Category Archives: morality

Political CYA

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors waxed opinionated on the matter of government efforts at stifling free speech, centering their wax-on piece on Sundar Pichai’s letter (formally written by an Alphabet lawyer) excusing (the editors generously called it a mea not-so-maxima culpa) Alphabet’s Google’s (read: Pichai’s) mistaken role in censoring Conservative podcasts—purging them from YouTube—during the Wuhan Virus (my term; the editors continue to euphemize with “Covid-19”) situation. The editors also nattered on about the hypocrisy of the Left’s getting on the Trump administration over the Kimmel business compared with the Left’s downplaying of the Biden administration’s role in that Alphabet (et al.) censorship.

What interests me about this editorial, though, is this bit from the penultimate paragraph:

Progressives intimidated companies into believing that if they failed to toe the line on certain issues, enforcement could follow.

This is those companies’ managers—including Mark Zuckerberg, of Meta, whom the editors also cited—conscious choice to be “intimidated.” I’ve written elsewhere in this blog about the flaccid-kneed nature of senior managers, at the pinnacle of their professions, who allow themselves to be so easily managed by others. Men and women of good character would have refused to kowtow and challenged in court any enforcement that might have followed, and won easily (if initially expensively, but long-term much more cheaply) on free speech grounds.

And the editors’ close:

Alphabet’s letter to Judiciary is notable for its commitment that the company “has not and will not empower fact checkers to take action on or label content across the Company’s services.” That’s good to hear, but Google would have done better if its accounting had come before the electoral winds shifted. The company’s letter is an admirable statement of principles. Let’s hope it sticks.

This is a sham shift, not at all a statement of principles. This is merely a political CYA claim, done at the convenience of political winds. There’s no reason to believe it will stick. Pichai already has amply demonstrated the strength of his character, and tomorrow may bring an administration of a different feather.

Business Executive Cowardice

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There is a great deal of loud bodice-ripping angst over the Trump administration having “bullied” Disney and ABC into putting Jimmy Kimmel’s late night TV show on hiatus for the time being.

It’s much ado about misplaced nothing, though. Bullies have only the power their putative victims choose to surrender to them; business executives only feel pressure because they choose to wallow in the perception.

FCC chief Brendan Carr threatened ABC affiliates’ broadcast licenses if they/ABC didn’t kowtow and deal appropriately with Kimmel and his TV show? This is a canonical example of choosing to wallow. Threats aren’t deeds, even when they from a high level government functionary. They need to be watched carefully lest they become deeds, but watching is the only action required. Certainly not kowtowing.

I claim that executives who fold under “pressure,” even when the “pressure” is yapping from government personages, are cowards and unfit for their posts. The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are more genteel about it.

The furor is wildly overstated when it claims an iron curtain of Trump censorship is descending on American media. If CBS and ABC, two networks that have lately bowed to the president, gave half a hoot, they would easily have prevailed on First Amendment grounds if they put up a fight.
That is, if they prized their network TV businesses sufficiently as businesses, as opportunities to display stewardship, or even as instruments of influence. But they don’t.

Indeed. Short term expensive, to be sure, to Just Say No, and hale the government into court. But long-term much lower cost, especially when compared to the great and growing cost of always surrendering.

The editors closed with this:

Mr Trump hasn’t got powers of intimidation other presidents didn’t have. He just meets less resistance.

I write it again: such executives are unfit for their positions.

Yes, “They” Did

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On this, Karl Rove is broadly wrong.

Our culture is built on the principle that individuals are responsible for what they say and do. People can be influenced by words they hear and groups they’re part of.

So far, so good.

However, there are vulnerable people of all ages who can be, and are, influenced to deadly action. “They” know this full well. “They” are the Left’s and the Left’s politicians’ carefully crafted environment of divisiveness and violent and violence-inspiring anti-Republican, anti-Conservative, anti-right leaning Americans.

  • New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer standing on the Supreme Court building steps threatening by name two Supreme Court Justices, followed shortly by an assassination attempt against one of them
  • Vermont’s Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders likening Conservative Republicans to fascism, followed shortly by a mass murder attempt against a gathering of Republicans at a baseball practice
  • Sanders and them-President Joe Biden likening Republicans and then-Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump to Hitler, followed shortly by two assassination attempts against Trump
  • Jimmy Kimmel nakedly lying about Charlie Kirk in the hours after Kirk’s murder, insisting Kirk was a Jew-hating bigot
  • Other Leftists claiming Kirk’s killer was a Republican
  • The New York Times nakedly smearing Kirk as a Jew-hater and only posting a correction after an enormous outpouring of opprobrium, and then burying its correction instead of giving it the same prominence as its lie
  • The left, relying on their Newspeak Dictionary, distorting MAGA as though it were some right-wing crazies, rather that the hope and dream of every American to Make America Great Again—the American English dictionary definition of the acronym

Just one example of the outcomes of the Left’s and Party’s constructed environment comes from “Bowser,” a protestor supporting the murder of an insurance company executive:

Bowser says[:] “Political violence is how this country was established.”

“They” know full well that the hostile environment they constructed would influence more than one of their minions to violence. That carefully crafted overtly hostile environment most assuredly facilitated—made possible—Kirk’s murder by influencing one vulnerable young man to commit that murder.

Until we broadly recognize that simple environmental fact, and yes, that includes the Karl Roves and the others who insist on downplaying the Left’s artificial political climate, and act on that recognition, that Left and their Party politicians will continue to spout their rhetoric of violence, continue to proselytize their hostility toward those who are not of them, and their atmosphere of hate will continue to cause murders to be committed among the rest of us.

Stupid, or Dishonest?

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Senator John Fetterman (D, PA) had an exchange with CNN‘s Manu Raju last Wednesday in the aftermath of a Leftist’s murder of Charlie Kirk. It began with Fetterman decrying the Left’s and his own party’s divisive rhetoric:

…just one day prior, people were protesting Trump by calling him the “Hitler of our time.” He condemned comparing anyone, including Trump, to Adolf Hitler and insisted his party must “turn the temperature down.”

Then, this:

“I think you just don’t ever, ever compare anyone to Hitler and those kinds of extreme things,” Fetterman said. “Now, look what happened to Charlie Kirk. I mean, you know, the man was shot. Now, we have to turn the temperature down. We can’t compare people to these kinds of figures in history. And this is not an autocrat. This is a product of a democratic election.”
“So you don’t think that Trump is at all shattering any of the norms of democracy in any way?” Raju asked.

Here is a CNN opinionator suggesting that “shattering…norms of democracy” is justification for murdering Conservatives who are associated with President Donald Trump (R).

I have to ask, given the irrelevancy between doing things not normally done but entirely legal, and murder: is Raju really that stupid, or is he really that nakedly dishonest?

“Political Violence Has Become a Terrifying Fact of American Life”

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That’s the headline. What it doesn’t include, and what the underlying article goes on to not include, is that the political violence is almost exclusively from the Left.

  • Then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D) shot and nearly killed at a rally
  • Progressive-Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer (NY), on the Supreme Court Building front steps, threatening by name two Supreme Court Justices, followed shortly by an assassination attempt against one of the named
  • Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) accusing Republicans and Donald Trump of autocracy and dictatorship, followed shortly by a Leftist’s mass murder attempt against Republican Congressmen practicing baseball
  • Antifa’s attacks on Conservative newsman Andy Ngo
  • Antifa’s attacks on Christian rallies
  • Attack against then-Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016
  • Months later another Leftist tried to steal a police officer’s pistol with which to shoot Trump at a rally
  • A 2017 attempt by a Leftist to ram a forklift into a Trump motorcade
  • A 2018 mailing of a ricin-laced envelope to Trump
  • George Floyd riots during which Minneapolis’ mayor held off sending in National Guard to quell the riots
  • Summer of Love in Seattle
  • Riots and attacks against Federal officers and buildings in Portland while Portland’s mayor objected to the Federal government sending National Guard troops to protect those Federal buildings
  • 2021 attack on the White House by a Black Nationalist, during which a Capitol Police officer was killed and another injured
  • Two murder 2024 attempts against then-Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump
  • Death threats and swatting made against
    • US District Judge Aileen Cannon
    • New York County DA Alvin Bragg
    • US District Judge Tanya Chutkan
  • Assaults against ICE agents as the go about enforcing immigration law, particularly against violent illegal aliens
  • Murder of Charlie Kirk, a Republican podcaster, speaker, fund-raiser, founder of Turning Point USA
  • The ammunition by the Kirk murderer inscribed with “anti-fascist” and transgender slogans
  • Death threats leveled against Kirk’s widow

Then there’s what Jonathon Turley calls “rage rhetoric,” which Leftists insist is provocative of physical violence, and on that, those Leftists are correct. It’s just that the rhetoric is mostly from their fellow Leftists. The following are in addition to Schumer’s and Sanders’ rage rhetoric. These have set the environment that justifies, in the Left’s collective mind, the violence they inflict.

  • 2022, then-President Joe Biden called the MAGA movement “semi-fascism.”
  • Vice President Kamala Harris yokked it up with Ellen DeGeneres about killing Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, or former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
  • Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) declared “Elon Musk is seizing the power that belongs to the American people.”
  • Congressman Jamie Raskin (D, MD) said that [Elon] Musk and Trump were conducting a “rapidly expanding and accelerating coup.”
  • Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR) said that a “coup” was being carried out.
  • Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) said Musk was “taking away everything we have.”
  • Congresswoman LaMonica McIver (D, NJ) said “God d—it shut down the Senate!…WE ARE AT WAR!”
  • House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY) called on his fellow Progressive-Democrats to fight “in the streets.”

That’s just a taste.

Then there’s the Left’s cancel war against the Right, which while not kinetic is often just as destructive of careers and lives.