War and the Military

Sure Such “Polls” Are Rigged, But Nevertheless…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The gimmick of walking through college campuses or other denizens of the young, woke and stupid and exposing the stunning ignorance on parade is an old one. Jay Leno developed it into an art form with his “Jay Walking” segment on the “Tonight” show. Jesse Waters has displayed versions of the bit on Fox News for quite a few Memorial Days now, asking young beach-goers about basic U.S. military history.

I know, I know. We have no idea how many people had to be interviewed to collect the staggeringly wrong answers. The dumbest participants are featured multiple times. Maybe these were the only embarrassing responses, though, frankly, I doubt that. I have mentioned before a lawyer I worked with who had been an associate at Skadden Arps, and was a graduate of Cornell. She had no clue when the Civil War was, guessing its dates to be “somewhere in the 1930s???” “Well, I was an economics major,” she explained.

These videos have the same perverse appeal as reality shows: they give audiences a chance to feel superior. It’s the same appeal that carnival freak shows had in past generations. Nevertheless, I believe that Watters’ Memorial Day debacles have value, because they provoke some clarity as well as foreboding.

First, the fact that there is a single adult American without a brain tumor, dementia or a closed head injury who doesn’t know who we fought in the Revolutionary War or who guesses that Albania was the world threat in World War II is a serious indictment of our culture, parenting, and the educational system from pre-school through college. One such idiot is too many. That more than one can be located on the same California beach on the same day portends of a decaying society being undernourished by atrophied minds. Democracy, more than any other form of government, depends on an engaged and informed populace. If people can reach adulthood that ignorant, we don’t have one, or at least we don’t have enough of one.

Second, it is arguably even more alarming that these dolts all laugh and giggle when their pet rock-level ignorance is exposed. They shouldn’t find it funny; they should be humiliated. They should dash into the surf to drown themselves. At very least they should tearfully apologize to, well, everyone.

These people vote. They are the audience that the Axis news media aim at, and the low information citizens that politicians like AOC, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Mamdani and James Talerico pander to. They, and people like them everywhere, are the reason the world doesn’t work.

I write comedy; I perform comedy, I have directed award winning comedies. I like satire, parody, slapstick and sophomoric humor. Will Rogers, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, W.S. Gilbert, Oscar Levant, Jerry Seinfeld, P.G. Wodehouse, Lewis Black and Chris Rock all amuse me, as will a good knock-knock joke. Those answers on the beach, however do not elicit a smile from me. They elicit despair.

Memorial Day Ethics Reflections…

/ Jack Marshall / 61 Comments

Nice.

The Democratic National Committee decided to use Memorial Day to attack the President of the United States. Of course it did. Despite all of the party’s rhetoric about saving democracy (while it was undermining it to a degree never before seen in U.S. history—go ahead, challenge that!), this is a party that literally doesn’t like the United States (maybe hate is too strong).

That tweet was so offensive, even Democrats objected. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, (D-Ill.) tweeted, “It is incredibly distasteful to use our heroic dead for a political attack on Memorial Day. I’m a Democrat and I condemn this post by the DNC.”

And the DNC pulled it, replacing it with this…

…without comment, apology, anything. Tweet? What tweet? But it was the fact it could be tweeted at all that is signature significance. The party is blaming the “kids” that it had in charge of social media during the holiday, but this just means the Gen Z radicals the party has indoctrinated in our schools and with its media don’t yet understand that the mask has to stay on a bit longer or else…

Can’t have that.

The DNC was just one example. I wrote yesterday about Democrats declaring the holiday “Celebrate a Dead Arrest-Resisting Street Thug Day,” including Minneapolis’s woke mayor, who had to be reminded it was also a holiday to honor patriots and heroes. I note that Fark, the often funny, left-biased satirical news aggregator, posted this yesterday…

If challenged, I’m sure Fark would say that it was satirizing the Trump Deranged progs who still think the Epstein files hold damning evidence against the President. You know the old saying though…”Fool me once..”? I’ve checked Fark for years. It’s about as non-partisan as Stephen Colbert. As for Fark’s favorite party—well, do you remember the Memorial Day message posted by Kamala Harris—you know, that whizbang, smart-as-a-whip candidate for President who only lost because American are racists and sexist? Here , let me refresh your memory…

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Ethical Quotes of the Week: Medal of Honor Recipients Will Swenson and Matt Williams

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Her face (as usual when she isn’t interviewing a Democrat or an Axis ally) etched with pain. ABC’s awful Margaret Brennan dragged out the “Everything is Terrible Under President Trump” Big Lie and asked two Congressional Medal of Honor recipients a “When did you stop beating your wife?”-style question. “What specifically makes you optimistic? Because this country, at times, can feel dark, these days, there’s a lot of darkness. What makes you feel optimistic?,” she asked.

You see the trick? She framed the question so that it would mean “I’m optimistic despite how terrible things are with this Fascist President.” But Will Swenson, on the right, didn’t fall into her trap. He answered,

“Well, ultimately, because we’re in Washington, D.C., and everything revolves around politics, we have to remember that politics aren’t everything. American lives continue on. Children are born, children go to school. Lives are achieved. Dreams are achieved. This country is a great place. It’s not politics. It’s not just what’s the news bites coming off of media. Ultimately, we continue forward as a country, continually imperfect, continually evolving forward, always trying to achieve a more perfect union. That’s what’s important to remember, what we can achieve aspirationally. No other place in history, time or on this planet have ever gotten to where we are today. We need to be proud of that, and we need to remember that is what we stay focused on, what we can be.”

Then Brennan, disappointed with the answer, tried to reframe it to meet her agenda, saying, “What we can be, and the promise of it….” Ah. So you agree there’s nothing NOW to feel good about, but maybe things will get better! She is scum. When Brennan asked the same question to Matt Williams (on the left) he also plowed under her “gotcha!” attempt, saying,

“You know, I agree with Will. I think, you know, it’s- it’s so important to remember who we are as a country, and take an opportunity to celebrate that, and think about all the- the challenges that we’ve overcome, how far we’ve actually come. You know, I think if you- if you frame it that way, you think very deeply about our trials and tribulations from beginning to today, we’ve made tremendous strides. Our country is, you know, we’re a super- global superpower. Our economy is doing well. All those things are great. And- and take politics aside out of this whole conversation. Just talk about our communities, that- that we live in, and the people that you surround yourself with, and your families, and the opportunity to be free and, you know, choose what school you go to, and where you want to live and do what you want to do, and what career path you go down or don’t if you want to, you know, I mean, there’s so much to be positive about. And I think the opportunity to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, you know, over the course of this next year is- is amazing. There’s so many great places to visit. You know, the National Mall is going to be full of Americana. And what we’re going to- celebrating ourselves, which I think we should take the time to do. I think it’s very important. You know, across the country, you know something we’re very passionate about at the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas, is a phenomenal beacon that stands to talk about and house our, not only our story, the story of the Medal, and what the Medal represents itself. And I would challenge people to go there and celebrate our history as well. You know, it’s so important. There’s so many great things to go do and great things to visit and don’t just take part in it, because it’s something to do on a weekend, right? Think about why you’re doing it, and when you’re there in the crowds and you’re enjoying yourself, and you’re taking your family to go talk about our country and celebrate our country, actually celebrate it. Be grateful for what you’ve got and the opportunity that was provided for you. If you do that, I don’t see how you can’t be optimistic about our future.”

Disappointed that her “dark times” leading question failed, Brennan ended the interview.

Unethical (and Tasteless) Tweet Of The Month: Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) [Updated and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Call me sentimental and patriotic, but on Memorial Day 2026, I believe we have better people to remember than George Floyd, and almost anyone is more appropriate to honor.

We can and should blame President Trump, along with the foolish voters of Georgia, for the fact that someone as unqualified and ethically inert as Sen. Warnock is in Congress today and not haunting a ramshackle church somewhere. You will recall that Trump made the two 2021 special Georgia Senate elections into referendums on the January 6 riots and his claims of a stolen election, and managed to snatch two defeats from the jaws of victory.

Still, using Memorial Day to extol a lifetime street punk who was overdosing on fentanyl while resisting arrest demonstrates a special kind of sick priorities. There is literally nothing, zero, nada, to admire, respect or honor George Floyd for. He was in the right wrong place at the right wrong time, and an audacious cabal of race-hustlers exploited his accidental death by bad cop to extort all manner of weak principled businesses and institutions into white guilt seizures, causing extensive, perhaps irreparable harm to the nation, society, race relations, the justice system and more. Poor dumb, useless George wasn’t at fault for any of this, but Senator Warnock and ethics villains like him were.

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Ethics Alarms Encore: “Aesop’s Unethical and Misleading Fable: The North Wind and the Sun”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

north-wind-and-the-sun-story-oil-painting

[ Like the hillbilly who pledged to take a bath every week whether he needed it or not, this is a post from 2011 that I vow to re-post every ten years whether I need to or not. It is the mystery post of Ethics Alarms: a throw-away essay on a slow ethics day that is one of a handful that accumulates new views regularly. (Another post in this category is here, but that is a bit more understandable.) I was moved to do another re-post because an episode of “Mad Men,” which I am finally watching (and glad, because it is an excellent ethics series) had a character using Aesop’s Worst Fable Ever to explain advertising philosophy.  I wrote the original post talking with my late wife  how Aesop’s Fables were joining Mother Goose stories,  Edward Lear limericks and American folk songs in the Discarded Bin of our culture. I then stumbled upon a fable I had never read or heard about.  To my surprise the post attracted intense criticism from fans of the story; I even had to ban a commenter who got hysterical about it. Apparently there are a lot of Sun-worshipers out there. Anyway, here it is again.]

Today, by happenstance, I heard an Aesop’s Fable that I had never encountered before recited on the radio. Like all Aesop’s Fables, at least in its modern re-telling, this one had a moral attached , and is also a statement of ethical values. Unlike most of the fables, however, it doesn’t make its case. It is, in fact, an intellectually dishonest, indeed an unethical, fable.

It is called “The North Wind and the Sun,” and in most sources reads like this:

“The North Wind and the Sun disputed as to which was the most powerful, and agreed that he should be declared the victor who could first strip a wayfaring man of his clothes. The North Wind first tried his power and blew with all his might, but the keener his blasts, the closer the Traveler wrapped his cloak around him, until at last, resigning all hope of victory, the Wind called upon the Sun to see what he could do. The Sun suddenly shone out with all his warmth. The Traveler no sooner felt his genial rays than he took off one garment after another, and at last, fairly overcome with heat, undressed and bathed in a stream that lay in his path.”

The moral of the fable is variously stated as “Persuasion is better than Force” , or “Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail.”

The fable proves neither. In reality, it is a vivid example of dishonest argument, using euphemisms and false characterizations to “prove” a proposition that an advocate is biased toward from the outset. Continue reading →

“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Res Ipsa Loquitur: Reuters’ Unethical Headline

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“Spirit Airlines shuts down, industry’s first Iran war casualty”

Today I was a guest on The Steven Speirer Show, talking about ethics. In the final minutes, Steven, a California lawyer, asked me what I regarded as the greatest ethics issue facing the U.S. today. Without hesitation, I named the corruption of journalism and the collapse of ethics in the journalism profession. Readers here are familiar with that conclusion and why I am confident that it is correct. A republic cannot function with out an informed populace. “Advocacy journalism,” the elevation of the profit motive over integrity, responsibility and honesty, and the increasing intrusion of the techniques of “fake news” into reporting has transformed journalism into a toxic combination of propaganda and indoctrination.

“Professions earn that label by being trustworthy,” I told Steve. “Our news media today cannot be trusted, and those who do trust it are uninformed or misinformed.” My host said that he wished he could disagree, but in good conscience could not.

Then I checked my emails after the session, and saw the link to the Reuters headline above, re-posted on Yahoo! Finance. (Arthur in Maine gets the pointer for the link; my apologies for misidentifying the source in the original version of this post). It’s a classic, typical of how journalism operates today. A story about a company bankruptcy that was long in the works is framed as an indictment of the Iran War, and by extension President Trump.

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Ethics Villain: Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

There is no honest way to spin this, but Murphy, truly one of the most despicable members of the Senate, tried anyway.

Democrats, like Murphy and the ethics-blind citizens who elected him (and many equally terrible people), really and truly hate the President of the United States so much that they are actively rooting for Iran to prevail in the current conflict. This is a half-century-long enemy of the United States that is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans as well as terror attacks all over the Middle East, and that has made “Death to America” and the end of the state of Israel its openly stated mission, and that recently massacred tens of thousands of its own people because they demonstrated against Iran’s dictatorial theocracy.

Has any member of Congress publicly cheered the enemy during a U.S. war? Is that not, as Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution defines treason, “adhering” to enemies of the U.S. and, “giving them aid and comfort”?

Then, after the response to Murphy’s stunning declaration of pleasure in a setback for the U.S. and the success of an enemy’s efforts to defeat his own nation, Murphy managed to further prove his warped character by lying, and obviously so:

He really expects anyone to believes he was being “sarcastic,” and is trying to blame the public for not understanding his subtle wit. He’s an asshole, but that label is too good for him.

Murphy should be prosecuted, and if not, then rebuked by his own party.

He won’t be of course. He’s invoking Rationalization 55. The Joke Excuse, or “I was only kidding!”…

“This is a common backtracking strategy when someone has been caught making a hurtful, unfair, false or otherwise unethical statement… defenders of comedian Wanda Sykes apply[ed] the joke excuse to her purely mean-spirited comment about Rush Limbaugh at a White House Correspondents Dinner, when she said “I hope his kidneys fail.” What a knee-slapper! As a general rule, “I hope you die” is not a joke, no matter who says it. Even when it is a joke, the jokester is still accountable for how people react to it. When a Washington D.C.’s shock-jock  made the second of two racially-charged quips…he lost his job and his career, because his employers didn’t want somebody on their payroll who made those kinds of “jokes.” …Nobody should accept the defense that “it was a joke” if it wasn’t a good enough joke to compensate for the damage it did, the people it hurt, or the trouble it will cause. …[P]eople and organizations …make jokes in public at their peril. Professionals. Elected officials. Scholars. People who expect to be taken seriously and trusted.”

 

But he wasn’t making a joke or being sarcastic. You know, I know, and he knows he was pandering to the anti-Americans and Trump Deranged in his increasingly perverted party.

The Democrats have given Republicans and the voting public so much evidence of their party’s ethics rot that the campaign ads write themselves. If the GOP cannot convince its supporters and a wave of progressives with a conscience to reject what the Democratic Party has become, it won’t be able to blame gerrymandering in Virginia or anything other than its own incompetence and the self-destructive ignorance of the American people.

Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Headline…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“Analysis: Failed peace talks leave Trump with few options to end Iran conflict“

That’s CNN.

Note the emphasis. This is Trump’s failure. The near universal framing of the Iran campaign is that the United States is losing, somehow, and it is Iran that has the U.S. at its mercy—you know, like the iconic Black Knight above from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail who insists that he is winning despite losing his arms and legs.

You see, the side that is being throttled in a war is the one with “few options,” and the collapse of peace talks are primarily a problem for the side that is losing. Ending the war is primarily in the best interests of Iran and its people. The anti-U.S., anti-Trump propaganda being spewed by the Axis news media in their reporting on the Iran war may be the most flagrant and unforgivable yet: it isn’t just Trump that they are hurting, or Republicans. They are deliberately harming our nation while giving Iran motivation to stall as long as possible.

Next, we will be reading “Poor Iranians” essays like the Times lament for Gazans. Our news media’s objective appears to be national euthanasia.

Ethics Villains: Yes, The New York Times Again…And Its Biased, Ignorant, Pro-Terrorism Readers

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The gift link to the NYT article at issue is here.


I’m not going to quote it or summarize it. I will characterize it: the opinion piece, Gaza’s Rubble Is the Grave of Our Future, by Ghada Abdulfattah, “a writer who lives in Gaza,” is anti-Israel, pro-Hamas propaganda that the Times has handed a large amount of space to promote. This is a “poor Gazans being victims of genocide by those inhuman, cruel Jews” essay. The writer never comes right out and says that, but her chronicling of the devastation in Gaza since the Israeli assault began three years ago is definitely aimed at conveying that misleading message.

All right, I will offer a quote:

“It isn’t just the sadness of what was demolished. Seeing endless piles of concrete brings a second layer of violence — the violence of being forced to live with destruction. Rubble doesn’t just destroy the past; it erases the future. It forces your mind to stop imagining, to stop thinking, to stop dreaming about life after today.”

Gee, I guess launching a sneak terror attack on civilians in your neighboring state, killing over 1200 people, including infants, raping woman and taking 250 hostages isn’t such a good idea, eh? Huh. Who knew?

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Ethics Dunce: Sec. of War Hegseth

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Oh come on.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth lifted the suspension of Army pilots under investigation for hovering near Kid Rock’s Tennessee mansion last week to give the rabid Trump supporter a “shout-out.” In a post on social media, Hegseth also saluted the B list rocker and said “pilots suspension LIFTED. No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, patriots.”

Kid Rock posted two videos of him waving to the Apache helicopter as it lingered near the pool outside of his Nashville estate. The musician said, “God Bless America and all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend her.” That’s nice. It doesn’t justify or excuse military pilots using government equipment for partisan demonstrations that were not ordered or approved by superiors.

The Army confirmed that two Apache helicopters from the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Campbell had taken part in the frolic flights and that the crews involved had been suspended pending an investigation “The Army takes any allegations of unauthorized or unsafe flight operations very seriously and is committed to enforcing standards and holding personnel accountable,” Army spokesman, Maj. Montrell Russell said in a statement.

Apparently not seriously enough. Kid Rock pooh-poohed the possibility of repercussions for the pilots, saying, “I think they’re going to be alright — my buddy is the commander in chief!”

Yecchh.

Unprofessional, destructive to military discipline, redolent of special dispensations for partisan loyalty, incompetent, irresponsible, foolish and wrong. I’d love to know the genuine reactions of our military personnel. My late father, the major, who was a stickler for military order and discipline, is probably spinning in his Arlington grave.