Sunday Ethics Affirmation, 6/27/2021: “Life Is Unfair, Suck It Up”Edition [Part I]

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

That Ol’ Blue Eyes classic comes to you courtesy of item #1. I am not a fan of Frank in general: despite his artistry and the pleasure he gave to so many (including, on occasion, me), he was such a loathsome individual that I can’t listen to him without the cognitive dissonance chimes sounding. But that song, by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon, perfectly expressed my father’s indomitable philosophy, which he grandly passed on to his son and namesake.”That’s life!” can easily be a rationalization to justify passive inaction; indeed I have considered adding it to the Rationalization List many times. My father didn’t use it that way, however. He expressed it as a quick summary of the Serenity Prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Dad knew the difference, and a large part of my ethics journey is gaining as firm a grip on that difference as he had.

1. Wait, which part is unfair? The Times reviewed two documentaries about female athletes and headlined the piece, “Women, and Girls, Compete in an Unfair World.” (the online version is titled, “Review: ‘Sisters on Track,’ ‘LFG’ and the Price of Star Power.” This is a pattern with the Times: the print edition almost always has a more aggressively political, propaganda-style headline. Any theories? Of course, we all compete in an unfair world, especially if one adopts the Left’s expansive definition of “fairness.” The first documentary examined (and remember, documentaries are usually advocacy pieces, not neutral or “fair.”) is “Sisters on Track.” It follows the saga of two talented young African-American runners. The unfairness, according to the Times: “[C]ontinued track success pushes closed doors open, granting the sisters access to shelter, scholarships and private school admissions that might have otherwise been beyond their means. But as they plan ahead for college — its opportunities and its expenses — they know they have to maintain their national records if they want to translate early success into lifelong stability.” Now why is that unfair? I would argue that it’s unfair for an unproductive talent like winning track meets to bring such financial riches, while society grossly undervalues other more substantive achievements. The message of the documentary is that the athletically talented Shepard sister have to keep excelling in order to keep profiting. Yes, that’s life, and that’s capitalism, meritocracy, and the United States of America. Would the documentary-maker and the Times reviewer call this “unfair” if the speedy Shepard sister weren’t black?

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Once Again The Courts Step In To Prevent Woke Discrimination

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

believe all survivors

Say what you will about the Trump Education Department, the fact that it reversed the anti-due process bullying of the Obama administration, which threatened colleges and universities that did not use a presumption of guilt to investigate accusations of campus sexual harassment and assault, was laudable and ethical. Now the Biden administration is in the process of reversing the reversal, as it once again embraces a “believe all women” context for such cases. (Well, “believe all women” except in cases where the Governor of New York and the president of the United States aren’t involved—but that’s another story.)

Fortunately, we have the courts, which are being kept especially busy as the progressives in power try to run roughshod over that damnably inconvenient Constitution thingy. This month the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the disingenuous argument by the University of Minnesota that they weren’t stacking the deck against accused male football players due to their gender, but rather tilting the process toward their accusers because the school was biased against all students accused of sexual misconduct. Riiiight, the Court concluded:

“The district court concluded that a university’s bias in favor of the victims of sexual assault does not establish a reasonable inference of bias against male students, citing Doe v. University of St. Thomas, 240 F. Supp. 3d 984, 991 (D. Minn. 2017). While the circumstances here also give rise to a plausible inference of bias in favor of sexual assault victims rather than against males, “[s]ex discrimination need not be the only plausible explanation or even the most plausible explanation for a Title IX claim to proceed.” Schwake, 967 F.3d at 948; see Columbia Univ., 831 F.3d at 57. Thus, we reverse the district court’s dismissal of the Does’ Title IX discrimination claims.“

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Saturday Afternoon Ethics Coolers, 6/26/2021: Bad Baserunning And Bad Laws

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Coolers

1. Professional incompetence, Baseball Division. ESPN had a long article by a former player about how the base-running skills of modern players had declined to a such a degree that he couldn’t stand watching games. I hadn’t thought about it much, since there have always been notable players who made repeated gaffes on the basepaths, and I assumed this was another of those, “In my day, we played the game right!” lectures from leathery old codgers. Then I started paying attention, and he was right: a shocking number of players don’t know the rules of the game they are payed eight figures to play. It really is amazing: players don’t understand how the infield fly rule works. They even get confused about whether they need to get tagged out or if the fielder just needs to tag the base in a force-out.

Last week, in a game with the Tampa Bay Rays, the Boston Red Sox got a break when a Rays player, thinking a fly ball out would be a hit, ran from first base past second, and then had to dash back to first so as not to be thrown out by the outfielder. The throw into the infield was wide, and the player made it back safely. But the Red Sox threw the ball over to second base, and the runner was out. Why? Because a player who runs past a base and then has to return to the original base is required to tag the second base on the way back. They used to teach this in Little League; my friends and I observed it in sandlot ball.

The Red Sox announcers thought the mistake was hilarious. Then a few innings later, young Red Sox superstar Rafael Devers did the same thing! Worse, no one on the Rays caught it, and he returned safely to first base.

2. I see no possibility that this unethical program will be be ruled constitutional. “You Can Feel the Tension’: A Windfall for Minority Farmers Divides Rural America,” reads the New York Times story from last month about the Biden Administration’s $4 billion fund that black farmers can access but not white farmers. Gee, why would a lot of money that will be distributed to members of one race and not another cause division?

“A $4 billion federal fund meant to confront how racial injustice has shaped American farming has angered white farmers who say they are being unfairly excluded,” reads the cut-line. You see the framing there? This is one of the many, many ways the news isn’t delivered straight: the “good intentions” of the law preceded the facts about the law, and thus slants the perception of it. “The debt relief is redress set aside for what the government calls socially disadvantaged farmers — Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and other nonwhite workers who have endured a long history of discrimination, from violence and land theft in the Jim Crow South to banks and federal farm offices that refused them loans or government benefits that went to white farmers,” the story goes on. Wait a minute: were these farmers the victims of that “long history” of discrimination? No, they weren’t and they don’t need to show any discrimination or mistreatment against them personally at all to get their money. Skin color or racial identification is enough.

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An Everyday Ethics Conundrum: Free Air

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

air pump

Help me out with this one, if you can.

Our car has a slow leak in my right front tire. It get about seven pounds low every three days or so, and it has not been convenient for me to spend the time to go to the dealer and have the thing plugged. For several months now I have just filled the tire at the closest filling station, which has two air pumps (one is perpetually broken) that require six quarters to start the air coming.

About a week ago, both of the air dispensers—including the busted one— began sporting signs announcing that air would now be $2.00 for five minutes rather than $1.50. At the time, that caused me additional annoyance since I only had six quarters, and had to get change at the 7-11 to acquire the additional fifty cents. But when I put in the coins, the air turned on after only six quarters, as it always had. I finished filling the tire in about a minute, wasting the other four minutes of potential air, assuming the change in price had just occurred and the owner hadn’t yet adjusted the machine. But today when I went to fill up the once-again underinflated tire, it still only took $1.50 to start the air flowing.

The question: Am I ethically obligated to inform the owner of this? Do I owe him a buck for the last two air purchases?

“Systemic Racism” Update

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I need a graphic for “The Great Stupid,” but until I get one, that clip above from Ed Wood’s masterpiece, “Plan Nine From Outer Space,” will have to do. I have to check back and find out which generous reader sent me this after I asked if there was a “Stupid, stupid!” equivalent of the “Madness! Madness!” clip from “Bridge Over The River Kwai.” That’s the immortal Dudley Manlove uttering those words, by the way. And that was his real name!

Update: Commenter Wallphone found the “Plan Nine” clip, and has my enduring gratitude.

Here are some especially annoying recent developments on the incoherent “systemic racism” front.

1. Philonase Floyd, the brother of the late, great,George Floyd, said, following the sentencing of Derek Chauvin, “I just want to reiterate: not just black lives matter, all lives matter.” Strangely, he was not immediately condemned as a racist or racially insensitive and forced to apologize like so many others who were hounded mercilessly for saying “all lives matter.” Of course, the explanation is that Floyd’s skin shade gives him license to say “all lives matter.”

I only want to know the rules, that’s all. That seems like a reasonable request. But the systemic racism scam is truly Calvinball.The rules are made up and changed according to whatever is expedient at the time. Incidentally, there is a politician named Calvin Ball who is the county executive of Howard County, Maryland. Guess his party and race. [Hint: He’s allowed to say “All lives matter.”]

2. There has to be some designation for the cowards and enablers of rising totalitarianism that accurately describes sniveling traitors to democracy like Charlette LeFevre and Philip Lipson, the directors of Capitol Hill Pride in Seattle. I was considering the “Winston Smith Award,” but that seems unfair to Orwell’s tragic hero.

The two sent a letter to the Seattle Human Rights Commission that said,

“It has come to our attention that an event called ‘Take B(l)ack Pride’ at the Jimi Hendrix public park June 26th is charging Whites only admission as reparations. We consider this reverse discrimination in its worse form and we feel we are being attacked for not supporting due to disparaging and hostile e-mails. We will never charge admission over the color of a person’s skin and we resent being attacked for standing in those values.”

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Friday Ethics Wrap-Up, 6/25/21: Little Bighorn Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

On June 25, 1876, Sioux and Cheyenne forces led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull wiped out the U.S. Army troops of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn near southern Montana’s Little Bighorn River. Custer had been asking for such a fate for sure: he had long been crippled by hubris, ambition and arrogance, despite other compensating positive leadership traits and one extremely important success, which I’ll write about again in about a week. The U.S. Army had also firmly established themselves as the bad guys in this true life Western. After gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills, in the previous year, the U.S. Army ignored previous treaty agreements and invaded the region. Custer and some 200 men blundered into the Little Bighorn Valley where his battalion was overcome by 3,000 angry warriors. Custer and every last one of his soldier had been killed within an hour. The Battle of the Little Bighorn, better known as “Custer’s Last Stand,” was the most decisive Native American victory and the worst U.S. Army defeat in the long Plains Indian War. It was a classic Pyrrhic victory, of course. Custer was elevated to undeserved martyr status, and the U.S. Government redoubled its efforts against Native Americans. Within five years, almost all of the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne were confined to reservations.

It took a while for history, popular culture and public opinion to catch up with reality regarding Custer. More than 20 movies and too many television shows to count portrayed him as a hero right into the Sixties. Among the actors who played the doomed and dashing cavalry leader: Ronald Reagan, Errol Flynn, Leslie Neilson, Robert Shaw, and Sheb Wooley, who sang the hit ’50’s ditty “Purple People Eater.” The tide turned against Custer for good after some critical biographies and when Richard Mulligan played him as preening idiot in the dark Western satire “Little Big Man” in 1970.

There was cosmic justice for Custer, if not for the Indians he persecuted.

1. Perhaps the greatest IIPTDXTTNMIAFB we will ever see! I really jumped the gun earlier this month when I marked a ridiculous lie out of the mouth of President Biden as an “IIPTDXTTNMIAFB for the ages.” ( The initials stand for “Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.”“Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.”) That doesn’t come within miles of Biden’s extemporaneous tough guy blather during his recent “all of the recent increase in crime in Democrat-run cities is caused by guns” speech, when he began with a historical gaffe, saying that a citizen couldn’t buy a cannon in Revolutionary times (citizens could buy cannons and did well into the 20th Century—the crazy publisher of the Los Angeles Times had one mounted on the hood of his car) and then really jumping the responsible Potus shark with this:

“Those who say the blood of lib- — “the blood of patriots,” you know, and all the stuff about how we’re going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been — if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

This has been discussed a bit today in the Open Forum, so I will just add that if Trump had said anything like this, Democrats and the news media would be screaming that he was psychologically unfit to be President, and that the 25th Amendment should be put into action immediately. But Trump never said anything that crazy or threatening. In addition to the statement being bellicose and offensive, it also evinces that understanding of the Second Amendment of the average 14-year-old. The Second Amendment like the rest of the Bill of Rights, was created to ensure that the Federal government knew its place, and also knew that like the colonies, American citizens would not surrender their liberties without a fight. The Founders never thought local groups of armed citizens could prevail in combat against the full resources of the Federal government, even in a world without AR-15s, nukes, and tanks. But they knew that the prospect of substantial numbers of armed citizens would deter government tyranny, assuming sane leadership. For example, an attempt to go houise to house confiscating guns would be unacceptably bloody and risk turning a majority of the public against the government.

Even though the news media is already trying to memory-hole Joe’s stupid threat, it is destined to haunt him, and should.

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Open Forum, As Everything Is Seemingly Spinning Out Of Control!

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

President Biden threatening to nuke citizens? Seattle approving an event that will charge whites “reparations fees”? The Red Sox lifting a starting pitcher when he’s throwing a no-hitter? I can’t handle all of this chaos!

Maybe you can.

Go to it.

America Last: Good News And Bad News At The Same Time

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Reuters-Survey-Trust-In-Media-June-2021

As you can see in the chart above, a report released by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford and the University of Oxford found that out of 46 nations surveyed the US public ranks last in its trust of the news media at 29%. The study surveyed 92,000 news consumers in those countries. Finland finished first with a trust rate of 65%.

I doubt that Finland’s journalists deserve that much more trust, which is one reason the report is good news for the United States. I think it is highly likely that the journalists everywhere else suffer from the same arrogance, relative lack of intellectual depth, and hive-mind leanings as U.S. journalists. I think that the U.S. public’s lack of trust shows growing and essential understanding of the true nature of what has become a corrupt and dangerous false profession that does not serve the interests of the people as it is pledged to according to journalistic ethics, but its own. Nor do I believe the U.S. has the worst and most unethical journalists in the world—far from it, I suspect. The U.S. has the journalists with the most freedom, making it especially easy to do their job as dishonestly as they do; yet unlike in many of those nations, their government isn’t forcing American journalists to substitute spin, distortion and propaganda for the truth.

The U.S. public has, finally, had its blinders ripped off, and is no longer under the delusion that they are being informed by altruistic and dedicated pros who only seek to reveal the facts necessary for us to live our lives as we choose to. Knowledge is power, and while our news media is wielding their control over knowledge to transfer power to their political allies, the public, at least most of it, has acquired crucial knowledge to neutralize it: the knowledge that that are not trustworthy.

Unfortunately, the bad news aspect of the study’s finding is arguably worse than the good news is encouraging. Democracy cannot function without a trustworthy news media, or as the Founders called it, “press.” Journalism rot is an existential threat.

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Objective Take-Aways From Fiona Hill’s “Fire Alarm” Story

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Fiona Hill

I know how I missed this: I won’t watch CNN, and especially not the ridiculous Don Lemon, unless there’s the equivalent of a gun at my head. I finally caught wind of it when a New York Times’ hard left op-ed writers, Nick Kristoff (who is one of the few rational ones in that group) referenced the tale as if it is indisputable proof of President Trump’s awfulness. On June 16, Fiona Hill, once Trump’s top Russia adviser, told Don Lemon that she was so upset at how Trump’s 2018 press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin was proceeding that she looked for a fire alarm to pull and considered faking a medical emergency when she couldn’t find one, just to disrupt it. “I just thought, let’s cut this off and try to end it. I couldn’t come up with anything that just wouldn’t add to the terrible spectacle,” Hill said on “Don Lemon Tonight.”

The “terrible spectacle” she was trying to avoid was that Trump refused to support US intelligence conclusions that Russia had tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Her self-glorifying account—at least to Trump-haters—didn’t get much coverage beyond CNN: little from the mainstream media, none from the conservative media. I sense, however, based on Kristof’s use of it, that it is destined to be wielded by Democrats as a “this is how terrible it was to have Donald Trump as President” story evermore.

But what Hill’s grandstanding really reveals is something every different, which is how this President, unlike all those before him, was sabotaged actively and passively by members of his own staff and administration who didn’t like him, trust him, respect him, or believe that he was a legitimate President. The media-derided term for what Trump had to contend with was the “deep state,” which had a conspiratorial ring and allowed those who correctly reported what was flamingly obvious to be ridiculed as paranoid. That term, however, was misleading.

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What Its Fraudulent Anti-Gun Video Reveals About “Change the Ref”And Everyone Applauding it

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Change the Ref

The anti-gun group “Change the Ref” pretended to represent a fake school, “James Madison Academy,” when they invited former NRA president David Keene to give a speech at a graduation ceremony. He was told that he was participating in a rehearsal, as he addressed a stadium of empty chairs. Another gun rights advocate, John Lott Jr., also was lured into the trap by the same ruse.

In reality, the group was filming an anti-gun video. As Keene exhorted the imaginary students to revere the Second Amendment, the video added audio from 911 calls, and the sounds of terrified students during an active shooter episode (or simulations of them). Keene addressed empty chairs, 3,044 of them, allegedly representing children and teenagers who were shot and killed before they could graduate from high school, though he wasn’t told that. Just a rehearsal! After they provided the desired footage to be used against their cause, Keene and Lott were told that the ceremony was canceled.

Change the Ref was founded by Patricia and Manuel Oliver, parents of a boy killed in the Parkland, Florida, shooting. The video is called the “The Lost Class.” Powerful! Clever! Also dishonest, unfair, disrespectful, unforgivably unethical and one more thing: signature significance. A group that would do this is untrustworthy. Nothing it says or publishes can be trusted; none of its arguments can be taken at face value; none of its statistics or analysis can be relied upon by anyone. With this video and its abuse of Lott and Keene, Change the Ref exposes itself as practicing “by any means possible” warfare, not legitimate policy advocacy. It believes that the ends justify the means—their ends. It is a perfect match for the current progressive movement, which has taken an ominous turn to totalitarian strategies with its full embrace of Alinskyism.

Good to know.

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