Ethics Dunce: Elon Musk

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Sigh.

I can’t decide whether it is completely predictable that the richest man in the world has a 5th grader’s comprehension of ethics and integrity of principles, or whether it should alarm us all. I do know that those of us hoping that Musk could transform Twitter from the censorious, leftist propaganda organ that it has become into a fair and valuable platform for public discourse are probably going to be disappointed.

Musk said on Twitter yesterday that he was reinstating former President Donald J. Trump to the platform, and poof!, Trump was back on the site. That’s fine: Musk should have reinstated him immediately as soon as he had the metaphorical reins of Twitter in hand. His banning in 2021 was both partisan and political; as the immediate former President, Trump’s ability to express his opinions and positions on the most used social media platform was essential to the national dialogue, regardless of what he had to say, or how obnoxiously he might say it. The principles that supposedly led Musk to spend billions of dollars buying Twitter demanded that Trump be reinstated.

But what did Musk do? He put the matter up for a vote on Twitter. How does that compute, as the robot on “Lost in Space” might say? Allowing a group to vote to decide whether an individual gets to speak or not is the epitome of censorship. Stifling free expression by those who are unpopular or who have unpopular opinions is the antithesis of the First Amendment. Doesn’t Musk understand that? Apparently not, or, perhaps more likely, he does understand it to the extent he has thought about it in his brilliant but weirdly wired brain, but doesn’t care. The vote was good publicity. The vote would get headlines. The vote would attract new accounts. Principles, shminciples; ethics, shmethics. I own this place and I’ll do what I want.

That’s basically the Donald Trump approach to ethics. Great.

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At Last! A Systemic Racism Accusation That I Almost Agree With. Almost.

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

CNN suddenly discovered this week that state lotteries are regressive and overwhelming exploit poor people and minorities. Too bad these inquiring, always-alert-to-new-issues journalists don’t read Ethics Alarms (but then, few do). I raised this issue in many posts, notably here (in 2010), here (1n 2012), here (also in 2012), and here (in 2016). The news media being shocked–-shocked!—that lotteries are cynical, unethical devices to deal with state budget deficits by legislators who don’t have the guts to raise taxes is like anyone who is surprised to see the cryptocurrency scam come crashing down. Welcome to the party, pals! (You incompetent morons…)

The CNN piece this week interviewed critics calling lotteries in general and PowerBall in particular a form of systemic racism that targets poor black and brown communities across America. Researches told wide-eyed CNN talking heads that despite the extreme low chance of winning, state lotteries aggressively market the lottery to sell tickets at higher rates to low-income communities, who are vulnerable to get rich quick without working schemes. Well of COURSE they market the lotteries: it makes the state millions of dollars! Why would they have a lottery and not market it? CNN also noted a report from 1999 finding that black Americans, high-school dropouts, and low-income citizens played the lottery on a more frequent basis. 

Gee, I’m stunned. Who would have suspected that, except for the fact that everyone knew this would be the case before the first state lottery was approved many moons ago. State lotteries are just the old, illegal numbers racket nationalized. Who played the numbers? Poor people. For heaven’s sake, the dirt poor denizens of Catfish Row in “Porgy and Bess’ are shown playing the numbers (and singing!) What a shock: the linear descendants of those player are also the primary targets and market for today’s lotteries.

CNN needed researchers to point this out to them?

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Saturday Afternoon Ethics Stimulus, 11/19/2022: Lincoln Was Right

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

On this date in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the most famous speech in U.S. history, authored by him, in a remarkable burst of historical and ethical clarity. Dedicating the military cemetery on the battlefield with rotting bodies still covering the ground after what we now know was the turning point in the Civil War, Lincoln captured the mission of this nation as it was while redefining it going forward:

 Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

How he missed the fact that the United States was really founded to protect slavery and was dedicated to being a scourge of human rights, we’ll never know.

I wonder how many of the “experts” who now train our children to be good citizens include the Gettysburg Address in their curriculum. To be fair, there may not be time, given the importance of imparting critical race theory and joys of transgenderism.

It is also worth noting that Abraham Lincoln developed the critical thinking and rhetorical skills that produced his masterpiece without any formal education. He just read many of those books by the same dead white men who are now considered the heralds of white supremacy.

I suppose three arch statements in a row are excessive on an ethics blog….

1. Another confirmation bias classic: A typical New York Times reader writes, “Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to step down from her leadership position was timely and astute. A good leader knows when it is time to go. Moreover, her speech was extraordinary in spirit, wisdom, humility, grace and gratitude….”

Nobody should care what Pelosi said, or says. She already showed us her spirit, wisdom, humility and grace many times, over many years. She was a consistently toxic and divisive feature of American politics, and her party and her nation are much diminished because of her.

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More “Good” Segregation And Racial Discrimination On Progressive College Campuses

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

When exactly did racial segregation pass from the agendas of racists, bigots, white supremacists, KKK members and Jim Crow enthusiasts to the playbook of progressive black activists? What was the catalyst, the tipping point? I’m almost certain the fault lies with Barack Obama, but I have to work out the process more carefully before I’m ready to make that case. Nevertheless, our ever-woke, leftist-indoctrination factories we still foolishly refer to as institutions of higher education increasingly are seeing and tolerating such “good” racial discrimination. A new outbreak has been triggered by the movie sequel to the Marvel hit, “Black Panther,” “Wakanda Forever.”

University of California Santa Barbara students were offered a free screening of the film, but advised that white students were not exactly welcome. The Black Student Union, which sponsored the showing with the assistance of outside organizations, wrote on its Instagram page stated event was intended to be “Black-centered” and a “gathering of Black community….We are lovingly curating this space to support and affirm Black people and Black joy. We ask that our non-Black allies support our intention of creating a Black affinity and celebration space.”

We are lovingly telling you crackers to keep your white asses out of our celebration.

Nice.

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Ethics Hero: Adam Frisch

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Adam Frisch, the former Aspen city councilman running to defeat hard-right, Donald Trump-backing (and Trump-backed) GOP Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, once again raises the contentious question on Ethics Alarms of whether someone can be an ethics hero by simply doing what was once understood by all to be the right, proper and civilized thing to do.

The policy here is that such conduct is not only heroic but important. Ethical societal and cultural norms are being challenged all the time, altered, edited, mutated, distorted and destroyed. It requires courage, responsibility, integrity and resilience to hold to a standard that is under attack. Once upon a time, before Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Stacey Abrams and, of course, Donald Trump and mail-in voting, it was understood in American politics that the way our system was supposed to work, and how it would work best, was for losing political candidates to graciously concede after they had lost an election, however close it might be.

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Just When It Looks Like The Contestants For “2022 Asshole Of The Year” Are Settled, A Surprise Contender Surfaces!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

And what a contender! That’s Samantha Foss, the 19-year-old daughter of billionaire Donald Foss, the founder and former CEO of auto loans company Credit Acceptance. Samantha, who was raised with all of the luxuries and benefits one would expect the youngest child of a tycoon to receive nonetheless took the podium at his funeral service and spent her oration insulting, denouncing, and trashing her father in front of mourners. Her money line: “You’ll never be what you could have been, but only what you are — and what you are is a racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, Trump-loving, cis, straight white man.”

Translation: “I am a spoiled, rude, ungrateful, narcissist offspring from Hell, and you must have been a terrible father, because look at the monster you raised.”

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“Bias Makes You Stupid,” Senior Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

That’s Dustin Hoffman in “Little Big Man” above, which he narrates as “Jack Crabbe,” a 121-year-old survivor of Custer’s Last Stand.

It is amazing to me that anyone seriously argues that elected officials, judges and other individuals with challenging jobs should NOT be required to retire at a reasonable age. [Yes, I omitted “not” in the original post. Idiot.] Many do so argue, however, especially those who are past that reasonable age, whatever it may be. Here’s a letter in the New York Times today; let’s call the writer “Jerry”….

Re “Biden Facing a Big Decision on His Future” (front page, Nov. 14):

Yet another article casting doubt on President Biden’s fitness to run again because of his age: 80 this coming Sunday. On the front page no less, as we celebrate his key role in dodging the predicted red wave.

Next month I turn 84. I still work at my computer every day, practice yoga regularly and ride my bike 10 to 20 miles a week. For sure, I can’t run as fast, or recall every name with the same ease, but in my mind I still feel young most days. And I’m far from alone among my cohort.

Eighty is the new 60. We need to get used to it as the baby boomers begin to turn 80 in just three years.

When we pick a presidential candidate, age is less important than character, experience, wisdom, judgment, kindness, resilience, mental health and track record, to name a few. Every candidate will have his or her flaws, but it’s insulting and foolish that someone should be disqualified simply based on age.

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Weird Tales Of The Great Stupid: The 10-Year-Old’s Sexual Assault

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Is there any time in U.S. history other than the Age of the Great Stupid that this could have occurred?

NBC News reports that a fourth grader was summarily suspended from the Holly Hill School in Volusia County, Florida after he hugged a school counselor late last month and, the counselor alleged, ‘grabbed her left breast” in the process. elementary school. The child now faces a potential misdemeanor battery charge after she filed a complaint with police.

The counselor—I wonder what she’s qualified to counsel about? — doesn’t have to give her name, thanks to a Florida law that allows “crime victims”—you know, like elementary school counselors who are sexually assaulted by hormone-crazed 10-year-olds—can remain anonymous.

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Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

open foru

Since the vote counting has taken ridiculously long, this is truly the past-2022 election open forum. (The earlier we—foolishly—allow people to vote, the longer it seems to take to get the results.) And there is a lot more ethics out there to discuss.

As always.

Finally Giving Cherokee Nation A Delegate In The House Is An Ethics No-Brainer

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The  treaty imposed on the Cherokee Nation in 1835 facilitated the Trail of Tears, and was the surest sign yet that the eventual fate of North America’s native population was going to be ugly, violent, and tragic. But the Treaty of New Echota, which forced the Cherokee to relinquish their ancestral lands in the South, also included the promise that the Cherokee Nation would be “entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives of the United States whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.” It is almost 200 years later, and Congress still hasn’t made such a provision.

Well, if we searched the Rationalization List for the excuse for this disgraceful betrayal, we would find several candidates on the very first page, mutations of the hoariest rationalization of all, #1, “Everybody Does It,” but represented by such variations of the theme as, It’s done all the time,”“It’s always been done this way,” “It’s tradition,” “Everybody is used to it,“Everybody accepts it,” and  “It’s too late to change now.” The United States broke too many treaties with the various tribes to count, but this one has an especially ugly story behind it.

On Georgia lands guaranteed by the United States to the Cherokee in yet another, earlier treaty, the tribe was attempting to create a model of what might have allowed all the Native American tribes to flourish in the new European-settled nation that was clearly not to be denied. The Cherokee Nation had foresworn war, was working with white communities, creating commerce and launching a hybrid culture that could be integrated into the U.S. while preserving Indian culture. The plan was working too— too well. Georgia exercised the then-current doctrine of nullification, a states rights principle holding that a state could nullify Federal law. The Georgian legislature wanted the Cherokees’ land, and declared the Federal treaty leaving it in their control null and void. The Cherokee sued Georgia in the U.S. Supreme Court and won. President Jackson, however, even though he had earlier condemned South Carolina’s nullification attempts in the strongest possible terms (Jackson threatened to hang Senator John C. Calhoun with his own hands), hated Indians. In an unprecedented demonstration of abuse of power and raw defiance by a President, “King Andy” refused to enforce the SCOTUS decision and backed Georgia. Continue reading →