projection

Worst Anti-Gun, Anti-Gun Violence Activist Ever

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The one thing I can admire in activists, even those whose agendas I find wrong-headed and irresponsible, is integrity. Are they genuinely passionate about what they advocate? Do they really believe the arguments they put forth? Will they adhere to their stated principles even when it becomes profitable or convenient to reject them? I may think an activist is ill-informed, addicted to demagoguery and not very bright (Rep. Octavia-Cortez comes immediately to mind), but I will always, perhaps grudgingly, appreciate his or her passion, dedication, and persistence, if they are accompanied by integrity.

And then we have activists like Ashley Auzenne, 39, a Texas mother who fought for stricter gun control laws and an end to gun violence until last week, when she used a gun to kill herself and her three young children,  Parrish, 11, Eleanor, 9, and Lincoln, 7.

I think it’s fair to call someone who says she wants to  to end violence (Auzenne’s Facebook profile pictures were accompanied with the hashtags #Enough and #EndGunViolence) and then engages in it herself a hypocrite, a liar who publicly pretended to hold one view while personally being capable of engaging in the exact conduct she condemned when it suited her own perceived needs.

Perhaps, on the other hand, we should regard her as the real life equivalent of the villains in various TV shows and movies like 2007’s “Live Free or Die Hard,” the third installment of the Bruce Willis “Die Hard” franchise. In that movie, a tech whiz who had failed in his efforts to persuade the government that crucial systems were vulnerable to hacker attacks sets out to prove his point by becoming a cyber-terrorist who takes control of government and commercial computers across the United States to launch a “fire sale” disabling  the nation’s infrastructure. Continue reading →

Saturday Ethics Warm-Up: “Important Ethics Stories That I Don’t Feel Like Writing A Lot About Or Am Thoroughly Disgusted With” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op5FxEs1aR0

Happy Weekend!

I hope you’re not working the whole time, like I am. However, the Red Sox have their first Spring Training game, they are playing the Yankees, and all is serene.

1. Another one of Trump’s “best people” bites the dust, or should soon.   Judge Kenneth A. Marra of Federal District Court in West Palm Beach ruled that accused serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s secret sweetheart plea deal agreed to by Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta when he was a federal prosecutor violated federal law.

The corrupt arrangement  protected the billionaire from serious jail time and also  protected his politically-connected  friends including, notably Bill Clinton, from accountability despite their visits to Epstein’s  infamous island resort via the so-called “Lolita Express,” the private plane where young girls allegedly provided sexual services to the passengers. Ick.

I wrote a post about this unfolding scandal here. At that time, last November, I wrote,

“I do not see how Acosta can remain as Secretary of Labor following these revelation, incomplete as they are. I don’t see how we can trust his judgment, and even if, somehow, he could justify the deal with Epstein on legal, technical or pragmatic grounds, I doubt that the general public would be reassured. He should resign.”

Hey, I beat Jonathan Turley by almost three months!

2. Is the media assault on Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for being an abusive boss legitimate? I have to say, it sure looks like it. The moderate Democratic Presidential hopeful might also be the target of a leftist news media that favors her more extreme competitors, but most Americans don’t know much about Klobuchar and can’t pronounce her name. The news media needs to introduce her, but it also shouldn’t poison the well. Conservatives, who don’t like her but like her a lot better than the likes of Senators Warren, Harris or Booker, are defending Klobuchar by arguing that she is being subjected to a double standard, since so many male officials past and present have been equally unpleasant. That’s just an “everybody does it” rationalization. There are good reasons to worry about the judgment and temperament of leaders who treat subordinates disrespectfully and cruelly, as in yesterday’s Times story about Klobuchar demanding that an aide clean her comb.

The problem is that the mainstream news media is not applying similar scrutiny, at least not yet, to similarly dubious candidates like Cory Booker and Kamala Harris.

3. Great. Just what we need.   “If Mueller is done, states could file their own charges — even against Trump,” says the Washington Post. So this is really the way it is: “the resistance” and its Democratic allies will continue to harass and obstruct the elected President forever, as their endless tantrum over losing the 2016 election. I have written that nothing could make me vote for someone with Donald Trump’s non-ethical approach to life as President, but I am beginning to think that only a Trump victory in 2020 will save the country from an endless cycle of partisan sabotage of Presidents, regardless of party, going forward. This unethical strategy has to fail, and fail hard. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day #2: “Nobody Should Be Cheering The Poll Showing President Obama As Regarded As ‘The Worst President Since World War II’”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Film-ProjectorI had barely posted the first Comment of the Day on the recent post regarding the explosive poll showing President Obama sinking below all previous post-war Chief Executives in the public’s estimation, when another excellent deserving one, by Mark, arrived.

Mark doesn’t comment often, but when he does, his posts are always eloquent and thoughtful. Here is his Comment of the Day on the essay, Nobody Should Be Cheering The Poll Showing President Obama As Regarded As “The Worst President Since World War II”.

I don’t go all the way with you on this one, Jack, but certainly a part of the way. A few years ago I learned about projections – how we project what we want/see/expect onto other people even when, or especially when, the projection has nothing to do with who they really are, and the consequence of not seeing clearly the person in front of us. If nothing else, President Obama has been a victim of that idea.

In 2008, he was a blank screen onto which people projected what they wanted to see after the Bush years and a rapidly tanking economy. He was HOPE, CHANGE, and perhaps worse, we ennobled him with the idea that he was something other than a standard-issue Washington politician. The fact that he was African American only amplified the idea of his actually making a difference in Washington because he was, indeed, so different from any other candidate we had seen since Kennedy and his Roman Catholicism. I think our ultimate projection might have been that if we could do this, elect a black man, then we would bring change to the country simply by “curing” the centuries-old race issues in the US or making a good run at it. Projections are powerful and in the hands of a collective even more so. After a time during the 2008 election, it didn’t matter what he said or did, he WAS hope and change, not a candidate.

And, in the absolute cynicism of American politics, all the pollsters, pundits, and creatures of his campaign knew and exploited this (and they’ll do it again for someone else come 2016).

In the moment he was elected, as an African American, I felt something incredible – a man like me in the White House, a supreme victory after slavery, Jim Crow, and the spilled blood of Till and King. I also felt an unease – could he govern? We knew he could run a crackerjack campaign, but could he replicate that kind of success from the Oval Office? In 2008, I figured only time would tell and to an extent it has. He was neither an outsider to Washington nor a maverick, both projections, not to mention a relative lack of experience compared to other presidents. I will say – and I know you agree – that he did not come to Washington to cause harm, but with a deep love for the country and an expectation that he could do what he had intended and promised. Perhaps those were his own projections upon a system that had no intention of bearing them out. I don’t know.

Like I said – I won’t go all the way with you on this and the points of disagreement are about perception of events and we each have our own. I will not say, either, that he is the worse president since WWII – that is, again, a matter of perception. Where we absolutely agree is a share of this lies with the American people who have not figured out how to counter systems – both political and governmental – that are increasingly cynical, unethical, and devoid of any sense of the common good for our nation. “Have you no sense of decency, Sir?” is truer today than it was in 1954 and should be asked of every politician in Washington from the President on down. In the last eight years everybody of every political stripe has some blood on their hands for this mess. We lay it at his feet because – unfortunately for him – the buck does stop there.

So now we wait for the curtains to part on another blank screen onto which we’ll project our hope for a country that is different from the one we’re living in now. We’ll hear from sincere, well meaning candidates who will tell us what we want to hear rather than what is true and doable, and we’ll buy it. The first woman in the White House is ripe for that, as is the first Hispanic, or a TRUE American Tea Party candidate. They’ll all present themselves and we’ll beam on.

Continue reading →