Yes, I’m sorry I started this.

The original piece was too long, so the process of debunking and exposing it is also too long. There are other issues to cover, and sock drawers to organize. Still: this kind of irresponsible, dishonest mind-poison is published in respectable places every day, and they are hardly ever challenged in print. Someone like Wajahat Ali will issue this junk and then get welcomed onto MSNBC, where Joy Reid or another one of the anti-America, anti-white racists who bloviate there will cheer him on. I know I can’t do anything about it, or him, or her. Still, I can’t do nothing either.

Let’s finish this…

If Republicans take control of the political leadership of Congress, which seems likely, they will be beholden to an increasingly radicalized and weaponized base that is fine using violence to “take back their country.”

A leftist wacko inflamed by pundits like Ali and the Jan. 6 show trial just tried to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh. I do not see how any Democrat can get away with calling Republican followers “radicalized” while their own allies convince pre-teens to change their gender, police are villified, cities like San Francisco are allowing thieves to run amuck, schools are being encouraged to teach that white America continues to oppress all minorities, children are being forced to grow up with half their faces covered, and the Democratic Party’s solution to students taking on more debt than they can afford is for the government to pay it off.

Meanwhile, Republicans refuse to move against white supremacist terrorism, which is the number domestic terror threat in the country. Instead their colleagues, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, openly attend conferences hosted by Nick Fuentes—a notorious antisemite and white nationalist. The hoods are off, and there’s no turning back for the GOP.

Shameless, don’t you think? This is an administration that called parents protesting anti-white propaganda in elementary schools “white supremacist terrorists.” Using two outlying, really bad, GOP House members as representative of the whole party is bold glass house stone-throwing for the supporter of a party where “The Squad”—speaking of anti-semites and wackos–has so much influence. Continue reading →

Continuing to slog through the obvious ethical, logical and journalistic horrors that infest pundit Wajahat Ali ‘s anti-US opinion piece “Is It Time for Me to Leave America?” (the previous installment is here):

“This is not a flippant or hyperbolic thought exercise, and I’m not the only one to increasingly ponder the question: “Where else can we go when this country turns on us?”

“I’m not the only one” is a rationalization, not a justification.

“Earlier this week, New York Times journalist Farnaz Fassihi was trolled and harassed on Twitter for simply stating the following: “I’m a child of immigrants. When I was a kid, everyone I knew wished they could raise their children in America, now, everyone I know wishes they could raise their children outside of America.” If you’ve traveled and talked to people over the past few years, her statement wasn’t extraordinary, it’s a sadly common utterance. 

Fassihi wasn’t “harassed” on Twitter (nobody’s forcing him to read critical tweets), and “trolled” means people simply pointed out what a stupid thing he had written, which is what Twitter does. “If everyone he knows” wishes they could raise the kids outside of America, then he lives in a bubble, and a really weird one. Why should anyone take a statement like that seriously? It reminds me of New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael famously saying that “everyone she knew” supported George McGovern in the 1972 Presidential race. The response to that is, “You need to get out more, kid.” I’m not believing the comment is “sadly common” until I see some evidence.

“Most people around the world aren’t rejoicing at America’s self-inflicted downfall, they’re looking at us with pity, sadness, and a desperate hope that we get our shit together. After all, the United States is still the most powerful and wealthy country in the world, and a doorstop against rising authoritarianism.”

“People around the world” need to get their own “shit together,” and one very popular way to do that is to come here.  Currently hey don’t live here, they don’t have our values or culture, they are unenlightened observers. This is the tell-tale whine of those who want the United States to be more like the rest of the world. Continue reading →

Three notable markers in ethics lore occurred on June 10. In 1752, Ben Franklin did something creative, inventive, bold and really, really stupid, flying a kite during a thunder storm to collect lightning in a jar. He pulled it off, too, because he was lucky, as usual. Ben just as easily could have been electrocuted, meaning that he would not have been around to add his considerable wisdom, negotiating skills and talents to the founding of our nation, which might not exist today if old Ben was a-moldering in the grave when they needed him in Philadelphia. A things turned out, Ben’s kite-flying experiment added to his fame, but it just as easily could have been an epic disaster for the world.

And that, my friends, is moral luck.

Another ethics landmark occurred on this date in 1692 in Salem Village the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Bridget Bishop, the first victim of the Salem witch trials, was hanged and 18 more innocent colonists were executed (none were burned) before the epic example of how fear, ignorance and political ruthlessness can turn good people into monsters. In 1976, a scientist published a paper arguing that the young girls’ weird behavior that triggered the witch trials may not have been caused, as “The Crucible” has it, by teenage rebellion, but by a hallucinogenic fungus that sometimes infects the type of grain the Salem colonists used for bread. The theory has substantial support in the scientific community if not so much among historians.

The witch trials are particularly relevant today, because of the Jan. 6 hearings…

Finally, on this date in 1935, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, two recovering alcoholics, founded Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA, a 12-step rehabilitation and support group program that has helped millions of people worldwide (including many very close to me) battle a terrible and widespread disease that destroys lives, families, and businesses.

1. “A Nation of Assholes,” redux. As regular readers here know, I posted A Nation Of Assholes: The Ultimate, Undeniable And Crucial Reason Donald Trump Must Never Be President nearly seven years ago, and all has transpired as I predicted. Well, not exactly as I predicted: I assumed that the rising generations would have their language and civility corrupted by having an unrepentant vulgarian and boor in the White House, but I did not predict the adults who were his adversaries quickly adopting equally unethical habits, and in some cases, worse ones. I was reminded again of this phenomenon—which as far as I can tell, only Ethics Alarms flagged—yesterday when a controversy emerged over Boston Celtics fans chanting “Fuck you Draymond” at Warriors court thug Draymond Green during yesterday’s NBA Finals game at the Boston Garden. As a born-and bred Bostonian, I can testify that not all that long ago such sporting event crowd conduct would have been unimaginable in the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin. The critics of yesterday’s disgrace concentrated on a “Think of the children!” tactic, which misses the ethics point. Chanting “fuck” is disrespectful of everyone.

Continue reading →