the ends justifty the means

Confronting My Biases #25: Kara Swisher

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I try hard not to hold grudges. I’m trying to learn from Spuds, my sweet pit bull mix: if a dog attacks him, he’ll defend himself, then come back up to the same dog later, tail wagging, trying to make friends. Maybe because I don’t have a tail, it’s a little harder than that for me to let bygones be bygones, especially when the offense is betrayal. Kara Swisher never betrayed me; but she has generally irritated me with her cool-progressive-lesbian branding and her unwavering leftward totalitarian bias.

Her EA dossier is here…at heart, she’s a self-made tech niche opinion journalist who likes censorship, and I say to hell with her. Mostly I try to ignore Kara, because I still remember that while she was bouncing around the Washington Post in the Eighties and Nineties she briefly ended up doing column about local theater she was unfair to The American Century Theater, my baby. She had no background in theater and no talent as a reviewer, but never mind: the Post’s apathy toward any professional theater (among the 80 plus that were operating then, including mine) other than handful of big ones was obvious.

Swisher ghosted a couple of excellent and gutsy classic plays The American Century Theater mounted that were too “dated” for her to waste time with— no same-sex marriages or something; I don’t even remember. I do remember that one snub ticked me off so much that I wrote a letter of complaint to the Post’s Style section. (You weren’t supposed to do that because the Post would take revenge on you by not sending any reviewers to your theater at all, and, come to think of it, that’s what they did. Of course, the ones they were hurting most were their readers, who never learned about some terrific and thought-provoking productions, but that’s our Post!)

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Ethics Quiz: The Surveillance Society

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Above we see that there are now photographs of the face belonging to the man who assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson yesterday. Those images will doubtlessly be subjected to facial recognition software that will make use of Big Data containing the images of millions of Americans who have allowed photos of themselves to be posted on social media.

My wife loved British procedurals, and frequently expressed her opinion that it seemed creepy and Big Brotherish that everywhere and everyone in Great Britain seemed to be under surveillance by CCTV, which was the key to solving the crimes in those shows with boring consistency. It is evident that the United States is rapidly getting to the same point. In cases like yesterday’s brazen daylight hit job, this development seems like a means justified by the desired end, but what guarantees do we have that the government and law enforcement will stop at that end?

In “Minority Report,” the film version of Phillip K. Dick’s dystopian future (well, one of them) showed everyone’s retinas being scanned constantly for both government and commercial purposes as they walked along the streets of D.C. In the latter case, the technology allowed street advertising to speak directly to individuals as they passed by: “Mr Williams! You have a cold! Come on in, CVS has just what you need to make you comfortable!” If this is science fiction, it is just barely so.

Like my late wife, I find this creepy and ominous. So…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it ethical for the government to subject citizens to complete and constant video surveillance in public places?

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Unethical—But Revealing!—Quote of the Month: Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College, London

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Remember: Trust the scientists! They know best…

“If I am brutally honest, the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate.”

—British vulcanologist and climate scientist William J. McGuire, “Bill” to his friends, cheering on human death in a tweet he quickly removed after colleagues advised him “Uh, Bill? We’re not supposed to say things like this out loud…”

Of course, the professor might have been saying that the economically disastrous measures being proposed and in some cases adopted by foolish governments like the Biden administration won’t affect the climate sufficiently to make a difference, so the whole movement is futile, irresponsible, based on speculation, and, to be blunt, stupid, but of course he wasn’t. No, this scientist, who is among those we are supposed to trust and obey—you know, like the health “experts” who crippled the economy, our society and the educational development of our children based on guesses about the Wuhan virus that were represented as fact?—believes that the only way to avoid a climate catastrophe (and we all want to do that, right?) is to have millions of people die as soon as possible, one way or another. A plague is a good way! Or we could just execute them, like Mao did. Of course, he shouldn’t be one of those sacrificed for the greater good, because his life is too valuable.

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Conservative Pundits Flogging Rationalization #28 In Response To Losing George Santos’s Seat Show Why Nobody Trusts Either Party

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

That bit of res ipsa loquitur was vomited up by the disgusting George Santos after a Democrat won this week’s special election in New York’s 3rd Congressional District to replace him. Santos, you recall, had been elected to represent the district in 2022 despite having no qualifications whatsoever, because he lied about, almost literally, everything. It was a genuinely fraudulent victory, far beyond the typical campaign false promises, fake positions and embellishments the American public is used to. Republicans were as accountable as Santos for allowing such scum to run in the first place.

The Republican Party seldom does anything right, but kicking this creepy-crawly out of the House was one of the few times it has been ethical (and I’m including “competence” is that description) in recent years. Both parties are responsible for upholding the dignity and honor of government institutions, particularly Congress and the Presidency. Right now, I fell secure in saying that the current crop of House members is the least qualified, the least trustworthy and the least ethical by far, and that condition is dangerous. There are probably ten or more members who would greatly enhance the body by leaving it, but Santos was unquestionable the worst of the worst. (As I wrote in the last Santos post, Rep. Bowman, the Mad Alarmist, would probably be next on my list, “Bowman should be sanctioned, “but compared to Santos he’s John Quincy Adams.”)

Congress has to insist on standards, and a political party has to insist on standards. At least the GOP demonstrated that it has some. It’s about time.

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It’s Called Sacrificing Individual Rights For “The Greater Good.” Jefferson Would Hate It, And So Should Any Ethical American

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Yet this is what progressives and Democrats increasingly argue for to solve problems.

Exhibit #1: David Brooks

It hard to believe that David Brooks was once considered to be a conservative. Spend enough time in the New York Times culture, apparently, at least if your character, principles and integrity are as weak as David’s seem to be, and you will emerge from your chrysalis as a new, collectivist, proto-totalitarian.

Here’s Brooks on PBS talking about what he’d like to see installed to address gun violence:

President Biden spoke about red flagging, that you would find somebody you think is potentially dangerous, and we would be able to — authorities would be able to go in and take guns away.

That would take a gigantic cultural shift in this country, a revamping of the way we think about privacy, a revamping of the way we think about the role government plays in protecting the common good. I think it’d be something I think would be good not only for — to head off shootings, but good to live in a society where we cared more intimately about each other.

And I would be willing to give up certain privacies for that to happen. But, for many Americans, that would just be a massive cultural shift to regard community and regard our common good more frankly, in a European style. I think it would benefit our society in a whole range of areas, but it’s hard to see that kind of culture change to a society that’s been pretty individualistic for a long, long time.

Observe what “conservative” pundit Brooks is advocating here. The government decides someone is “dangerous” and can then take away Second Amendment rights. What would stop the government from taking other rights away that it might believe are “dangerous” in the hands of someone it fears? This is pre-crime. This is open-ended government control over individual liberty based on subjective standards. And David Brooks says he’d “be willing to give up certain privacies for that to happen,” because he knows that he would probably not be a target of such government oppression. After all, he’s now on the “right’ side.

The United States, he says, is “pretty individualistic,” meaning too individualistic, by European standards. Yet the United States of America was created expressly to reject the limitations on individualism placed on its citizens by European cultures and governments.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month (And Maybe The Year): Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

“As long as they’re dangerous, I hope they all die in jail if they’re going to go back and kill Americans. It won’t bother me one bit if 39 of them die in prison. That’s a better outcome than letting them go. And if it costs $500 million to keep them in jail, keep them in jail. Because they’re going to go back to the fight. Look at the fricken Afghan government that’s made up of former detainees at Gitmo. This whole thing by the left about this war ain’t working.”

Senator Lindsey Graham in a meltdown at the confirmation hearing for SCOTUS nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, before walking out in a tizzy.

Hmmm. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that high ranking elected officials from both political parties appear to have little regard for core Constitutional principles? I’m going out on a limb here by stating that it’s a bad thing.

In fact, it is terrible.

Graham, an alleged conservative, proudly went on record as supporting “pre-crime” punitive measures (Watch “Minority Report” for a fair assessment of how that works) along with a pure “ends justifies the means” endorsement, spiced up by some “if it saves just one life” false logic. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month (And Signature Significance): Barack Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Few people have done more for this state and this country than this driven, brilliant, sometimes irascible, deeply good man from Searchlight, Nevada.”

—-Former President Barack Obama, speaking at former Democratic Party Senate leader Harry Reid’s funeral.

Harry Reid was asked about his repeated lie during the 2012 Presidential campaign that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes over the previous decade.  Reid even made that allegation from the floor of the Senate.

Reid’s accusation was an outright, brazen lie. Romney released his tax returns for those years. In 2011, Romney paid $1.9 million in taxes; in 2010, he paid slightly more than $3 million in taxes. The Washington Post Fact Checker, a reliable defender of unethical conduct by Democrats, gave Reid Four Pinocchios for his “no taxes” claim. Another inveterate left-biased factchecking group, PolitiFact, gave the claim a “Pants on Fire” rating.

Reid’s answer to the query became infamous: he responded, “Romney didn’t win, did he?” Later, he insisted  that the lie was “the best thing he ever did.” Continue reading →

Another IIPTDXTTNMIAFB Classic: Biden On Vaccinations!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Biden town hall

IIPTDXTTNMIAFB is Ethics Alarmseese for “Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.” I could probably feature such stories every day, but that would be as boring as these episodes are infuriating. They all come under the sub-heading of “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias,” which I could justifiably update to “Nah, the mainstream news media didn’t steal the Presidency for Joe Biden.”

This one was so egregious that the AP even did a “factcheck”, but muted its description so absurdly that it is a perfect IIPTDXTTNMIAFB.

You see, President Biden said, in a CNN town meeting during which he periodically babbled incoherently, “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die…You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”

That is a lie. It’s a lie because it is demonstrably false, and like so much else involving the pandemic, it is deliberate misinformation to manipulate the public. The Democrats, after all, fervently believe that the ends justify the means in all things. Apparently the truth, which the Biden Administration knows and thus its head is responsible for knowing, just isn’t good enough to move the herd along as its masters desire, so the strategy is to lie.

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KABOOM! New York City Endorses Racial Division And Distrust Of Whites In A PSA [Revised And Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

jackheadexplosion

I’ve never had my head explode while driving before.

It’s scary, but not as scary as what made it explode. There I was, driving along after picking up some stuff at the 7-11. I was listening to the first game in a Toronto Blue Jays-New York Yankees double-header, and was cheered to find the Yankees losing with just a half-inning left to go. Then an ad came on right before the Yankee 7th. (Baseball has this hideous rule this season making double header games only seven innings, but my head had exploded over that long ago.) When I first posted this, I wrote that I couldn’t quote it exactly, and that I couldn’t find it online. But commenter Here’s Johnny did, and here it is.

The rest of the post now reflects the actual message, and not my fevered efforts to recall it.

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Comment Of The Day: “Tit For Tat Ethics: The Anti-Biden-Pro-Trump Flags”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Mutual assured

Chris Marschner, in his Comment of the Day, once again raises the persistent ethics problem of when or whether unethical methods to foil the unethical acts and strategy of others become necessary, justified, and thus, except to the Absolutists, ethical. It is one of the great mysteries of ethics, and one that has never been answered to my satisfaction, or anyone’s satisfaction. This has many implications: the ethics of war is part of the controversy. So is capital punishment. And, of course, politics in general.

Here is Chris’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Tit For Tat Ethics: The Anti-Biden-Pro-Trump Flags”:

There is something to be said for the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction which is the ultimate Tit for Tat. The vitriol expressed against Trump and his supporter if left unchallenged will become the tactic of choice for all future challengers to the Democrat machine.

Political pendulums swing back and forth. The pendulum will not swing if sufficient numbers are not convinced that they are not alone. Complaining about what the AUC does has proven to be ineffective. Pick your poison – vulgar flags or riots. Flags such as these, while crass and vulgar, are simply tools to communicate that others feel as they do which gives more people an impetus for speaking out. The electorate seeks safety in numbers. These signs are no different that the BLM or End Racism signs in yards or “Tolerance” stickers on automobiles.

When the bully gets a taste of his or her own medicine the bully tends to behave differently. If there is a better way for the average person to broadly communicate a reasoned alternative perspective, when your local paper limits the number of letters to the editor for their position but promotes the printing of the paper’s preferred perspectives for whatever reason, well, I am all ears. These signs reflect who we are. Only when people see themselves in that mirror will they see just how ugly their own actions were.

Personally, I am tired of talking about the AUC [JM: For infrequent visitors here, the AUC is Ethics Alarms shorthand for the “resistance”/Democratic Party/ mainstream media alliance I call “The Axis of Unethical Conduct” for its behavior in response to the 2016 election.] and I am looking for ways to ethically combat their tactics. I will not, however, allow my liberties to be stolen through unethical practices so that I can be called an ethical player.