2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck

Trump, His Critics, And The Julie Principle

/ Jack Marshall / 108 Comments

We return now to “The Julie Principle,” an ethics concept I introduced three and a half  years ago. “The Julie Principle lies at the center of tolerance in its most productive sense. It also will keep you from going crazy “ was how the post was introduced. Here is the guts of it.

When a characteristic or a behavior pattern appears to be hard-wired into someone, it makes no sense to keep complaining about it. You either resolve to tolerate it ( and accept responsibility for the consequences of doing so), or decide that it is too much to endure, meaning that the relationship has to end.  “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…” [ Note: this is the most famous lyric in the second most famous song in “Showboat,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man o’ Mine,” sung by the tragic, abused mulatto Julie.]

The Julie Principle comes in handy in resolving many ethical dilemmas. In making an ethical analysis requiring balancing, the illusion, when it is an illusion, that a major part of the equation can be removed by just a little more advocacy, education or pressure permanently warps the process. We have been debating same-sex marriage here in several threads, and the illusion that gays can change their orientation, that it is a choice rather than part of their essence, is a massive impediment to reaching a rational accord. The Julie Principle applies. Do we want gay Americans to be part, and feel like a part, of the American fabric, or do we want to make what is essential to their being a deal-breaker? We’re the ones with the choice, not them.

I think the Julie Principle makes the choice obvious. It makes the choice obvious in the immigration debate as well. All those illegals are here. They have ties to family, the economy and the community: they aren’t leaving. “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…” Does it make sense to keep punishing million of people for what they can’t change, or do we accept them for the good they can do from this point on? Sure, it would be preferable if we hadn’t allowed so many to walk across our boarders…But it’s too late to do anything about that. 

“Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…”

The challenge in executing the Julie Principle is how you accept your bird or fish without letting that act corrupt your own values, or stop you from continuing to advocate and fight for them.

The left-wing media and still-bitter Democrats and progressives really need to learn the Julie Principle regarding Donald Trump, and fast. It might be too late to stop them from going crazy, but if they don’t learn it, they will drive everyone else crazy, and still accomplish nothing. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Texas Republican Elector Art Sisneros

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

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….As an Elector, I came to conclusion I have three options under our current system. I can 1) vote for the nominee of their party under which I was elected, 2) vote for someone else and be considered a faithless elector (a term I despise), or 3) I could resign my position if the candidate turns out to be someone I can not, in good conscience, vote for. I believe under the right circumstances every option is not only valid, but can be ethically the righteous thing for a Christian to do. The question that everyone wants answered is, what will I, an Elector who is under the conviction that our nominee is not a biblically qualified candidate, do? After wavering back and forth, my conscience is finally at peace with the decision I’ve made….If Trump is not qualified and my role, both morally and historically, as an elected official is to vote my conscience, then I can not and will not vote for Donald Trump for President. I believe voting for Trump would bring dishonor to God. The reality is Trump will be our President, no matter what my decision is. Many are furious that I am willing to have this discussion publicly. Personally, I wish more civil officers would be honest about their convictions. Assuming a Trump Presidency is their ultimate goal, they will get that. The problem is, that isn’t what they want. They want a democracy. They will threaten to kill anyone who challenges their power to vote for Skittles for dinner. That is evidence alone to prove that our republic is lost. The shell may remain, but in the hearts of the people and functionality of the system our republic is gone.

…I believe to resign is to honor the intent of the pledge as it relates to the people of my district. Since I can’t in good conscience vote for Donald Trump, and yet have sinfully made a pledge that I would, the best option I see at this time is to resign my position as an Elector. This will allow the remaining body of Electors to fill my vacancy when they convene on Dec 19 with someone that can vote for Trump. The people will get their vote. They will get their Skittles for dinner. I will sleep well at night knowing I neither gave in to their demands nor caved to my convictions. I will also mourn the loss of our republic.

This excerpt doesn’t do the tortured elector justice, as he expounds on his torment in detail in this remarkable blog post.

Observations:

1. His ultimate decision was the ethically correct one, the “book answer”: Resign, and let someone who can and will do what the voters expect take his place. He reached it using some unethical and crooked paths, though.

2. His post is a rationalization-fest with muddled thinking and dubious history thrown in. Sisneros inadvertently makes an ironclad case for why we don’t want electors like him to have the power to veto the electorate. This guy is too confused and emotional, not to mention biased and theocratic, to be trusted for such a job. Who knows? The other electors may be even worse. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: Trump’s Tweet On Fidel’s Demise”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

trump-tshirtThe Democratic/progressive/news media freakout over Trump’s election has become an ethics story itself, as the foes of a man whose lack of impulse control and respect during the campaign drew deserved rebukes now emulate him. This is, Ethics Alarms will soon explore, an effort at deligitimzing Trump’s presidency before it begins, just as the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bush v Gore was employed by Democrats to legitimize Bush, and the various Muslim and birther smears were aimed at Obama by conservatives to undermine Obama. The tactic is un-American and despicable, and never has it been so thoroughly embraced by so many, with such smug self-righteousness.

My thanks to Steve-O-in-NJ for his Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Quiz: Trump’s Tweet On Fidel’s Demise, which is timely and helpful:

I thought I was done with ranting about the election. I also thought everyone else was mostly done and the fire of outrage and self-pity that had followed had burned itself out. It probably didn’t hurt that most students had gone home for Thanksgiving.

Now Jill Stein, an extreme leftist who wasn’t even on the ballot in several states and had zero chance of winning, decides to demand a recount in not just one, but three states. Hillary pretends not to want to join in, but then says, well, ok, if we’re doing it anyway.

Keep a few things in mind: Continue reading →

An Ethics Wow: Maureen Dowd’s Strange, Bold, Honest—Chicken?—Absolute Bullseye New York Times Column About The Election And Its Aftermath [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

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Op-ed writer Maureen Dowd, the New York Times’ Queen of Snark, is widely regarded as an arch-liberal, if an amusing one. During the campaign, however, she  emerged as an analyst who was not dissuaded from telling the truth and expressing deep displeasure with Hillary Clinton’s ethics. As the full-force assault on Donald Trump and Republicans by her employer and colleagues since November 8 has shown, this isn’t a safe stance to take on the flagship of biased American media.

Maybe that explains why Dowd took such a strange and circuitous route in today’s print column, in which she places what are obviously her own words and conclusions in the mouth of Kevin, her conservative, “affluent, educated suburbanite” brother, introducing the column as his, based on the barrage of pro-Trump gloating Dowd says she received at the hands of her Trump-supporting kin, which she calls her “own little basket of deplorables.”

It’s really Maureen’s column, of course, and I would have made her an Ethics Hero if she had only had the guts to own it unequivocally. That cavil aside, I gained a great deal of respect for Dowd through her writing this. She rose far above the vast  majority of her ideologically similar peers by doing so, and the nation and especially the Democratic party would be better off if angry liberals read it and accepted its truths as the icy dousing in unbiased reality they so obviously need in order to stop embarrassing themselves. Ethics Alarms and I, as it happens, didn’t need her analysis, since it literally matches what has been explained here for months. Still, I find it gratifying  that at least one prominent liberal pundit gets it, and had the integrity, sort of, to say so in the Times.

Please read Dowd’s whole column here. Here are a few of my favorite parts: Continue reading →

The Jerk On The Plane: Boy, I Hate It When My Hypotheticals Come To Life…

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments
It would have been OK, if he was black and his rant was scripted by a genius...

It would have been OK, if he was black and his rant was scripted by a genius…

On a recent Delta flight from Atlanta, a young man stood up before take-off and started harassing his fellow-passengers with a pro-Trump rant,  yelling “Donald Trump baby!” and “We got some Hillary bitches on here?” while pointing at individual travelers. He also said, “Donald Trump is your President. Every god damn one of you. If you don’t like it, too bad.” Delta initially removed him, but returned him to the cabin. According to one witness, upon returning the man said, “This is what you get for being a patriot.”

He’s an idiot, of course, and there’s no excuse for his conduct. And yet…

How different is what he did, and what the “Hamilton” actors did? Not much. Neither the “Hamilton” audience members nor the passengers bought tickets to be subjected to this. Both were captive audiences. The conduct in both cases constituted harassment. The clearest distinction was that the jerk on the plane wasn’t an employee; if he had been a flight attendant, the incidents would have been even more similar. The jerk on the plane didn’t single out a particular passenger by name, making his conduct better, not worse, than what the “Hamilton” cast did.  On the plane, passengers hadn’t previously jeered the Hillary Clinton voters among them, so the intimidation factor Pence experienced was absent, and it was only one passenger, not a passenger with an imposing  line of others backing him up, like the wall of actors behind Brandon Victor Dixon. Continue reading →

Short Takes As The Left’s Unethical Post-Election Freakout Continues

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

freakoutI admit it. I can’t keep up with all the progressive/Democrat/Hillary Corrupted/journalist and pundit freakouts over Donald Trump’s election, and I don’t want to. There is more to ethics and life than pointing out how completely so many have abandoned reason, fairness, proportion and their own previously stated principles because Donald Trump won the election. Well, that’s another beneficial effect of the result: Trump has inadvertently exposed how thin the veneer of decency and fairness was for a large number of institutions, occupations and individuals. Among the examples about which I could and probably should write complete posts, but won’t, are these:

New York Times columnist Charles Blow, he of the anti-Mormon slurs against Mitt Romney before the 2012 election. Remember how Rush Limbaugh was excoriated by journalists, progressives and Democrats for saying, after Obama’s election, that he hoped the new President would fail? Here is Blow, in my print Times this morning, declaring in advance his irrevocable hate:

I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral obligation to do so.I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, but rather to speak up for truth and honor and inclusion. This isn’t just about you, but also about the moral compass of those who see you for who and what you are, and know the darkness you herald is only held at bay by the lights of truth….

So let me say this on Thanksgiving: I’m thankful to have this platform because as long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my withering gaze.I’m thankful that I have the endurance and can assume a posture that will never allow what you represent to ever be seen as everyday and ordinary. No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as a threat to the state is the head of state, all citizens of good faith and national fidelity — and certainly this columnist — have an absolute obligation to meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn.

This is the theme of the unethical response of the Angry Left—which increasingly appears to include everyone on the that side of the political spectrum. The double standard reigns. Conservatives should accept election results with grace and patriotism in the interests of national unity, but liberals can scream, protest, attack the system and claim fraud indefinitely. Republicans shouldn’t use fear as a political weapon, but Democrats can. Americans should give elected leaders a chance to  progress beyond the uncivil and excessive rhetoric on both sides during a campaign, with the exception of this President. Continue reading →

Note To Conservatives On The “Hamilton” Cast’s Harassment Of Mike Pence: I’ve Got This. You’re Not Helping.

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

grandstand-hamilton

The problem is that, as you might guess, Trump-supporting Republican and conservatives are as ethically clueless as the Democrats attacking them.

Now there is a backlash against the “Hamilton” actors who singled out an audience member (who happened to be the Vice-President Elect) for specific abuse last week, because, the theory goes, elected officials who a cast doesn’t like shouldn’t be able to attend live theater without entailing the risk of being harassed. Ethics Alarms has been very clear about why this is wrong in every way, and all rebuttals have boiled down to “But we don’t like Mike Pence or Donald Trump, so we should be able to suspend ethics!”

Keep telling yourselves that.

Now it has been discovered that some of the “Hamilton” grandstanders probably didn’t vote in the election, and the actor whose mouth was used to issue the lecture to Pence had himself authored some Trump-like misogynist  rhetoric in a tweet or two. This is supposed to prove hypocrisy, and undermine the legitimacy of the cast’s ambush.

It doesn’t do this, because the cast’s stunt had no legitimacy at all, votes or not, hypocrisy or not.

Is the whole Trump term going to be like this? I fear so, since the incoming President literally is bewildered by all concepts ethical, and his defenders appear to be similarly disabled.

Look: if it is per se unethical and wrong for a theatrical production to turn on audience members without consent or warning to humiliate, threaten or accost them, the qualifications of the cast members engaging in this harassment can’t make the unethical act more or less so. Continue reading →

Well, These Episodes WOULD Have Helped Elect Donald Trump, If He Hadn’t Been Elected Already…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

kkk-art

I can’t bring myself to be thankful for the election of a President who has horrified and revolted me for the better part of a decade, but I am thankful that some troubling trends and attitudes in our society and culture have received the metaphorical slap in the face that Trump’s victory delivered. The Ethics Alarms tag “This will help elect Donald Trump” is about to be retired, but when mourning progressives ask you today, while passing the gravy, “Why? Why?”, you should direct them to this link, and this post.  If they don’t help, they are are beyond helping.

Three awful stories surfaced after the election, two of them yesterday, that illustrate the kinds of social dysfunction that have been nurtured in the Obama years, and if a Trump administration can erase them and their ilk, returning some sanity to the national landscape, no one will be able to say the Trump experiment was a total bust…

1. First, and most unforgivable, we have this recent quote from Bernie Sanders’ former spokeswoman, Symone Sanders (no relation). Appearing on CNN yesterday and talking about the future of the shell-shocked Democratic Party, she said in part…

“In my opinion we don’t need white people leading the Democratic party right now.”

On April 6, 1987, Dodger executive Al Campanis appeared on  the ABC News show “Nightline,” and infamously said that black people couldn’t be major league baseball managers. The statement caused an uproar, and Campanis, whom nobody who knew him regarded as a racist, lost his job and career. Symone Sanders’ comment, which like that of Campanis equates the ability to do a job with race, is no less offensive than what Campanis said, but similar sentiments are broadcast frequently from black public figures without widespread obfection or consequence. ( Sanders also said sarcastically this month, after the election, when shown a video of a mob beating up a Trump supporter, “Oh my goodness, poor white people!”)

Acceptable anti-white racism and a bigotry double standard both defy American values, including basic decency, respect and fairness, but there are seldom consequences for shameless bigots like Sanders, except the cumulative one of having the people she and others denigrate for their color and ancestry sticking the human thumb named Donald Trump in their eyes.

It is no more racially biased for white Americans to take offense at the broad negative stereotyping endorsed by Sanders than for black Americans to oppose white supremacists…or clueless passive bigots like Al Campanis. Their anger at being told their skin disqualifies them for any job is justified, and the fact that news media talking heads nod respectfully at racist bile like the comments of Symone Sanders is further justification. (  Ted Koppel’s reaction to Campanis’s jaw-dropping statement 30 years ago can be fairly summarized as, “Wait…what?“ ) Not happily voting for a political party that embraces individuals who want to marginalize you because of race or gender isn’t bigotry, as the current Bitter Hillary Fan narrative now styles it. It is common sense.

Promoting racial division and bias is unhealthy and un-American no matter what direction it comes from. Until everyone can be certain that the Democratic Party is on board with that concept, and until proud and arrogant racists like Symone Sanders are shown the same level of tolerance Al Campanis received—that is, none—distrust of  progressives and the news media will grow, and should. Continue reading →

At Least They’re Keeping An Open Mind…

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

new-yorker-best

Ann Althouse, who flagged this, wrote, “Oh, New Yorker!”

She’s right: what a relentlessly negative and divisive way to welcome a new President. The New Yorker is supposed to be the flagship publication for sophisticates and intellectuals. The better term for the audience appears to be “bitter snots.”  The flagship is playing to the mob, Althouse suggests. Is that all the media has become? Clickbait purveyors and the reinforcement of pre-existing biases, fears and prejudices?

I’ve been around a long time. I have never seen those on the losing side of any election behave so nastily, defiantly and unfairly. It reflects poorly on the nation, its politics, and its journalism, but it really reflects badly on Democrats and liberals. I’m embarrassed for them.

Ann tags this “Trump derangement syndrome.” That is too kind.

Opening The Door, Tit-For-Tat, And The Drunk In The “Hamilton” Audience

/ Jack Marshall / 91 Comments

opening-the-door

All right, all right, maybe this is the final word on the “Hamilton” controversy.

What do we make of this?

A supporter of President-elect Trump reportedly interrupted a Saturday-night performance of “Hamilton” in Chicago with profane shouts at the show’s cast. According to BroadwayWorld, somebody seated in the balcony shouted, “We won! You Lost! Get over it! Fuck you!” during the number “Dear Theodosia,” which is about Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr coming to terms with what being a father meant in the newly formed United States. The audience member was escorted out of the theater by security after a brief altercation.

Rueful thoughts: Continue reading →