ad hominem

“The Meat Axe”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I had some amusing bloody meat-axe graphics all ready to go for this post, but it is really about flat learning curves: the Democratic Party’s, the Axis news media’s, and maybe, frighteningly, the public’s.

Yes, once again we have a looming test of just how stupid the public really is. Democrats are betting their very existence on the public being as dumb as a box of Joe Bidens, and the biased, anti-Trump news media, having already been completely exposed as the enemies of the people Donald Trump said they are, have predominantly fallen back to the same tactics that served them so well in Trump 1.0. The unethical “advocacy journalists” are gambling that propaganda will prevail, and that the 2024 election was just a blip because the Democrats ran a babbling fool—but a historic one!—for President.

Trump’s tsunami of executive orders along with the relentless DOGE assault has the Axis searching for a magic bullet or two. They settled on two old unethical stand-bys: ad hominem attacks, aka. “kill the messenger,” and “It’s a constitutional crisis!” Trump being elected at all was a constitutional crisis for the Angry Left, and the phony “He’s breaching traditional democratic norms!” trope was core to both impeachments and the “Trump is Hitler” campaign refrain.

Elon Musk is being vilified by using classic Democrat class warfare tactics: he’s been successful and is rich, so obviously he’s only helping Trump cut spending because he greedy and he’ll make money from it somehow. How dumb does someone have to be to buy that logic? If there is anyone in the world who can be trusted not to be serving his country for the money, it’s Musk. I heard some mouth-foaming contributor on CNN screaming this morning that “Trump is a liar and criminal” and “Musk wasn’t even born here!,” an odd argument from a defender of illegal immigrants.

But the EA “Flat Learning Curve” graphic is up there because I heard Chuck Schumer—is he really an idiot or does he just play one on TV?—say that sure, everyone agrees that there is too much waste in government spending, but “this is a meat-axe!” Yup, it sure is, Chuck, and if you don’t know by now that the only way to seriously address systemic corruption, waste, incompetence, dishonesty and obstruction is with a meat-axe (or blow-torch, or metaphorical nuclear bomb), you’ve never successfully managed anything.

Experienced managers know this, and both Musk and Trump are experienced managers as well as successful ones. Good leaders know it too. Heck, I know it.

What Schumer is really saying is, “We don’t want to solve this problem, we want to look like we want to solve this problem, and we are confident that you out there listening are so uneducated, inexperienced, naive and gullible that you’ll fall for it…again.”

When a system is broken, corrupt and incorrigible, and because of its dysfunction causing constant harm, the technique of carefully trying to extract the jewels buried in the shit pile never works. It takes too long. Every inch of the shit will have advocates claiming that it isn’t really shit. Paring down the bureaucracy gets delegated to the bureaucracy, and improvement is minimal if you are lucky. Most of the time, the inefficiency, waste and corruption just gets worse. Nobody can deny that this is the futile path the United States government has been treading.

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Stop Making Me Defend George Clooney!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

In a typical ad hominem rant on Truth Social, Donald Trump attacked George Clooney, who recently joined the “Dump Biden” team with an op-ed in the New York Times calling on the President to step aside.

“So now fake movie actor George Clooney, who never came close to making a great movie, is getting into the act,” Trump wrote. “He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are. What does Clooney know about anything?….Clooney should get out of politics and go back to television…Movies never really worked for him!!!”

As is so often the case, the former President doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Clooney can legitimately be criticized for his part in deceiving the public about Biden’s disabilities; as Christian Toto recently pointed out, Hollywood power-players—like Clooney—were despicably complicit in hiding Biden’s real condition from the public. However, claiming the Clooney “never came close to making a great movie” is unfair, uninformed and ignorant, and saying that “movies never worked for him” is just silly.

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Comment of the Day: “I Guess It’s Time For Another ‘Ad Hominem’ Lesson”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

For some reason, the debate in the comments to the recent post about the proper use of “ad hominem” ended up about Rush Limbaugh, who has been dead for a while now. The issue was whether Rush’s referring to then-Georgetown Law Student Sandra Fluke, briefly a media star for her argument that birth control should be free, paid for by taxpayers, as a “slut” was an ad hominem attack or not. Ryan Harkins, in his Comment of the Day, decided to arbitrate the dispute, and did so with his usual logic and objectivity.

I do have a couple of points I want to make in this introduction to Ryan’s COTD. He admits that he never listened to Rush, and that’s a problem. As I kept emphasizing in the discussion in the comments, Rush Limbaugh was primarily an entertainer, though he was one with a political agenda and clear ideological orientation. (He was also was master of the slippery “clown nose on/clown nose off” device, like Jon Stewart.) I don’t think he can be fairly analyzed without that context. Ryan says that the use of slut has no place in “honest argumentation,” but Rush Limbaugh’s routines were no more intended as honest argumentation than a Lewis Black set or a Louie CK rant.

Nor can his work be fairly assessed second or third hand. There are several posts about Rush on Ethics Alarms; my wrap-up on his career and legacy is here.

I also neglected to mention in my lengthy exchange with jdkazoo123 that I did designate Rush’s “slut” comment about Fluke as “the worst of Rush.” That still doesn’t make it “ad hominem.” Limbaugh also apologized for that insult, something he didn’t often do, but it was pretty clearly a forced apology, though he said it was sincere. His show was losing sponsors over the controversy. Fluke refused to accept the apology.

Here is Ryan’s Comment of the Day on the post, actually the comments on the post, “I Guess It’s Time For Another “Ad Hominem” Lesson.”

***

Watching this exchange, I’ve had to consider a couple of things. First, I never listened to Rush, so I don’t know how his monologue progressed. But I would have to agree that throwing out the term “slut” would poison the well. Compare the following statements:

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Unethical Website of the Century: “Above the Law”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

[Oh, all right, not “evil,” exactly, but I just wanted to use that clip from the Ethics Alarms Clip Archive because it always made Grace laugh. For an indisputably great director, Hitchcock allowed some pretty awful acting in his films periodically. ]

I was about to declare the legal gossip and now full-time Democratic Party and Woke World mouthpiece the Unethical Website of the Month, a title it deserves, frankly, every month, but decided to check its Ethics Alarms dossier. Not only would that designation make it the only website to be so honored twice, “Above the Law” has been an ethics dunce multiple times, issued the most misleading headline of the month once (well, just once when I bothered to flag it). Two of its most frequent writers, Joe Patrice and Kathryn Rubino, have been hit with flagrant ethics foul calls here, and that doesn’t even include the reign of terror and hysteria by Elie Mystal, the anti-white racist Harvard lawyer who was the most prominent voice at ABL until he left for “The Nation,” apparently because ABL wasn’t quite communist enough for him.

“Above the Law” isn’t the worst website out there, of course, but it is by far the worst supposedly respectable website. Yesterday, a legal ethics blog authored by a legal ethics specialist I know cited Above the Law as an authority on one legal controversy, and that did it: I won’t be going back there again. For a legal ethicist to admit to following “Above the Law” is the equivalent of a political analyst revealing that he or she watches MSNBC or follows NewsMax. It’s as disqualifying as opinion columnists quoting Kamala Harris, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Bill Maher, Joy Behar or Mike Lindell to support their positions.

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Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 8/1/2020: I See Bad People And Penis-Talkers

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

1. This may not be the most trustworthy advocate for the President’s favorite Wuhan virus medicine…President  Trump’s supporters among the punditry and conservative bloggers briefly celebrated the endorsement of  hydroxychloroquine, despite recent studies questioning its effectiveness and safety, by Dr. Stella Immanuel. Support for her was redoubled after her posts were taken down by both Facebook and Twitter as “misinformation.” That’s censorship, of course, and arguably partisan.  Immanuel has an opinion. However, her response to the censoring of her posts does not enhance her credibility. She tweeted,

2.  I see…he shouldn’t be honored because he was white, right? I have reached the point where I have to conclude that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez just isn’t very bright, and those who support her passionate—but stupid!—pronouncements have a similar basic competence problem. Take this example: AOC complained in a video,

Even when we select figures to tell the stories of colonized places, it is the colonizers and settlers whose stories are told — and virtually no one else. Check out Hawaii’s statue. It’s not Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii, the only Queen Regnant of Hawaii, who is immortalized and whose story is told. It is Father Damien. This isn’t to litigate each and every individual statue, but to point out the patterns that have emerged among the totality of them in who we are taught to deify in our nation’s Capitol: virtually all men, all white, and mostly both. This is what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks like! It’s not radical or crazy to understand the influence white supremacist culture has historically had in our overall culture & how it impacts the present day.

I’ll have to do a full post on the entire “white supremacy” canard, which is basically linguistic game-playing. Culture, everywhere, is primarily determined by the majority.  In a majority white population, white people, their habits, preferences, interests and values, have the strongest effect on the culture. Because there are more of the majority than other groups, they also will tend to have the greatest visibility and participation in that area’s history. Framing this rather obvious and universal situation as something sinister is silly as an argument, and evidence of impaired critical thinking skills if one is persuaded by it. Continue reading →

Bill Maher Ethics And Resistance Big Lie #5

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

HBO’s Bill Maher has exercised a downward force on national ethics since he started taking himself seriously as a pundit. We haven’t check in on Bill for a while. The non-news is that he’s as reflexively smug and vile as ever, and that his pose as a comedian is still used as cover to permit his often sociopathic political views to escape the condemnation they warrant. Let’s see…

  • In his latest show, Maher had this exchange with Democratic columnist Josh Barro:

Maher: “I’ve been hoping for a recession – people hate me for it – but it would get rid of Trump.”

Barro: “Recessions are really bad. People lose their jobs and homes and we shouldn’t wish for it.”

Maher: “I know. It’s worth it.”

Unless you think this was a hilarious exchange, you must recognize it as the position of a hateful, Machiavellian fanatic. He detests the President so much that he wants there to be a disaster harming the U.S., families, businesses and the economy  so  he can rid the nation of the President. This is no different from wishing for a plague, race riots, a terrorist attack or a war.

  • Closing his show, Maher made this pitch:

“Fatigue is the best thing we’ve got going for us. The majority of Americans aren’t tired of winning, they’re tired of looking at his fat fuckiing face! It’s hard to beat an incumbent in a good economy. Every incumbent since FDR has won if they avoided a recession leading up to an election year and consumer confidence is sky high. … The voters that Democrats need to win, moderates who have Trump fatigue, will vote against a good economy, I think, just to get back to normalcy, but they won’t trade it away for left-wing extremism….”All the Democrats have to do to win is to come off less crazy than Trump — and, of course, they’re blowing it! Coming across as unserious people who are going to take away all your money so migrants from Honduras can go to college for free and get a major in ‘America sucks.’ It’s the fatigue, stupid! Let’s make it hard for Trump to play on voters’ fears and let the fatigue win the election for us. We’ll get to the revolution, but remember, put on your oxygen mask before assisting your child.”

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Unethical Quote Of The Week: Tweeter @perpetualTJ

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“I am going to unfollow and block anyone that spouts the “age” shit. Ageism is NO different from sexism – or racism, or homophobia. A person is either competent – or they fucking aren’t. It has NOTHING to do with their fucking age. Go ask Pelosi – and RBG”

—-Joe Biden fan and defender @perpetualTJ on Twitter, piling up bad logic, faulty reasoning and political correctness like there’s no tomorrow.

Well, I don’t know who this idiot is, and it doesn’t matter. You usually don’t see such emphatic, self-righteous, and veriegated nonsense in a single tweet. It is truly a treasure trove:

  • As  is increasingly common on the left side of the political spectrum, perpetualTJ’s response to an opinion or position that he/she/it disagrees with is to stifle it, and punish the cur who dared utter such blasphemy.

This reinforces a closed mind, and guarantees perpetual ignorance.

  • As Ethics Alarms has written here before, denial and delusion are increasingly  indispensable  means whereby many advocates can continue to hold opinions and argue for policies that are factually indefensible. You can make your own list; I’m tired. Of course, age is materially different from gender or race, because age, unlike either of those states, has measurable deleterious effects that, while they vary in onset and intensity, are nonetheless real, unavoidable, and factors that must be taken seriously.

Generally denigrating someone’s words or actions for their age alone is bigotry and a form of ad hominem attack. Acknowledging that increasing age eventually makes diminished performance, illness and mortality more likely is simple biology.  Continue reading →

The Signature Significance Of The Left’s Endorsement Of Sarah Jeong (Part I)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Hi, White America! I want you dead! And now, the technology news…

Are you already sick of the controversy over the New York Times hiring Sarah Jeong? Don’t be. The mainstream media and the now officially-derailed progressive establishment want you to move on, as in Move-On.Org’s definition, meaning …

… but there is a lot to see, and it is important to see it clearly.

Are these…

…racist tweets? Of course they are. Denying that they are is Orwellian, but progressives have been tending to 1984 for quite a while now, and denying it all the while. Would any journalist tweeting the equivalent sentiments about any other race have a career left in anything but wreckage? No. Rosanne Barr, a comic, not a journalist, was fired, branded a pariah and non-person, and had her hit ABC show cancelled for a single racist tweet about one woman. These are but a sample of many tweets from Jeong about an entire race (and often an entire gender). Not only is her career not in tatters, it is advancing.

What this means is that the Left, including the mainstream news media that is represented by the New York Times, the traditional exemplar, the role model, the standard-setter, now unapologetically and openly endorses an unethical, dangerous and divisive double standard. Non-whites can engage in hateful, racist speech against whites, and women can use sexist, misandrous rhetoric against men, and that’s not only acceptable, but deserved. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 7/26/18: Ominous Portents

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Good Morning!

This day in ethics: in 1908: the FBI was founded as the the Office of the Chief Examiner, and re-named a year later. Few American institutions have as mixed an ethical legacy, and the cognitive dissonance continues. In 1984, one of the most evil men in U.S. history died, though his exploits have inspired as many works of fiction and entertainment as many a more virtuous figure. Ed Gein, the serial killer who was the inspiration for “Psycho,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and many others novels and films,  and about half the episodes on the long-running CBS drama “Criminal Minds, finally went to his maker. The identity of this monster’s “maker” is a matter of debate.

1. Baseball ethics and a troubling societal blind spot.  The American League Rangers finally demoted struggling outfielder Delino DeShields to Triple-A Round Rock on Tuesday. The real question should be what too them so long. Despite playing solid defense in the outfield, DeShields, 25, has hit just .204  in 322 plate appearances this season with an  On base+Slugging total of .570, which is, for you sad baseball unenlightened, objectively horrible. Any OPS under .700 is unacceptable in the major leagues.

Yet an unnamed Rangers player told reporters that such demotions don’t breed a winning culture and instead breed complacency. Funny, I always thought complacency was when an organization just accepted sub-par performance rather than moving to address it. Yes, even in baseball, the toxic idea that employees have a right to their jobs no matter how well or poorly they perform them is on the rise, and with it support for America’s socialists. Continue reading →

No, Bill O’Reilly Shouldn’t Be Fired For Making Fun Of Rep. Maxine Waters’ Hair

/ Jack Marshall / 117 Comments

Bill O’Reilly should have been fired before he made fun of Maxine Waters’ hair. Now would be the worst time imaginable to fire the blow-hard, untrustworthy Fox News pundit, because it would allow partisans to silence an opinion-maker whose opinions they hate by employing shameless and unjustified race-baiting. That tactic, employed repeatedly and futilely against Rush Limbaugh and other high profile conservatives, is unethical, and must not be validated by success.

In case you don’t follow O’Reilly, 1) I salute your taste and time management, and 2) here’s what caused the controversy:

O’Reilly was stopping by the set of “Fox and Friends,” and along with the gang on the couch watched some of Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ speech attacking President Trump. After the clip, O’Reilly said, “I didn’t hear a word she said. I was looking at the James Brown wig.”

Being in the Land of the Dimwits, O’Reilly sparked an idiotic defense from co-host Ainsley Earhardt, who said, fatuously, “You can’t go after a woman. Plus, I think she’s very attractive.”

Why in the world can’t you “go after a woman” when the woman is an elected official who says ridiculous things as routinely as clockwork? Earhardt’s statement was sexist on its face, and as O’Reilly quickly found out, it wasn’t sexism that he was going to be accused of with his mean James Brown wig comment. By the way…

…he had a point.

It’s a nasty, ad hominem, unprofessional point, however, that lowers political discourse into the gutter. O’Reilly has been doing this in various ways from the beginning of his career, when he wasn’t misrepresenting his credentials, his conduct, or other matters. This, however, was a relatively minor example.

Never mind though: Waters is black, so by the infinitely adjustable weaponizing definition of racism used by progressives, black activists and Democrats for the previous eight years, to criticize her at all is to be a racist. This was a sub-version; criticizing a black woman’s hair is racist. OK, comparing a black woman’s wig to an iconic black soul singer’s wig is racist. Or something: just cry racism, and the hope is that it will tar O’Reilly so badly that he will become unemployable, and no progressive will ever have their blood pressure raised by him again.

All over social media, progressives of note and non-note called for Bill’s head because his comment was “racist.” This really takes chutzpah, since mocking Donald Trump’s hair and skin-color virtually became a national pastime in Leftist Land during the 2016 campaign, and is still. What’s the standard being advocated here? Calling a white President”s comeover anything from a dead animal to decomposing vegetables is perfectly acceptable political discourse, but comparing a black House member’s wig to the hair of a dead rock icon is too horrible to tolerate? The Washington Post published a feature called “The 100 Greatest Descriptions of Donald Trump;s Hair” last June. It included such entries as

  • A mullet that died in some horrific accident
  • Combed like he’s televangelist Benny Hinn.
  • Like Biff, from “Back to the Future”
  • Like Lucille Ball
  • Like a troll doll

And most worthy of discussion,  this: Continue reading →