Ethics Alarms reader and frequent commenter Michael J. Ejercito reports that he tried to post this morning’s warm-up on the U.S. politics Reddit and got the above response.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
New York City
Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/25/2020: Dumb And Dumber
Good morning, I guess.
It is clear, if it wasn’t already, that everything hinges on whether the American public is as stupid and inattentive as those seeking to manipulate it think it is.
1. Mobs? What mobs? I just listed to CNN’s health expert, Dr. Gupta, list the reasons there has been a surge in Wuhan virus cases. Notably absent from his list were the mass, no social distancing demonstrations/protests/riots that began two weeks ago as a prominent part of the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck. These, as you may recall, were largely supported by the health experts (though I don’t have a record of Gupta being among them) as they apparently decided that Black Lives Matter matters more than all the black lives that would be put in danger by ignoring the safety measures we shut down the country to install.
I also have yet to read a single news story about the new cases of the virus that highlights the completely predictable effect of the mobs, which are still roaming, as a factor in the so-called “surge,” though I can’t check everything.
Is the news media really certain that if they don’t report this connection, it will never occur to most of the public? I’m already reading accusations that opening up the states is “racist” because of the evidence that African-Americans have contracted the virus and died from it at a higher rate than the rest of the public. By that logic, encouraging the mobs of George Floyd protesters was also racist.
To re-phrase Wilford Brimley from his great scene in “Absence of Malice”: “American Public, are you that dumb?” So far, it seems so. Continue reading
TGIF Ethics Warm-Up, 6/5/2020, Although Now That I Think About It, There’s No Reason To Think Saturday Will Be An Improvement….
…Since everything is seemingly spinning out of control!
1. The party of Soviet-style historical airbrushing…Virginia Governor Northam, who you would think would now have to airbrush away himself, being a veteran black-face performer, has decreed that he will remove Richmond’s famous statue of Robert E. Lee from its pedestal and place it in storage, reports the Associated Press.
The monument was erected in 1890. Northam is expected to follow this cultural censorship with the virtual toppling of all Confederate monuments along Monument Avenue, including those of J.E.B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson; Confederate naval commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
I’ve written a lot about the ethical folly of Americans adopting this Soviet habit; most of the essays are collected here. The American Civil War was probably the most important and complex event in our history with continuing influence and impact today, yet progressives think the wisest approach is to make it as invisible as possible to future generations. This is as good a symbolic signal regarding what’s dangerously wrong with 21st Century progressivism as one could find. The ethics values being missed are competence, responsibility, respect, perspective, humility and citizenship.
Lee, especially, deserves to be remembered and studied. I am not a Lee admirer in most respects, but it is indisputable that he was an important historical figure, and that all of his significant moments in the spotlight were not negative ones. In particular, Lee probably deserves credit for ending the Civil War and stopping the Confederacy from becoming a long-term guerilla insurrection. That alone earns him a statue.
What Northam and the statue-topplers are doing is lobotomizing America. Continue reading
Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 4/30/2020: The “Let’s Have A Morning Warm-Up That’s Actually In The Morning” Edition
Good morning!
1. I have a theory on mainstream media bias deniers..Maybe it’s more sympathetic than they deserve, but I think people don’t notice how sloppy, incompetent and stupid reporters and pundits are because they don’t read newspapers carefully or consistently, and because other news sources are so packed with distractions and emotional manipulation (not that newspapers are not) that it’s hard to concentrate on the details. This is why I read the Times. I figure that it’s supposed to be the best, and if the best is stupid and biased (stupid makes you biased, and vice-versa), then we can be pretty sure that the rest are worse.
It is amazing how much disinformation the Times allows, or in many cases, promotes. Here’s a trivial but telling example: Sarah Lyall is a Times reporter who also writes a column reviewing thrillers in the New York Times Review of Books, wrote recently that she always wanted to be “the Henry Fonda” of a jury, “single-handedly” “exonerating” a “wrongly accused” defendant, like “Twelve Angry Men.” This is a factually and legally false description of Reginald Rose’s script. Juror 8 (Fonda) doesn’t “single-handedly” do anything except keep deliberations going. The defendant isn’t “exonerated”—all the jury does is collectively figure out that he wasn’t proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt–you know, like OJ. And he probably wasn’t wrongly accused. In fact., he’s probably guilty. The whole point of Rose’s screenplay is that “probably” isn’t enough.
Newspapers are supposed to enlighten readers, not make them dumber. I know most people think that “Twelve Angry Men” is like mystery where someone is accused of murder and is proven innocent by a relentless sleuth, but it’s not. Did Lyall not really watch the film, meaning she was lying, or did she not understand it, indicating that she should be judged too stupid to be a reporter? The same can be said of her editor. The Times can’t get the easy things right; why would anyone trust it to analyze more complex matters more reliably? Continue reading
Let Us Have A Moment of Appreciation For The Rude, The Vulgar And The Defiant, For They Are America’s First Line Of Defense Against Totalitarianism
Oh, how I love this about Americans!
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new program to help protect New Yorkers against the Wuhan virus outbreak. It’s quite straightforward, really: report your neighbors to authorities.
“We still know there’s some people who need to get the message,” the city’s socialist mayor said on Twitter. “And that means sometimes making sure the enforcement is there to educate people and make clear we’ve got to have social distancing.”
The simple solution, he explained is to snap a photo of an offending person or crowd, set the location on the image, and “text it to 311-692.”
“Action will ensue,” de Blasio promised.
History has taught us that governments seeking to bend the public to its will “for the greater good” usually seek the cooperation and participation of citizen lackeys eager to ingratiate themselves with their ascendant masters. Fortunately, the United States was settled and created by people who came here to escape presumptuous tyrants and oppressive governments not of their choosing. The contrarian RNA and traditions run deep, and it always gives me a thrill to see that while they may have been diluted a bit over time, in the face of those who either do not comprehend this nation or do not respect its unique values, the old defiance flames forth. Continue reading
Ethics Observations On A New York City Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck Incident
Let’s go through this one step by step. The quotes are from The Intercept’s account.
Police officers arrested three people in Brooklyn over the weekend after they allegedly “failed to maintain social distancing,” court documents reviewed by The Intercept show.
Comment: Remember this photo from two days ago?
I don’t comprehend how anyone in New York City can be arrested, fined or anything else for “failing to maintain social distancing” when authorities daily ignore and accept the lack of social distancing on a mass scale. It is unethical for law enforcement to be that arbitrary and inconsistent. Continue reading
Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month Who Is Exactly As Incompetent As Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio
I think I’ll seed this post with intermittent direct quotes from this one, about the ridiculous Governor of Georgia who told his state last week that he just learned that asymptomatic people could infect others with the Wuhan virus. Such excerpts will be identified by being set in italics, with the replacement for Kemp’s name, “Georgia” or other words in bold, like this one:
Mayor De Blasio should resign over this.
Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 4/4/2020: Letting The Perfect Be The Enemy Of The Good, And Other Blunders
Why is today unlike any other day?
1. What’s wrong with this picture? This, courtesy of ABC News, was the scene on a New York City subway yesterday:
My question is this: how can everyone be cheering Governor Cuomo’s leadership during the pandemic crisis when this is still going on? I heard Cuomo say, in one of his briefings, “You can’t stop public transportation. You just can’t.” Yet if you are going to allow the above scene all day, every day in your state’s largest city, why bother with the rest of the measures? Just wall off the Big Apple and let everyone get sick.
2. And speaking of New York…and while we’re justly bashing China for all the lies and disinformation, this blogger finds the charts , models and projections showing how the health care system will be overwhelmed by April 15 puzzling, and asks, Continue reading
Monday Morning Warm-Up, 3/2/2020: Idling, Stigmatizing, Lying
Good Monday!
1. Totalitarianism watch. Idling one’s car for longer than three minutes, or more than one minute while adjacent to a school, is illegal in New York City. There have been anti-idling laws since 1972, but they were previously examples of the law being used to encourage conduct rather than enforce it. Now, with socialist Bill de Blasio at the city’s helm, the laws are being enforced with a vengeance.
The city is offering bounties to citizens who report their neighbors, for example. “If you witness a vehicle idling illegally, you can potentially receive a reward for your enforcement efforts through our Citizens Air Complaint Program” says a city website.
Nice.
The theory is that forcing people into not idling their car will mitigate climate change, just like forcing people to ride bicycles and to stop having children when the Left gains sufficient power and the Green New Deal is within reach. Cars idling for no reason is a pet peeve of mine, particularly when they idle in a parking space with cars waiting while the driver checks his or her messages on a cell phone. There are, however, good reasons for idling. I have idled while recharging a dead battery for example. I have idled in sub-freezing weather to keep the car warm while my wife, who had a cold, ran into a 7-11 to buy some cough medicine. The blunt boot of the law does not belong in this matter, like many matters that today’s progressives and socialists want to turn into government edicts.
Oh—the PR geniuses in de Blasio-land decided that the ideal spokesperson for the anti-idling campaign is washed up rocker Billy Idol. Continue reading
Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/21/2020: Our Cheating Hearts
I can’t sleep.
While I’m thinking about Hank, I recommend Ken Burns’ latest documentary, “Country Music,” and I’m not exactly a country music buff (though my father’s favorite song was “The Wabash Cannonball” . Burns has always had a fondness for ethics stories, and his latest work is full of them.
How did I not know that Williams died before he turned 30? Based on his amazing output of classic songs, I assumed he must have lived to be 90. He’s the Buddy Holly of Country, or perhaps the Mozart.
1. Before we get to the real cheating, stop making me defend Mike Bloomberg! From Yahoo, in a post headlined, “Bloomberg Shares Doctored Debate Video To Hide Dismal Performance” by David Moye, who needs a head transplant:
“On Thursday morning, the billionaire businessman released a deceptively edited video that falsely suggested he rendered the other candidates speechless at one point….The video begins at the moment when the former New York City mayor declared: “I’m the only one here I think that’s ever started a business.” During the actual exchange, his comment was greeted with about four seconds of silence, but the video below falsely implied it was more like 20….whoever edited Bloomberg’s video tweet took moments from other parts of the debate to make it look as if his declaration was so powerful candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former Vice President Joe Biden had no response.”
Garbage! The critics are doing the exact same thing they did to President Trump’s video that kept showing video of Nancy Pelosi ripping up his State of the Union speech interspersed with the President’s admirable guests, like the 100-year-old Tuskeegee Airman. Anyone who couldn’t tell that the video was edited to make a point rather than to deceive is too dumb to vote. Similarly, anyone who believes that a Democratic candidates debate stage would ever stay silent for 20 seconds doesn’t know what a debate is, and has been watching cartoons all his life. A satirically edited video isn’t deceptive just because some viewers are dumber than boxes of kitty litter. Continue reading
