U.S. Society

Comment of the Day: “On Musk Derangement Syndrome”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Chris Marschner filed this epic Comment of the Day yesterday. Thoughtful commentary with the intensity and outrage behind it of a rant, it its is personal, analytical, passionate and direct while touching on hypocrisy, layoffs, media misinformation, human nature, nationalism and Musk Derangement. Bracing and enlightening!

Here is Chris Marschner‘s Comment of the Day on the post, “On Musk Derangement Syndrome”…

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“I also have sympathy for those who are reacting emotionally because friends and loved ones—or they themselves—are losing jobs, grants or other benefits because of the DOGE cuts. D.C. is full of such “victims.”

Actually, the entire nation has faced cuts because of government decisions. I for one lost a job running an academic program in a correctional institution when Clinton, with Biden heading the Judiciary Committee decided that it would save money by denying financial aid to inmate students in state correctional facilities. The only people who criticized the decision were those who were financially affected. I spoke out against the decision because we could prove reductions in recidivism and overall costs of incarceration. Emotion ruled the day. It was get tough on crime time as Clinton tacked to the center. No politician gave a damn about anyone involved in that program.

I took a big financial hit because my layoff happened less than a month after my stepson was involved in a nearly fatal car crash and laid in a coma through September. Dealing with that and my dad who was in hospice care put me deep in debt. That’s my story. You have to work through these setbacks because they happen to many others.

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Ethics Villains: 28% of American Voters

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Gee, great: a mere 72% of American voters as polled by Rasmussen Reports believe that “vandalism against Tesla” isn’t “an appropriate form of protest” against Elon Musk and DOGE.

In what world is that an encouraging result? Here are the results when asked “Tesla automobiles and Tesla dealerships have been vandalized by anti-Trump protesters. Is vandalism against Tesla an appropriate form of protest?”…

“No” Democrats, 61%; Independents, 79%; Republicans, 78%; All voters, 72%

That is disgusting, depressing, and nauseating. Where does that ethics rot come from? You disagree with the political views of someone, so your response is to vandalize someone else’s automobile? Under even the most warped ethical reasoning, that’s moronic and indefensible. If it is true that further left one leans on the political spectrum the more likely one is to answer “yes” to that question reveals an entire ideology in an ethical crisis.

I’m going back to bed.

On Musk Derangement Syndrome

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Perhaps the clearest sign that a formerly mentally competent Facebook friend has gone over the rainbow to Progressive Wacko Land is if they write nasty things about Elon Musk.

Trump Derangement I can understand. Oh, at this point it’s juvenile and embarrassing to the sufferer as well as his or her family, but I can understand it. I easily could be a victim myself: “There but for the grace of God go I!” [a quote attributed to John Bradford (1510–1555) who was imprisoned in the Tower of London for crimes against Queen Mary I and burned at the stake.]

After all, from 2011 to 2016 I wrote dozens of Ethics Alarms posts about how awful Donald Trump was and a fair amount of very critical posts since then. Trump’s personality, rhetoric and conduct are so far removed from the nation’s historical template for its Presidents that the gag reflex is completely understandable, though if his style causes an individual to fail to appreciate what he has done (or tried to do) that is courageous, necessary and important (what we call “substance”), then bias has indeed made that individual stupid.

Elon Musk, however, is an unquestionable Ethics Hero. He will eventually get honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and could justifiably get the honor tomorrow. Musk’s purchase of Twitter rescued civic discourse from the slowly tightening grip of progressive/Democratic Party control over what the public could read, learn about, consider and write. It is very likely that without the platform’s transformation to “X,” the Democrats would have held on to the Presidency despite their Politburo-like management of it under Joe Biden. That unselfish and patriotic purchase alone should guarantee appreciation even from those who disagree with Musk politically; that it doesn’t reveals ominous aspect of the Left’s priorities and values.

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Friday Open Forum (“Is This a Great Country or What?”)

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I apologize for seeming to force a topic on participants here, as the Open Forum is for you to write about ethics issues that intrigue you, and not necessarily me. However, I can’t think of anywhere else to use the remnants of a post I did a lot of work on before giving up in disgust.

The impetus for this aborted project was reading more of the increasingly unhinged rants of the formerly rational lawyers, artists, scholars and baseball fans on my Facebook feed, whose Trump Derangement is something to behold. One of them posted a chart purporting to list the nations in order of their “quality of life”; this one showed the U.S. 19th, after, among others, Slovenia, Oman, and Estonia. #1 was Switzerland. “I wonder how much lower we will be after Trump and Musk are through with us?” the poster queried to a flurry of likes. angry faces and the “care imogi. The moronic post moved me to look at the most recent such surveys, most of which seem to conclude that Spain is the best country to live in. Spain is a country where you can be imprisoned for criticizing the king, and where the average household income is around $40,000. On the one that was posted by my friend who is leaking IQ points, Spain finished 15th. Huh! First in one quality of life survey, 15th in another. This is, of course, why none of these “scientific” surveys are worth the paper they are printed on: the rankings will always reflect the biases of the researchers. The reason the U.S. always finishes absurdly low in these things is because our learned class believes fervently in socialism, and any nation that isn’t a nanny state is, by definition, inferior. The U.S. allows its citizens to own guns. It allows “dangerous” speech. It isn’t committed to fighting “climate change.” It hasn’t solved its racial tensions, while Switzerland has done such a bang-up job dealing with the descendants of its African slaves.

Yeah well, the U.S. is still guided by the most aspirational mission of any nation on Earth, and it has Major League baseball too, so bite me. (One of the rankings rated the U.S. low for “climate.” Which climate? Hawaii? Fairbanks? )

Spain is, I’m sure, a great country for someone like Richard Gere to live in (he moved there with his Spanish citizen wife and kids after Trump won the election: he was a big Harris supporter) who had lots of money and has already made his mark in life. For the most part, however, the immediate retort that comes to mind when I read someone on Facebook arguing seriously that Spain is a “better” nation than the United States of America, is “Wow, you really are an idiot, aren’t you? I’m so sorry.”

Anyway…Open Forum!

Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Smoking Gun…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I’m going to have to keep posting pieces like this until anyone who insists that the Axis media is “independent and non-partisan” gets laughed out of the room and has to change their name and identity.

Tim Walz, the Minnesota Knucklehead whose national exposure during the 2024 campaign showed the nation that 1) progressives like him don’t like freedom of speech, 2) and haven’t read the First Amendment; 3) Kamala Harris picked an understudy who was almost as unqualified to be President as she was; and 4) Minnesotans are out of their minds to elect such a boob governor. But, amazingly, with the dearth of competent, trustworthy, non-wacko leaders in the increasingly absurd Democratic Party, Walz is looking (everything is relative, after all) pretty good, since the alternatives are Gavin Newsom, AOC, Pete Buttigieg and “None of the above.” So, as the man who managed to make J.D. Vance seem like Abe Lincoln in their debate goes around the country saying the same kinds of dumb things he said while helping Democrats lose the White House, the Axis media feels unethically obligated to mitigate the negative impact.

Walz was in Eau Claire for a town-hall-style event aimed at supporting his party’s candidate for Chief Justice of the Wisconsin [NOT Minnesota, as the first version of the is post carelessly stated] Supreme Court. [The position at Ethics Alarms is that electing judges is unethical and, duh, guarantees critical decisions will be based on politics rather than that law thingy.] The New York Times writes that “Groups backed by Musk have poured millions of dollars into the race on behalf of the conservative candidate, Brad Schimel.” Yes, those groups backed by Musk are called “conservative groups” and “the Republican Party.” Why didn’t the Times write that “groups inspired by Abraham Lincoln” support Schimel? Democrats are promoting the contest as “The People vs. Musk.” [I hope to have a post on Musk Derangement up later today.]

To be fair, it should be noted Fox News et al. routinely describe progressive advocacy groups as “supported by George Soros.”

Back to Walz: in his speech to the crowd, Walz called Musk a “dipshit” and, later, an “unelected South African nepo baby.” Nice.

The Times headline: “Taking a Page From Trump’s Book.”

An Unethical Cascade…Thanks, Metropolis!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The photo above carries the caption: “Metropolis parking utilizing AI to create drive in drive out parking without the need for a ticket and validation. This lot is at 236 S. Los Angeles in Little Tokyo in Downtown Los Angeles.” Here’s my caption: “Metropolis parking can bite me.”

And did, come to think of it.

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An Ethics Can of Worms: The Mental Health of Airline Pilots

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Great: one more thing I wish I didn’t have to worry about…

The New York Times has an article up [Gift link!] titled “Why Airline Pilots Feel Pushed to Hide Their Mental Illness.” Wait—there are mentally ill people flying planes? Yikes. But of course there are…depending on what is called a “mental illness” at any given time.

In the Denzel Washington film “Flight,” the actor plays an excellent pilot who is an alcoholic and cocaine abuser. He saves a plane full of passengers from doom by executing a brilliant but risky mid-air maneuver, then has to cover up the fact that he was drunk when he did it. I haven’t checked lately to see if alcoholism is current classified as a mental problem, but having had extensive experience in the area, I have concluded that it is a physical problem with profound effects on mental and emotional stability, so I really don’t care if it’s technically a mental illness or not. Alcoholics and recovering alcoholics should not be piloting aircraft.

Isn’t that an easy call? The same call should apply to bi-polar individuals, chronic depressives, OCD sufferers…but how far down the list do we go? It’s been estimated that as much as 20% of successful individuals, high-performers, are sociopaths. I don’t think I want to know how many airline pilots are narcissists. Once upon a time, homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Next up: transsexual pilots.

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!”: Once Again, the Fake Non-News Phenomenon

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

One of the many promised posts that I have failed to complete was a full list of the many varieties of “fake news.” I am sorry about that; indeed, I apologize for all of the supposed follow-ups I recklessly announce and never get to. (I know everyone is sick of my bemoaning the fact that I can’t make a living with an ethics blog, and how charging for commentary via substack et. al. would undermine my mission, so I won’t elaborate on THAT again…but boy, could I use a staff). One of the sub-categories of fake news is what I call fake non-news, when major Axis news organizations deliberately bury or hide news stories that would harm The Cause, (or Causes), like turning the U.S. into a European-style socialist nanny state, ensuring that Democrats run the nation in perpetuity, advancing expensive and futile climate-change policies, or cancelling the Second Amendment.

Surely many examples of this breach of journalism ethics leap to mind: Joe Biden’s dementia, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Hillary Clinton’s campaign seeding the Russian Collusion hoax, the Wuhan lab leak source of the pandemic, Biden’s Senate staffer who accused him of rape, and more. There is another one making its non-visibility clear now: This story…

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I Just Took Down a Completely Legitimate Ethics Alarms Post. Why? It Was the Right Thing To Do…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It’s an email variety I have come to dread, though EA has received very few of them over the 15 years of this blog’s existence.

“We are reaching out on behalf of our client,” the missive read, “regarding the URL posting mentioned below. We kindly request [its] removal… [Our client] has experienced significant distress and negative consequences in both his personal and professional life. The damage caused by this article has affected his relationships, employment opportunities, and overall well-being….”

The article at issue was posted in 2012. Naturally, I didn’t remember it. I reviewed the post and found it well-sourced and reasonably stated. (Gee, I wasn’t as swashbuckling back then!) The episode I had focused on from an ethics perspective indeed had some embarrassing features: it involved a dentist who had dismissed an assistant because her pulchritude was causing domestic problems at home. (I’ve been watching “Bombshell,” the movie about the sexual harassment scandal at Fox News. The story I posted on would be the equivalent of one of the Fox News blondes suing because she had been fired in the wake of rumors that she had slept her way to a prime time show when nothing of the kind occurred. )

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Societal Enabling of Abnormal Behaviors

/ Jack Marshall / 81 Comments

Guest Post by Steve Witherspoon

[My first reaction to this passionate guest post was “Gee, how do you really feel, Steve?” My second was “The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the host.” My third is: I wouldn’t laugh yet. One of my oldest friends is visiting D.C. to meet his new grandson, birthed by the wife of his former daughter, now son. When I went to the memorial service of a former thoroughly Irish Catholic boss from the streets of Brooklyn, I discovered that two of his three sons, all of whom I knew as children, are now middle aged women, and seemingly very happy about it. A close member of my immediate family is “transitioning.” Whatever it is that’s going on here, its getting dig in like a tick.]

I have raised the question in an earlier essay titled, What’s Considered Normal, where I looked into the differences between what is considered to be “normal” and “abnormal”. You can read the arguments presented in the entire post if you like, but I’ll briefly summarize some of the details as I go along in this essay.

I think it’s extremely important that everyone understands the core of an argument based on the words used and how those words are defined. So with that in mind, let’s start by presenting some generally accepted “norms”.

NORMAL

  • Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected
  • Conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern..
  • …characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine.
  • If something conforms to a general pattern, standard, or average, we describe it as normal.

ABNORMAL

  • Deviating from what is normal or usual.

  • Not normal, average, typical, or usual.

  • Something that is abnormal is out of the ordinary, or not typical

ENABLING

  • Supporting or allowing (whether intentionally or unintentionally) harmful or destructive individual behaviors thus preventing the individual from facing either the consequences of their choices and/or generally accepted reality.

Dysfunctional: Deviating from the norms of social behavior in a way regarded as bad.

Delusional: Characterized by or holding false beliefs or judgments about reality that are held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, typically as a symptom of a mental condition.

Now that we have the terms settled, on to the core of this essay…

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