Sean Lennon

Thoughts While Reading Classmate Entries In My Alma Mater’s Anniversary Report, #5: Bias Really Does Make You Stupid…Or Worse

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The stunning thing is how many of my aging classmates, no matter what they’ve accomplished and how credentialed they are, have their brains riddled with progressive cant, Trump-Derangement, and climate-change fanatacism. They usually save their rants for the end, after leading the reader on by impressive accounts of career triumphs, arcane literary references, and skilled writing.

A report I read last night by a retired physician was sailing along, rational as could be, and then unravels like the rebel leader in Woody Allen’s “Bananas,” who once he overturns a South American dictatorship gives a speech announcing that the national language will henceforth be Swedish. The doctor warned of madness to come by listing, among the activities he and his still practicing physician wife are passionate about, “seeing Marlon every chance we get.” Surely he doesn’t mean Marlon Wayans or Marlon Jackson; it must be a reference to Marlon Brando.

Okaaay, that’s a little strange: Brando was a great actor and all, but he made maybe ten really good movies (I just checked that: ten is a stretch) and was a self-indulgent, pompous jerk. A non-actor being obsessed with “Marlon” is an ominous sign. Quickly after that admission we get “The Republican push to delegitimize any election they don’t win screams 1938.” Ah, a “Republicans are Nazis” shot…and Republicans push to delegitimize elections they don’t win? A bit of selective history there, Doctor.

Then comes the obligatory climate change hysteria: “The existential threat of climate change has me thinking about Marlon in a haze of worry and terror…Greta Thunberg has it absolutely right.”

Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/25/2021: The George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck Is One Year Old Today

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

happy-birthday-cake-for-1-years-old-girl_225938

It really is amazing: I have already read three references today to George Floyd’s death as a cultural watershed in the U.S. society’s recognition of racial injustice, yet there remains not a single piece of evidence or a logical argument that Floyd’s death had any relationship to his race whatsoever. This was a manufactured narrative that the news media deliberately advanced in flagrant defiance of the facts. I have challenged more indignant progressives than I can count to justify treating Floyd’s death as anything but negligence and brutality by a local cop who should never have been allowed to keep his badge. All they can come up with is that the officer was white, and Floyd was black—in other words, presumed racism based on skin color, which is itself racism, or that the episode had a positive impact, justifying treating it as something it was not. That, of course, is an “ends justifies the means” rationalization.

The ugly episode is a lesson, not in “racial reconciliation,” but in how events can be manipulated for political gain—in this case, involving violent protests and virtual societal extortion— if there is no trustworthy news source to keep the public informed.

Today is also the anniversary of another ethics low in U.S. history. It was on this date in 1861 that President Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus so he could keep a Maryland state legislator locked up on the charge of hindering Union troops.

SCOTUS Chief Justice Taney issued a ruling stating that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus, but Lincoln, channeling his inner Andrew Jackson, just defied the Court. Five years later, another Supreme Court case held that only Congress could suspend habeas corpus.

1. The Confederate Statuary Ethics Train Wreck misses its biggest target. Good. The giant images of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson carved into Stone Mountain as Confederate nostalgia’s answer to Mount Rushmore have survived the latest effort to tear them down. The Confederate flags at the base of Georgia’s Stone Mountain, placed there by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, will be removed, and new exhibits will offer a more thorough history of the park, including the role the Ku Klux Klan and resistance to desegregation played in its creation. Also good. The thing is a pro-Confederacy monument to be sure, a defiant one, but it also is a piece of history that should be seen, debated and thought about.

Many dedicated historical censors are upset that the mountain art will not be blown up any time soon. arguing that racist anger, not a desire to honor the South’s heroes, inspired the monument’s creation. OK, and so what? It is a vivid historical relic. Fall River’s Joe Aronoski, 82, told the New York Times after touring Stone Mountain, “It’s American history. It shouldn’t be destroyed. What are you going to do? Make-believe the Civil War didn’t happen?”

Well yes, that’s the general idea behind statue-toppling: make believe any events that make some people “uncomfortable” didn’t happen.

Continue reading →

“Systemic,” A Four Part Ethics Alarms Depression, Part I: Systemic Propaganda And Facebook

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

censorship2

I know who Bret Weinstein is; maybe you don’t. He’s a biologist, evolutionary theorist, and, of late, a free speech activist. The fact that you may not remember him is my fault: he was the hero in the Evergreen State College (in Washington State) racist fiasco in 2017, where the school decided it should order all whites off campus for a day. He was the sole professor on campus with the guts and principles to refuse to leave, resulting in his vilification, harassment, and ultimately, his resignation. Why I didn’t highlight his courage in an “Ethics Hero” post, I don’t know: I didn’t even give his name a tag in the sole post where he was mentioned.

Fast-forward to 2020, and Weinstein found his Facebook account suspended because he wrote something that the Thought Police there felt was inappropriate—you know, like all of Ethics Alarms is inappropriate on Facebook for daring to explain that performers who have worn dark make-up are not all racists or advancing racism

“I have been evicted from Facebook,” he tweeted to his 400,000 followers. “No explanation. No appeal. I have downloaded “my information” and see nothing that explains it. We are governed now in private, by entities that make their own rules and are answerable to no process. Disaster is inevitable. We are living it.”

Later,Weinstein revealed, Facebook told him it had “already reviewed” the suspension and the decision “can’t be reversed.”

Ah, but among his 400,000 followers is John Lennon’s articulate, contrarian and often conservative-sounding younger son, Sean. He tweeted to his friend’s rescue, writing,

Continue reading →