U.S. Society

Sunday Afternoon Ethics On The Island Of La Grande Jatte

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

seurat_a-sunday-on-la-grande-jatte

On this date in 1868, the Senate acquitted President Andrew Johnson of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors” by a single vote, which made the total less than the requisite two-thirds. Johnson’s failed impeachment was the closest in motivation and ethics to the two Trump impeachments. The eleven counts against him were contrived because he was a political annoyance, and was using his power to foil the Republican Senate’s Reconstruction policies. The one real “high crime” was defying an unconstitutional law, the Tenure of Office Act, which Johnson asserted was illegal (and it was).

On the topic of impeachment, two other notes:

  • In the classic 1952 film “The Manchurian Candidate” (not the superfluous remake with Denzel Washington), a U.S. Senator threatens to “bring articles of impeachment” against a Vice- Presidential nominee “to the floor of the Senate.” The Senate doesn’t initiate impeachment; that’s the job of the House.  This is irresponsible scripting. No wonder the public is civically illiterate.

  • Anti-Trump fanatic Rick Wilson, a former GOP consultant, warned Democrats in a podcast, “If the Republicans take over the House, they will impeach Joe Biden…[they] will run show trial Benghazi hearings every day that will never end.” Why yes, Rich that’s right, and it is exactly what the Democrat-controlled House guaranteed by its abuse of the impeachment process and undemocratic obstruction of President Trump’s Presidency, as they obliterated all previous norms of fairness and comity in the relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches. They pay this guy for “insight” like that?

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Ethics Footnotes, 5/11/21: Misremember The Alamo, and Other Alarming Things That Could Never Happen Here

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

the-artwork-for-1984-142271

1. The glorious defeat of the Alamo by that champion of diversity, General Santa Anna! The San Antonio Express-News reports that a local activist and university professor, Mario Salas, who has taught African American studies and somehow ended up on the city’s historical commission (though he is not a historian), is claiming that Santa Anna’s army in 1836, the one that slaughtered the defenders of the Alamo, had an all black regiment that has been erased from history. The theory seems to be that if the Mexican dictator had an all-black regiment, he’s not the villain in the Alamo story, he’s the tragic hero: a woke dictator who opposed slavery and fought against the white supremacist Alamo defenders. Like most of the historical revisionism designed to smear American history and its heroes, this requires ignoring a lot of facts.

The Texas Revolution was part of a much wider war that engulfed Mexico at the same time, not a rebellion based on slavery and race. From much of northern Mexico and including Texas as well as states as far from Texas as Yucatan, the war’s primary issue was Santa Anna’s betrayal of the federalists and his abrogation of the 1824 Mexican constitution when he sought absolute dictatorial power. He abolished state legislatures and redrew state boundaries into military districts. His favored treatment of those who opposed him was to execute whole regions. Keeping slavery in Texas was indeed a bone of contention among the mostly Southerners who settled the region, but non-slave states in Mexico were rebelling as well.

Santa Anna would have been a villain if all his soldiers were black.

2. Oh! The defendant deserved to be attacked by the judge! Chief Magistrate Cary Hays III of Crawford County, Georgia “physically assaulted an inmate while the inmate was handcuffed, shackled at the feet, and accompanied by a law enforcement officer,” according to an ethics complaint. This is officially an allegation, but there is a video, and there were plenty of witnesses.

On December 2020, the inmate began cursing at Judge Hays and continued to do so as he was led out of the conference room where his bond hearing took place. Judge Hays “verbally engaged the inmate,” who cursed at Hays again. Hays followed the inmate into the hallway, grabbed him and pushed him into and up against a wall. The inmate did not physically threaten Judge Hays, attempt to escape or flee from custody.

Judge Hays’ defense? He says he didn’t hurt the guy, and if the video had sound and included what the inmate called him, his actions would be considered justified.

No, Your Honor, they wouldn’t.

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Three Ethics Metaphors: The Rise, The Presidency And The Fall Of Donald J. Trump, Part I

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

dog pilot

I have to cleanse the blog of Trump related markers, like having “The Presidential Impeachment And Removal Plans, 2016-2020” link under the home page banner, and the “This Helps Explain Why Trump Is President” categories to tag articles. I’m not nostalgic or anything, I just hate blog housekeeping. But It’s also time to close that chapter with an ethics assessment of the Trump Presidency.

Three metaphors I applied to the nation’s Trump adventure nicely encapsulate what went on, I think. Beginning in late 2015, I derided the idea that electing (or nominating) Donald Trump to be President was the equivalent of the passengers in an airplane navigating a storm voting to let a dog (in some versions, a chimp) try flying the craft. The metaphor was apt, and it’s still apt, even though the dog/chimp equivalent did not crash the plane and kill everyone in it. That was moral luck, as pure as it can be. It was madness for this country to permit a man with Trump’s well-documented character flaws and proven proclivities both and executive and a human being control the destiny of the nation in 2016. Concluding otherwise is indefensible. A valued commentator here has apparently abandoned commenting here because he objected to my tendency to designate what he considered opinions as facts. I’m sure that he considers this one of those, but he’s wrong and I’m right. It’s a fact that Donald Trump had proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was unfit to be President before the 2015 debates, and he did nothing during the campaign to undercut that conclusion. It’s a fact that a dog shouldn’t fly a plane, and similarly, it’s a fact that Donald Trump should not have been allowed to come within miles of the White House, except as a visitor. Hillary was right: for the most part, those who were advocating Trump’s Presidency were deplorable: ignorant, reckless, irrational, walking and voting examples of the perhaps fatal flaws in democracy. She was just the worst possible individual to make that observation, since giving Clinton and her party the power she sought, while different from allowing a dog to fly the plane, was still wrong. It was just more like allowing a kamikaze pilot to fly the plane.

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Weekend Ethics Frolics, 5/9/2021: Birthing Persons Day Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Frolicking

Surely you have heard by now that a few addled Democrats in Congress have begun using the hilarious term “birthing people” to describe mothers. This is in order to pander to the trans population, because the special problems of this tiny minority are worth turning the entire culture inside out and upside down. So far it’s three certifiably silly people on the Hill whose credentials as ethics dunces are unusually strong, even for Congressional Democrats (the links go to signature significance EA posts: Senator Cory “Spartacus” Booker , certifiable Rep. Ayanna Pressley, previously heard arguing that “girls” have a right to attack other girls with knives “uninterupted”, and the spectacularly unqualified Rep. Cori Bush, who was supposedly on Biden’s short list for VP, which is terrifying—yes, even more terrifying than Kamala Harris:

birthing person tweet 1Birthing person 2

This is fascinating from an ethics perspective, specifically the slippery slope. The Great Stupid that has descended over the land, with special focus on progressives, has led to vocal support for so many ridiculous ideas—defunding the police, paying people more to stay out of work than to have jobs, open boarders, electing Joe Biden, packing the Supreme Court, and more—that the once fairly bold line between “progressive” and “batshit crazy” appears to have been erased. At some point, and maybe “birthing people” is it, even left-tilting Americans will wake up and say “Whoa! These are wackos!”

And indeed they are.

1. Also from the “What an idiot!” files…On baseball and Giants’ Hall of Fame immortal Willie Mays’ 90th birthday last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Twitter account posted a picture of Willie McCovey. Willie Mays is a national icon, probably the greatest African-American baseball player of all-time, and any American, especially any American elected official, who does not know what he looks like is too ignorant of America’s culture and history to serve competently. (I’m only exaggerating a little.) Not only is this an insult to the Say Hey Kid (What does that nickname mean, Nancy? Huh? Come on, you represent San Francisco!), it’s the kind of “they all look the same to me!” mistake that white officials are typically savaged for, as when Senator Rubio mixed up Rep. John Lewis with Rep. Elijah Cummings. At least Cummings and Lewis looked a little bit alike. McCovey, who was also a Hall of Fame slugger and who also played for the Giants,

Willie McCovey Holding Baseball Bat

looked nothing like Willy Mays…

Willie-Mays-US-2155529

…and to make the distinction easy for baseball ignoramuses, Willie McCovey is DEAD.

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Afternoon Ethics Afterthoughts, 5/7/2021: On Quitting, Cancelling, Lying And Deflecting

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

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1. The dignity and integrity to quit. The big news in baseball yesterday was that the California Angels finally released Albert Pujols. Pujols is in the last year of a terrible 24 million dollar a year+ contract he signed as a free agent. For the last several years, he had negative value, meaning that the Angels would have been better if they just stuck a utility infielder in his slot in the line-up. When Pujols left the St. Louis Cardinals, he was already a lock of the Hall of Fame, much like Mike Trout today (also on the Angels) who could quit at 30 and still be regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. In 2019, I wrote about another washed up batter holding on to collect his exorbitant salary when he was no longer capable of earning it, the Orioles’ erstwhile slugger Chris Davis. I wrote in part,

[He] should call a press conference and do what some baseball players better than he have done when they realized they could no longer play at the level they were paid to. Quit. Retire. Say that he has too much respect for the game, his team mates, Baltimore, the Orioles, its fans, and himself to keep on with the embarrassing futility of trying to play major league baseball when he no longer has the skill to do so while receiving millions to fail. Then he should walk away, an Ethics Hero, and a model of integrity.

But Davis didn’t, of course. Davis earned $23,000,000 that year, and last year. He will earn the same amount this season and the next, to add to the 165 million he’s banked already. His OPS (On Base % plus Slugging %) the past three years: .539, .601, and .331. The average OPS in the Major Leagues is about .750. Nothing yet this year: he’s been injured. The Orioles hope he stays that way.

What Pujols is owed if he stays active is virtually monopoly money to him: he already has a third of a billion dollars from his baseball salaries alone, and many millions more from endorsements—and that’s just assuming he keeps his money in a sock. Reportedly Albert is greatly admired as a man of character, but if he was truly that, he would have the character to quit. Now.

2. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Here’s a fun link: conservative pundit David Harsanyi traces (some) of the egregious media bias since Biden took office.

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Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

I have an excuse for the late open forum today, but it’s my problem, not yours, so I’ll just say: as Heddy…I’m sorry, Headley, would say,

“Now go do that ethics voodoo that you do so weeeeelllll!!”

Evening Ethics Cool-Down, 5/5/21: Toyota, Patents, And The Cheating Homecoming Queen

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Frozen-Jack-Nicholson

I don’t want to over-use the “This Date In Ethics” concept, but attention must be paid: this was the day, in 1961,that Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. boarded the Freedom 7 space capsule to becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space.

In these times where so many aspects of our culture are working to imbue Americans with fear of living, when people wear masks in their cars and teachers are willing to cripple both the economy and children’s education to minimize their risk of catching a virus, it should be remembered that a young, healthy man risked his life and the chance of a fiery death to advance America’s science and the spirit of exploration.

1. For some reason (Cognitive dissonance?) I haven’t been checking Althouse as often since she decided that her readers were hogging too much attention on her blog by insisting on posting comments. She still has an admirable talent for cutting through the BS. Reacting to today’s announcement that Facebook’s “quasi-indepedent” board upheld FaceBook’s partisan and anti-democratic ban on Donald Trump’s posts. Ann writes, “I’m not surprised. If the decision had gone the other way, Facebook could have found some new offense and banned him again.”

Not could have, though; would have.

2. How is this fair or equitable? Once again, Toyota is giving a special discount to “recent college graduates.” This is, of course, ham-handed pro-college virtue-signaling, but wouldn’t you guess that non-college grads of the same age need such discounts more? In the TV ad, we see a nice, upper-middle class white girl from childhood to college—it sure looks like her parents can afford a car…or she can afford a full-price cheaper car. Interestingly, this is one of the relatively few TV ads running now that dares to feature a white character who doesn’t at least mitigate her ingrained evil by being part of a mixed-race family.

Special deals on products and services for special categories of Americans—yes, even veterans—are divisive and incoherent.

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Unethical “American Idol” Tricks

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

American-Idol-Season

Wow. Has it really been that long since my last “American Idol” post? The last one appears to have been in 2012. I began losing interest in the updated version of “Major Bowe’s Amateur Hour” when it became clear to me that the show’s system routinely missed the best talent, notably Adam Lambert, who so obviously had “star” written all over him during the 2009 season that his loss to the vanilla Kris Allen (Who?) was an embarrassment. I stopped paying attention a few years later—yes, I guess 2012 fits.

But I can’t let this pass.

At the end of last month on “American Idol” Season 19, MC Ryan Seacrest announced that ten “familiar faces” from last season, when the show was made remote and virtually dead by the production limitations prompted by Wuhan virus fears , would be permitted to compete for a spot in this year’s top 10. “Those finalists never got the true experience of the big stage, the lights, the cameras, the hair, the makeup, the wardrobe, that fun stuff, Kris Pooley and the band backing them up,” Ryan said, not really justifying anything. Yup, they got a tough break. But it was that season’s groups’ tough break, and the current season’s competitors shouldn’t be penalized for it. Adding those performers now obviously ould skew the voting: some of them already had a solid fan base. This was especially true of last popular season’s runner-up, Arthur Gunn.

Sure enough, Gunn predictably won the “comeback round,” and thus was added to the Season 19 Top Ten. That meant that one of this season’s singers who would have made the finalist group without the Invasion of the Losers from Season 18 was robbed of his or her shot. At very least, Gunn should have been the 11th finalist if he was going to be allowed to compete at all. Then he was voted into the Final Seven, compounding the damage.

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Democracy Or Mob Action? It Depends On Your Point Of View…

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

School boards are testing the limits of democracy and tolerance for its abuse on two fronts now: mandatory masking, and Critical Race Theory indoctrination. Parents and others are learning that being nice and compliant has backfired badly on them (and the nation) and are finally beginning to push back. Good. Late, perhaps disastrously late, but still: good.

In Vail, Arizona, where the school board is one of many in the state taking a harder policy on mask-wearing than other areas of the state, hundreds of parents and protesters turned up at a public school board meeting to demand a more reasonable mandate. Overwhelmed and outnumbered, the school broad ended the meeting and fled. (Someone even called the police on “the Nazis,: causing understandable confusion. Who are the real fascists in this controversy?) The remaining citizens, armed with “Robert’s Rules of Order,” then declared that the board had dissolved, elected a new board by a voice vote, and then the “new board” voted to make masks voluntary in schools.

Uh, well, it doesn’t work like that, though the conservative media cheered on the episode while misrepresenting it. Robert’s Rules lay out orderly procedures for holding meetings, not how to hold elections. The elections of Vail school board members is guided by law, and, of course, the whole city gets to vote, not just those who show up spontaneously at a meeting. Reportedly, a lot of the protesters in Vail didn’t even live in Vail, though rightish blogger like PJ Media’s Steven Green insisted on calling them (falsely) “parents” without any verification that they were.

It is also more than a little hypocritical for conservatives to simultaneously endorse efforts to make voting less conducive to manipulation and fraud while applauding a mob takeover of a school board.

Nonetheless, sneering at the incident is as unwise as over-praising it. Democracy works only with the consent of participants, and the increasingly power-mad and self-righteousness besotted Left is begging for uprisings like the one in Vail. (Was it an insurrection?) They will get them, and if civility, fairness and respect doesn’t enter the process soon, they will involve a lot more than a misuse of “Rorbert’s Rules of Order.”

Here is the the video of the Vail meeting: