Insidious Stealth Mind-Control Is Spreading And I Have No Idea What Can Be Done About It

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It is well-established that when a mind lacks the linguistic tools to conceive of certain thoughts, those thoughts become impossible to conceive. This is why tight control of the language was so central to Big Brother’s control of the populace in “1984,” and, it seems clear, why current aspiring power-mongers on the Left are increasingly employing censorship and linguistic manipulation to herd a lazy, badly-educated and apathetic public into virtual pens where they can be controlled and relied upon to support their betters.

In the last couple of weeks we learned that woke-infested publishers have been stealth editing the works of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming; this week, “Goosebumps” author R.L. Stine announced that his popular series has been similarly edited “for sensitive readers” without his consent. Who knows what other classic books are having their original authors’ words, ideas and messages altered by anonymous political correctness hacks in the pursuit of “social justice”?

Now comes the news (via The Spectator) that a prime online news source and political analysis site is also in the business of restricting language. Here is a list of  “non-inclusive words” that Politico’s reporters have been instructed to avoid using: Continue reading →

Further Musings On The Tucker Carlson Car In The Capitol Riot Aftermath Ethics Train Wreck [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Having read more in the last 24 hours about this fiasco layered on a fiasco, I have reached the following conclusions:

1. I was right: Speaker McCarthy choosing Tucker Carlson as the vehicle to educate the public regarding the bias and slanted coverage of the January 6 Capitol rioting was a truly incompetent decision. If Rush Limbaugh weren’t dead, it was the equivalent of that, giving all of the Trump Deranged, progressive brain-washed and dishonest propagandists all they needed to spin the security footage into incoherence. Carlson is a proven liar and a cynical, untrustworthy charlatan who can’t even be trusted to believe in what he says on national TV. McCarthy walked into a cognitive dissonance perfect storm: if you wanted to ensure that no one who already hadn’t swallowed the “resistance”/Democratic Party/mainstream media (aka The Axis of Unethical Conduct) “insurrection” narrative would dismiss the new video, that was the way to do it.

2. Sure enough: Carlson and the Republicans are being widely accused of trying to excuse the riot, which was inexcusable. Chuck Schumer’s lie—on the Senate floor— that Carlson claimed the attack on the Capitol was not violent has more currency with those who don’t watch Fox News than anything Carlson said, and those who do watch Fox News already had concluded that the insurrection narrative was garbage. What is essential to begin clearing away the deception and corruption this episode epitomizes is to find someone whom the non-Fox News watchers will trust to carry the message. Handing the job to Carlson was simply dumb—but about what I expect of Kevin McCarthy.

3. The Big Lie is not that the 2020 election was stolen, but that the riot was an “insurrection.” Schumer and the Axis are using a Big Lie while accusing their adversaries of using a Big Lie. You have to admire the audacity: the 2020 election was a lot closer to “stolen” than the riot was to an insurrection.

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Comment Of The Day: “Regarding Tucker Carlson’s Newly Revealed J6 Surveillance Videos”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Here is Steve Witherspoon’s Comment of the Day on the post, Regarding Tucker Carlson’s Newly Revealed J6 Surveillance Videos:

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Personally I don’t care who the video evidence was released to as long as it is released to the public in a responsible manner. I’m not a big fan of Carlson’s tactics but he’s the one who now has all the video. We can’t do a damn thing to change that fact so, so be it. He had better take this responsibility to the people of the United States very seriously.

The government and the political left has had an absolute monopoly on the evidence to support their narrative since January 6th, 2021. It may be the tit-for-tat rationalization, but it’s fair political gamesmanship for an opposing narrative to be presented (using the video evidence) that completely contradicts the narrative that has been pushed by the political left.

Jonathan Turley has a blog post out this morning about the QAnon Shaman, The Curious Story of QAnon Shaman: Fox Footage Raises New Questions Over the Chansley Case.

In the midst of all the internet trolls commenting on Turley’s site, I wrote,

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Ethics Alarms Just Figured Out That The January 6, 2021 Capitol Riot Aftermath Is A Still Rolling Ethics Train Wreck…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

You don’t need to hit this analyst over the head with a 2×4, no sirree! I’m on these things like a shot. It only took me two-plus years, a fake House investigation, Tucker Carlson and rote news media lies to put it all together.

Bruce is talking to me in that classic above from the Ethics Alarms clip library.

Yes, the disgusting aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol is now one of those national ethics fiascos in which everyone who touches it (or boards the train) breaches ethical standards one way or another. The riot has been unethically distorted by Democrats for political gain, weaponized and spun by the Trump Deranged like Liz Cheney, used to justify a blatant violation of House tradition and bipartisanship by Nancy Pelosi, nauseatingly misrepresented and mis-characterized by most of the news media, frighteningly used to justify political show-trials by the Justice Department, exploited to execute an unconstitutional impeachment (probably rendering the process useless going forward), epitomized double standards in the treatment of the riot narrative and the rioters compared with the far more destructive George Floyd riots, and launched more demagoguery and anti-historical nonsense than any event in memory.

And what a passenger list! Donald Trump, Cassidy Chivers, Nikki Haley, Mitch McConnell, Tom Manger, Chief of the Capitol Police, Kevin McCarthy,prosecutors and defense attorneys, Pelosi, baskets of Senators and House members, enough talking heads and pundits to re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg, which, you know, was but dust in the wind compared to the cataclysmic rumble that had no substantive effect on anything except in the imaginations of Machiavellian partisans.

Yet it took smug, cynical, ethics-disabled Fox News fomenter Tucker Carlson to penetrate my thick skull and make me realize that this isn’t just an extension of the endless, disastrous, 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck but its own, ugly thing.

Last night Carlson decided to go “Nyah, nyah, nyah!” at the mainstream media hacks who treated his selective use of the security footage to bust at least part of some false narratives as if he had released another pandemic virus:

How absurd of them; how puerile of Tucker. But the most spectacular First Class train wreck boarder was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Read his entire rant from yesterday here; meanwhile, regarding some highlights:

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Official Progressive Deceit: The Equality/Equity Scam

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

In describing to lawyers what deceit is in my ethics seminars (it is amazing how many layers don’t know what deceit is, though it is forbidden in the ethics rules), I often say that deceit is the official language of Washington, D.C. It’s a reliable laugh line, but it’s not funny. Using linguistic tricks to deceive and mislead the public is a tool of dangerous and untrustworthy governments, movements, leaders and politicians. I don’t know if this age old practice has become worse in recent years; to me it seems that way, but it could be an illusion. In the Sixties, leftists like Abbie Hoffman liked to use “liberate” as a synonym for “steal.”

The success of “Black Lives Matter” relied on a linguistic disorientation, like the old gag about a lawyer asking a witness, “When did you stop beating your wife?” What has been dismaying is how few people have the wit and courage to call out the trick and refuse to back down. The use of “immigrants,” “migrants,” “undocumented workers” and other deliberately misleading terms to hide the reality that the subject is law-breaking aliens has also been largely successful in bamboozling the public. “Affirmative action,” a nice and deceptive way to say “racial quotas,” is finally going down, but it kept the Constitution at bay for half a century. The all-time most sinister linguistic cheat, perhaps, is the use of the benign word “choice” to describe the right to kill unborn children.

Lately, the most prominent verbal deceit is embodied in the “Diversity-Equity-Inclusion” mantra, with “equity” serving as the cornerstone of the cheat. Most Americans—hey, thanks, public education system!—think that equity is just another word for equality. Now that Democrats and progressives are fully committed to socialism (while denying it—that’s not deceit, it’s just lying) they have been bombarding the public with the word without clarifying its implications. Equality means equality under the law; it means that every citizen has the same opportunity to accomplish what his or her talents, effort, ingenuity, determination, laws and the vagueries of fate and fortune allow without obstruction by the government. Equity means that every citizen should be guaranteed the same success to the extent government power can make such “equity” possible. It is based on the socialist/communist ideal that it is unfair that life provides unequal benefits , ability and advantages, so central power must ensure fairness by artificially eliminating as many disparities in these benefits , ability and advantages as possible.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month And Early Front-Runner For 2023 “Asshole Of The Year”: Art Critic Jerry Saltz

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This is signature significance. I shouldn’t have to point out that such a public declaration of bigotry, hypocrisy and ethics duncery is signature significance for an utter asshole, so I’ll just add that it is also signature significance for anyone who reads Saltz’s Instagram post whose immediate reaction isn’t, “Wow. What an asshole.”

To be fair, Saltz is an art critic for New York Magazine. I personally think art critics are worthless, even more worthless than drama critics and movie critics, but as art critics go, he could still be as reliable and trustworthy as any despite this “I am a hateful idiot!” announcement. Stephen King has made an ass of himself repeatedly during his own descent into Trump Derangement; he’s still the best horror novelist around. Mark Ruffalo’s a fine actor; Rob Reiner might even still be a terrific director; presumably Bette Midler can still sing. If I don’t hold artists’ flawed character and Swiss Cheese brains against their art, I certainly am not going to going to let a blathering critic wildly out of his lane convince me that his astuteness in a dubious pursuit like art criticism is undermined….unless, of course, when he’s judging the art of a Republican. Based on that Instagram outburst, I presume Saltz can never again review the creation of a registered Republican.

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Regarding Tucker Carlson’s Newly Revealed J6 Surveillance Videos [UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was given access to more than 44,000 hours of video from the Capitol rioting on January 6, 2021. Carlson and his staff reviewed the video for three weeks (that’s not enough) and last night began showing footage that he believes exposes the false narratives about the event being pushed by the House’s partisan J6 Committee and the news media. He will continue tonight.

Observations:

  • I do not endorse Tom Fitton’s characterization of the video because I have not seen it all, nor do I know what was “knowingly false.” Bias does make one stupid, after all, and regarding January 6, 2021, its hard to be more biased than Democrats, the Trump-Deranged and the mainstream media.
  • Whatever benefits Carlson’s expose may have (other than boosting his ratings), choosing him as the messenger guaranteed that the footage will be dismissed, ignored, and get less attention from those who need to consider it than if Speaker McCarthy had chosen a reliable media figure (true, there may not be any) who has a well-earned reputation as a two-faced weasel. Just last month, emails were revealed in which Carlson ridiculed claims that the 2020 election had been corrupted while be was aggressively boosting such theories on hos show. Elon Musk handled the “Twitter Files” the correct and wise way, entrusting them to independent commentators like Matt Taibbi, whose agenda appears to be the old fashioned, out-of-date, ethical journalism mission of finding the truth.
  • For what it is worth, Carlson’s video clips cast doubts on three stories that were accepted as truth by the J6 witch hunt and the media. Jacob Chansley, who is in federal prison for being the absurdly garbed “QAnon Shaman” that became the symbol of the riot, is seen being given a personal escort through the Capitol by police without indicating any violent intent at all. At one point, the officers are seen walking Chansley past seven other police officers outside the Senate chamber. They then escort him to various entrances of the chamber that appear to be locked, and eventually  help him open a door to enter the chamber. Chansley, a 33-year-old Navy veteran, has been jailed for almost two years years for “obstructing an official proceeding.” In a jailhouse interview he tells Carlson, “The one very serious regret that I have [is] believing that when we were waved in by police officers, that it was acceptable.” There is now a question of whether this footage was presented at trail in Chanley’s defense.
  • Carlson next showed a video of Officer Brain Sicknickwearing a helmet and walking inside the Capitol among the “insurrectionists” after  media reports described him as being fatally bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher by the rioter. President Biden repeated this falsehood. Sicknick died of a stroke the next day, and there has been no credible connection established between the riot and his death. No officers suffered fatal injuries on January 6.

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Stop Making Me Defend Ticketmaster (And Louis Farrakhan)!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Ugh.

Next to the totalitarian, censorship-obsessed, indoctrination-pushing ideology of current American progressives, the inability of American conservatives to observe basic intellectual integrity and avoid disqualifying themselves as trustworthy defenders of democratic principles may be the greatest threat to the U.S.’s existence as a free republic.

The Washington Free Beacon, often a helpful source of conservative analysis, apparently thinks that everyone, especially members of Congress should be condemning Ticketmaster because it sold tickets to a Louis Farrakhan event:

The ticketing giant hated by Taylor Swift fans and everyone else who has ever tried to buy concert tickets is now under fire from Jewish activists for selling tickets to a Louis Farrakhan event in which the minister defended Adolf Hitler and predicted another Holocaust against Jews. But many of Ticketmaster’s biggest critics on Capitol Hill don’t seem to care.

Ticketmaster, which charges service fees on each ticket it sells, raked in money selling tickets to Farrakhan’s annual Saviours’ Day conference in Chicago last weekend. During his speech at the event, Farrakhan assailed the “stranglehold that Jews have on this government” and claimed “Jewish power is what has all of our people of knowledge and wisdom and talent afraid.”

The event was met with crickets on Capitol Hill, with almost no one in Congress speaking out against Ticketmaster for making money off of the Farrakhan event. The reaction is a stark contrast to lawmakers’ response when Ticketmaster bungled sales last year for Taylor Swift’s much-anticipated concert tour. That fiasco was in the news cycle for weeks and led to a Department of Justice investigation as well as a Senate hearing. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say Ticketmaster and its parent company, LiveNation, have a monopoly over the ticket industry, leading to price-gouging and a failure to crack down on automated scalping.

“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, it’s merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned in [sic],” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) in a Twitter post in November. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) called on the Department of Justice to investigate. None of their offices responded to a request for comment on Ticketmaster’s Farrakhan sales.

Only Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.)—who also spoke out about the Taylor Swift debacle—weighed in on the Farrakhan controversy when contacted by the Washington Free Beacon.

“It is extremely concerning that Ticketmaster is choosing to use its platform to elevate and promote a well-known anti-Semite. The targeting of the Jewish people has gone on far too long and must stop,” she said.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), a Ticketmaster critic who serves as the chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also sent a  comment after this story was published.

“Anti-Semitism has no place in America,” said McMorris Rodgers. “Ticketmaster should be completely transparent on why it chose to profit off of Farrakhan’s abhorrent history of hatred and violent threats of genocide against the Jewish people.”

The author is Alana Goodman. Naturally, Republicans (and conservative websites and pundits) took the bait. Democrats don’t like democracy, Republicans are dumb as eels. Morons. Ethics dunces. Hypocrites.

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Comment Of The Day: “Using Personality Testing For Anything But Party Games Is Unethical”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I was very pleased that the post on personality testing triggered the lively discussion it did. The topic is a long-time source of irritation to me. Reducing the infinite variety and complexity of human character to any test should obviously set off ethics alarms, and making life-changing decisions based on such lazy short-cuts to assessing character is a bright-line Golden Rule breach. Anyone who wants to start understanding my character should read all of the posts on Ethics Alarms, and even then should prepare to be surprised.

Before I get to Sarah B.’s Comment of the Day, let me relay the link to Extradimensional Cephalopod‘s website and its basic mindsets section in his Foundational Toolbox for Life.

I’ve combined two of Sarah’s comments here, because they are closely related and I couldn’t choose between them. Here is her Comment of the Day on the post, “Using Personality Testing For Anything But Party Games Is Unethical”…

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I know a manager who believes strongly in personality testing, and focuses heavily on the Clifton Strengths profile. He has convinced everyone that it is the way to go and has every one of his employees list their five strengths in order on their work emails, just like some places want preferred pronouns. Everyone I have talked to about this seems totally bought into it. I volunteer here, and thus don’t have to have my Clifton profile done, but when I was introduced to my supervisor (T), he introduced himself as a strategist, which means that he knows how to get from point A to point B in the best possible way, but has a weakness with communication, so we should just all do what he says without question, because he knows better than we do and he doesn’t have time to communicate. If you want someone who is good at communicating, talk to person H. Another of my supervisors (D), introduced herself with her main strength, the ability to think out her problems very well, but as a down side, she must have time to think, so don’t bring her a problem and expect a solution that week. She needs quiet time to work it out.

This is not a way to introduce yourselves, in my opinion. Frankly, I’d rather be known for who I am and let you determine what you think my strengths and weaknesses are, rather than a self reported test that gives me, however accurately, an assessment of those things I am strong at and tells me to make them stronger. I’d rather work to be a well rounded person. I’d also rather think of myself, not as a combination of personality traits, but as a whole person, a person who may have strengths and weaknesses, but who can work to overcome weaknesses and may let certain strengths founder as a choice.

Even if strengths are good things to have, we have to work on our weaknesses too. Frankly, T lets his “strength” in strategizing be an excuse for acting like a controlling jackass. If something doesn’t work perfectly, he blames it all on others, and says we didn’t listen enough. He cannot handle changing conditions, because they throw off his plan, so he gets stressed and pushes people badly. I have nearly quit because of him, but am too stubborn and want the experience for later in life. D uses her “strength” as an excuse to not organize or prepare for anything, all with the excuse that she didn’t have adequate time to think through the problem. If a problem arises needing a quick solution, she shuts down totally, claiming that there is nothing to be done, and won’t accept anyone else’s solution to the problem. We go from about to do our work to completely cancelling our work in moments.

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Reflections On The First Stupid, Virtue-Signaling Lawn Sign Of Spring….

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

obxoxious sign

For the second time this week I find myself grafting substantial sections of an archived Ethics Alarms post to a new one. (I promise not to make a habit of it.) The occasion is the appearance on one of my Alexandria, Virginia neighbors’ lawn the idiotic sign above. Once again I was seized with the desire to ring the house’s doorbell and cross examine the residents. Can they explain and justify what’s on that sign? I am almost certain that they cannot, just as my other neighbor who STILL displays a medieval suit of armor next to a 5 x 4 hand-made, painted wooden sign reading BLACK LIVES MATTER in block letters could not justify that obnoxious lawn ornament, since it is, after all, more indefensible than ever now that the movement it stands for has been exposed as cynical hustle.

In 2021, New York Times’ woke propaganda agent Amanda Hess was given a rare slot on her paper’s front page to opine on the sign above, which was apparently the beginning of the the viral Announce to your neighbors that you’re a smug, simple-minded idiot!” epidemic. Ethics Alarms has had several posts about similar signs, but I did not realize that I had missed Patient Zero.

Hess’s analysis by turns informed readers that the sign has “curious power” (to make me detest the homeowner?); that the mottoes are “progressive maxims” (so progressives really are that facile and shallow!), that “Donald Trump is out of office…But nevertheless, this sign has persisted” (Oh! It’s all Trump’s fault?), that the sign is “directed at the adults in the room, reminding them of their own mission” (Really? Open borders? Man-boy love? Anti-white discrimination? Marxism? Why is a sign aimed at adults so naive and childish? ), that it is “the epitome of virtue signaling: an actual sign enumerating the owner’s virtues. There is something refreshing, actually, about the straightforwardness of that.” (There is something refreshing about smug idiots placing signs on their laws that say, “I am a smug idiot”?).

I learned other things from that article:

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