Tim Levier, tied for the title of the longest-running reader on my ethics posts, recommended this sordid tale for a post, and I concur.

Jackson Reffitt told authorities about his dad’s involvement in the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and then testified against him. Guy Reffitt was sentenced to more than seven years in prison in 2022 on charges of civil disorder, obstruction of justice and other offenses, though he never entered the Capitol. His son testified for more than three hours for the prosecution in his father’s trial, revealing text messages his dad had sent after the 2020 election, promising that he and like-minded patriots would “rise up” and “shock the world” on January 6. Jackson tipped off authorities before the riot, then recorded his father’s comments about the riot after he returned home. The surreptitiously recorded tapes were crucial evidence in sending Guy to prison, along with videos recorded by Guy in which he talked about “taking the Capitol” and dragging Nancy Pelosi out of the building.

Now, thanks to President Trump’s pardons, Daddy’s coming home, and Sonny Boy is terrified. He told CNN his father was still involved in the militias and had no regrets about his actions on that fateful day. “I’m honestly flabbergasted that we’ve gotten to this point. I mean, I’m terrified. I don’t know what I’m going to do,” his son told CNN. “I’ve got as many precautions as I could recently …I’ve got a gun, I’ve moved and I’ve gotten myself away from what I thought would be a dangerous situation, and staying where I thought my dad could find me or other people that are going to feel so validated by these actions, by this pardon.”

“My dad once called me a traitor, and he said ’traitors get shot,’” he said.

Huh. I can’t imagine why he would say that.

If there ever was a case where the entry question for ethics analysis is critical, this is it: What’s going on here? It sure sounds like there is a long-running father vs. son conflict that the son chose to resolve by exploiting his father’s January 6 activities. Warning authorities that his father and presumably others were on their way to D.C. with possibly violent intentions is an ethics easy call: doing that was admirable, ethical, and the son’s civic duty. Actively gathering evidence against his father and ensuring his arrest, however, is very close to the line, and I am inclined to say crosses it into settling scores, getting revenge, and eliminating an unwelcome presence in Jackson’ life.

I was a featured ethicist on the Montel Williams Show years ago when the featured topic was whether a parent had an obligation to “rat out” a criminal child. I argued that there was such an obligation, both as a citizen and as a parent. Montel, amusingly, disagreed with me during the show but when the cameras weren’t rolling he told me he’d turn in his own son “in a heartbeat.”

However, the reverse scenario never came up: is it equally ethical for a child to turn in his parent? Certainly it is when the parent is a genuine threat to harm someone, including family members. Yet a parent’s obligations to a child are materially different from a child’s obligations to a parent. The enthusiasm with which Jackson sought to have his father locked up makes me wonder if this wasn’t an unusually ugly real life episode of “Family Ties,” the Eighties TV sitcom starring Michael J. Fox as a Reagan-supporting, Republican, capitalist teenage son of two former Sixties radicals.

oward the government.

1. CNN seems determined to charge into oblivion. Yesterday, I had a CNN website anti-Trump news piece ready to fisk, then was so happy to find some non-political topics to write about that I didn’t, and now its outdated. Never mind, though! There are more “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” pieces up today. Look: here’s “news analysis”: In a flurry of activity happening almost too swiftly to follow, Trump is giving critics every reason to think their worst fears will be realized. Click on that, and you get “Trump is imposing MAGA rule on the government hour-by-hour.” The whole website is littered with apocalyptic headlines, as if every President doesn’t arrive prepared to make sure the government carries out his policies and beliefs. The language CNN (and others) are using is calculated to create fear and dread, following up on the “Trump is Hitler” smear, which worked so well.

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I can honestly say that I have greeted every inauguration of a newly-elected President with hope, respect, optimism and good will, every one of them, with no exceptions. I fervently believe that this is how all Americans should regard Inauguration Day, and for most of our history, that was how the vast majority of the nation did treat the swearing in of a new President. A major kick to the solar plexus of that tradition was delivered by former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell when he said, though well after Barack Obama was sworn in, that he saw his party’s mission as making sure Obama was a one-term President. In this he was tracking the rhetoric of the late Rush Limbaugh, whose similar sentiments about Democratic Presidents were routine during the Clinton Presidency.

There is hope: the Democratic and progressive demonization of President Trump pales compared to what he was subjected to in 2016, but the Trump Deranged are probably more vocal and more numerous than they were then. It is only that there are more open-minded, reasonable Americans now willing to welcome a new President, even Trump, since the Democrats have left such chaos in their wake.

As I noted in a post yesterday, Joe Biden’s unethical prospective pardons got Inauguration Day off to an ugly, deplorable start. The anti-Trump press, that is, most of the news media, certainly were not in a patriotic or generous mood. “Trump Celebrates in Washington at Rally Laced With Exaggerations and Falsehoods,” said the Times on its front page. On my Facebook feed, most of my friends were behaving like petulant children rather than informed citizens interested in giving a new leader a chance. “Buckle up, y’all. They’re likely to overplay their hand. But that is going to suck even if we can turn them back.They’re also going to use every story, algorithm, and lever they can to divide the resistance. It’s how they got just over the line last November. Let’s not be played like the MAGA marks got played,” wrote one. “A lot of dystopian fantasy literature with evil rulers I have loved for many years has been resonating very differently with me since 2016,” wrote another. “Someone like Trump, an amoral, power-hungry demagogue, is what the founders feared most when they created the presidency,” was another friend’s unbiased analysis. This post was wildly liked: “I will be employing the ‘unfollow’ and ‘unfriend’ buttons with ruthless precision. Some of you… I love you, but you backed the bad guys, and your boasting about it when it’ll directly harm my family and my community and my neighbors… is indefensible. Yours is a door I won’t be knocking on for refuge if I ever need it. ”

Nice.

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My head just exploded. The New York Times. oh, about three years late, maybe more, does an exploration of the effort to hide Joe Biden’s increasing disability from the public. The key conspirators, the Times says, were “Jill Biden, the first lady, and Hunter Biden, his surviving son, fervently believed in his ability to win. Mr. Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, the counselor to Mr. Biden, knew when and how to deliver information, along with Annie Tomasini, the deputy chief of staff. She and Anthony Bernal, the first lady’s most senior aide, took tight control over the president’s public schedule.”

I wonder if any of them were as capable as Edith Wilson.

The Times does not enlighten us as to why its crack reporting team never did any reporting about this Constitutional debacle while it was going on, perhaps because the answer is too obvious: the Times, like the rest of the Axis media, was complicit and wanted the Democrats to get away with it. Then the Times readers, who the now-banned Ethics Alarms defender of the Times always cited as evidence that the paper wasn’t as biased and unethical as it obviously is, mostly disgraced themselves with one or more of these positions: 1) It was worth electing Biden because he beat Trump in 2020; 2) Trump will be worse; 3) It was all Biden’s aides’ fault. 4) He was a good President. 5) Biden still would have done better than Harris. None accused the Times of betraying its mission and and its readership. Occasionally a lone commenter made an observation like this:

“In any other situation Biden would have been considered a part time worker and wouldn’t even have qualified for health benefits. Yet he was allowed to continue as president while working less hours than a crossing guard. This was a covered up coup where someone or some persons were really making decisions.”

Here’s a gift link to the piece.

Meanwhile,

1. What an unethical—and stupid—hill to die on. The House of Representatives passed legislation banning trans women who are biological men from competing in women’s sports. The vote was 218-206, with all Republicans present supporting the bill and all but two Democrats opposing it. Apparently the Democratic Party is unwilling to abandon the absurd argument that preventing female athletes from losing games, matches, scholarships, championships, records and maybe an eye by having to compete with newly-minted women who are taller, heavier, stronger and better due to the advantage of going through puberty as a male is just plain old discrimination. “Republicans fearmonger about the trans community to divert attention from the fact they have no real solutions to help everyday Americans,” ranted Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.). “Transgender students, like all students, they deserve the same opportunity as their peers to learn teamwork, to find belonging, and to grow into well-rounded adults through sports.” The first part of that statement is deflection, and the second part is misdirection. Transgender individuals don’t deserve the opportunity to have an unfair advantage and to endanger the safety of women they compete against. Doing what she does, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said, “Let me tell you something: Trans people ain’t going nowhere, just like when the racists wanted to make sure that black people somehow were going to be dismissed in this country, we ain’t left either.” Now there’s a brilliant analogy, but it appears to be all the Democrats can come up with. You know, ‘Racial discrimination is based on prejudice and nothing else.’ The effort to keep trans women out of women’s sports is not “invidious discrimination” but the acceptance of reality.

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The Trump-Deranged are cheering Michelle Obama’s decision to boycott Donald Trump’s Inauguration. Personally, I wouldn’t cross the street to greet Michelle, so I am inclined to think that her petty effort to show her contempt for the duly-elected President of the United States (and virtue-signal to the Axis) has little significance other than telling us more about her character.

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