James Mattis

The Big Lies Of The “Resistance”: A Directory. Big Lie #5: “Everything Is Terrible”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The Ethics Alarms compilation of the Big Lies being used by the resistance and others to undermine the Trump Presidency continues with Big Lie #5.

This Big Lie, and the fact that it is one, will be a theme of the 2020 Presidential campaign. “Everything is terrible” has been a veritable mantra from the “resistance,” Democrats, progressives and the mainstream news media literally from the second Donald Trump had been declared the winner of the 2016 election, when New York Times columnist Paul Krugman announced that the stock market had declined and would  never recover. The fact that he was spectacularly wrong didn’t dissuade Krugman or his ideological allies at all. They set out to make President Trump a failure by simply saying that he was, over and over, regardless of facts and reality and often without linking their pronouncements to anything substantive.

The fanciful narrative, in turn, was advanced in casual conversation by fear-triggered citizens, in interviews by celebrities, actors and performers, in website comments and letters to the editor, in television dramas and sitcoms, novels and blogs, as they alleged dark “threats to democracy,” “increasing hate,” “dangerous times” and various “crises.” The fact that none of this hysteria was rooted in truth hasn’t slowed Big Lie #5 down a bit: it is immune from rebuttal because it was never based on substance to begin with, but rather extreme bias, emotion, and vicious political warfare.

Everything is not terrible. Indeed, by all past standards of what constitutes national misery or crisis, very little qualifies as terrible. The economy remains strong, unemployment is minimal, and wages are up. Under President Trump, the Washington Post announced yesterday that “For the first time, most new hires of prime working age (25 to 54) are people of color…Minority hires overtook white hires last year.”

Worst white supremacist President ever!

Police shootings are down, and crime is down. There has been exactly one Islamic terrorist attack in Trump’s three years. As he promised, the President hax reduced the suffocating number of government regulations, and has fought the sinister “open borders” movement on the left, by refusing to allow illegal immigration to be romanticized and enabled. Continue reading →

From The “Stop Making Me Defend President Trump” Files: Criticizing Trump For Following Management 101 Really Shows You To Be Ignorant As Well As Trump Deranged

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

I bet you can guess what Trump was saying here…

You know, it’s late, I’m finally finished decorating the tree, nobody’s visiting the blog anyway, and when they do and try to share an article without an scintilla of “hate speech” in it, Facebook blocks it. But ethics never rest, and I’m going to post this anyway.

The President announced that ol’ Mad Dog won’t be staying on for an” orderly transition” at DOD after all: today the President announced that Mattis’s deputy would take over on January 1, and Mattis can get head start on collecting shells in Boca, or something. One more time, the news media and social media are acting like this is some kind of scandal, because they 1) hate the President and 2) couldn’t manage a lemonade stand themselves.

I’m sure Mattis would have been welcome to stay on a couple more months as originally announced—if hadn’t publicized a resignation letter that implicitly attacked the President. You can’t do that and expect to stay in any job, much less one as powerful and important as Secretary of Defense.Oddly, Trump’s perpetual critics don’t understand this, either because bias has made them stupid, or they were ignorant to begin with. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Mattis Resignation

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

President Trump announced that he was ending the U.S. mission in Syria, and drawing down the troop level in Afghanistan. His Secretary of Defense,General Mattis, resigned in protest, and copied his letter of resignation to the world.

The news media, social media, and full time anti-Trump hysterics, among others, went bonkers.

  • What’s going on here? A President who has long held that U.S. domestic priorities are more important than “being the world’s policeman” followed through on his promise. As is his wont, he sprung the actual news without laying a foundation to cushion the blow. Nobody knows whether the decisions will work out or not, but the assumption is that because this President is the one making the decisions, they must be stupid, evil, or both. This, despite the fact that Barack Obama essentially did the same thing regarding Iraq, except that Iraq gave much more promise of stabilizing with continued U.S. presence. Syria is still in chaos, and nobody can confidently say when and if it will not be. As for Afghanistan, the U.S. has been expending lives and treasure there for a mind-blowing 17 years. What is the mission? Funny—I thought the original mission was to punish the country for sponsoring the 9/11 attacks. We could have declared the point made long, long ago. Is the President wrong to say “Enough is enough”?

I have no idea—and neither do you.

  • Having no idea, not having seen the data, not having been advised, and not being President of the United  States, I have little basis to challenge or deride the decision. But what’s really going on here is what has been going on since January, 2017. Any decision or action by this President is immediately assumed to be wrong. The analysis attached to it afterwards is superfluous. The position is that President Trump did it, it’s wrong because he’s a Nazi/idiot/ grifter /fool, and that’s all we need to know.

This, of course, makes it impossible, literally impossible, to get honest, trustworthy analysis about anything.

  • Anyone who criticizes Trump in public, even certifiable slime like Steve Bannon, James Comey, and Omarosa, suddenly is embraced by “the resistance ” and the news media using the formula that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This rewards unethical conduct, and “Mad Dog” appears to have fallen into the trap, to his eventual shame. As a lawyer, I know it is unethical to drop a client, my employer, and make any pubic statements whatsoever impugning his or her judgment or conduct. It is also unethical to do this in any professional relationship. Professionals know this: I presume at one time Mattis knew this. But having paid attention to how routine betrayals of this President have been cheered and praised, he apparently couldn’t resist temptation.

Now, as a lawyer, my duties are codified. That doesn’t mean that professionals who don’t have the same duties codified aren’t obligated to follow them. Continue reading →

The Easy Ethics Verdict On Trump’s Middle East Immigration Suspension

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

immigration-protests

There are three steps to evaluating the ethical nature of any law or government action. The first is what was done. The second is how it was done. The third, and usually most difficult to assess, is why it was done, and whether the measure’s objectives are ethical, including whether the measure can reasonable be expected to accomplish them. . What President Trump’s controversial Executive Order temporarily halting immigration from seven Muslim nations is was covered in the previous post on the subject. Thanks to the fact that our mainstream journalists are incapable of reporting some news events without allowing their biases to distort or confuse the facts, the what was misrepresented to the public, and that misrepresentation is reflected in most discussions of the relevant issues on the web.

How the measure was implemented is an ethics  issue, as this involves competence, responsibility, accountability, diligence and leadership.

The Executive Order was incompetent and irresponsible.

There, that was easy.

It’s nice to be able to post an analysis here that nobody will disagree with. Usually I don’t even bother posting such verdicts.

The sudden order (you can read it here) caused world-wide confusion. Passengers were barred from flights to the United States. Customs and border control officials received notice and instructions in the wee hours of the morning, and many began work without knowing what they were supposed to do.  The order  blindsided Trump’s cabinet—what there is of it so far—including Homeland Security chief John Kelly and, incredibly, “Mad Dog”  Mattis, the new Secretary of Defense, who was not consulted by the White House during the preparation of the order and was not given an opportunity to provide input while the order was being drafted. Mattis did not see a final version of the order until a few hours before President Trump arrived to sign it at the Pentagon. Now he really has reason to be be mad. Continue reading →