars started kneeling during the National Anthem to protest, well, something. The protesters didn’t agree, their explanations were incoherent, and the stunt was generally annoying to spectators and fans. The League lacked the courage and integrity to stop it, but the kneeling started tapering off in 2020. For 2021, the NFL grovelled for approval from the relatively few social justice warriors who watch pro football by playing the so-called “Black National Anthem” at every game. This is offensive, as it constitutes a statement contradicting the ideal and the fact that Americans are Americans, and we don’t need no stinking color-coded anthems.
And that’s not even the worst of it. Players were allowed this season to choose from 6 progressive, racially divisive, anti-white bigotry messages to plaster on their headgear (which does not prevent brain damage, put the helmets are pretty, and now, woke): “End Racism,” “Stop Hate,” “It Takes All of Us,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Inspire Change” and “Say Their Stories.”
Whose stories, you ask? Oh, just the stories of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, whose deaths had nothing to do with racism and have been hyped to encourage the hatred and distrust of police.
It’s Super Bowl month, and I will periodically be reminding readers of just how unethical it is to support the National Football League, which allows criminals to play, enables racial division while doing nothing substantive to address its own “diversity and inclusion” problems, is a Black Lives Matter propaganda distributor, and most of all, knowingly places the brains and health of its players at risk, confident that the price of paying periodic multi-millions to settle serial class actions will be pocket-change compared to the profit the NFL makes sending its employees into premature dementia. This is one of the major ethics corrupters in American culture.
Ethics Alarms 