Tag Archives: ethics

Misdirected

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…as opposed to misdirection. Gerald Seib, in his Monday piece for The Wall Street Journal, wrote about the need to restore confidence in America’s democracy.

His need is misplaced, however. We Americans have a deep and abiding confidence in our republican form of democracy right along with our faith in voting (another of Seib’s misplaced concerns) as the means of executing our republican democracy.

this year’s election can be seen as the culmination of a two-decade period of decline in faith in the basic building blocks of democracy. That period began with the controversial Florida recount in the 2000 election, then expanded four years ago to charges of foreign interference in an election.

No, this year’s election has demonstrated our faith in our republican democracy and our voting: 150 million voters—easily a record number in his words—voted. That’s no lack of faith.

On the other hand, this year’s election can be seen as the culmination of a two-decade decline in faith in what is increasingly recognized as an intrinsically mendacious system of media, of news reporting and opinion providing. Our media have increasingly mixed news and opinion, masquerading the latter as the former while the former is increasingly unsupported by identifiable sources. Our media have increasingly provided “opinion” unsupported by fact, identifiable sources, even logic.

Our media culminated its descent (so far culminated, the descent isn’t slowing) with its open spiking of stories detrimental to Progressive-Democrats like Joe Biden or favorable to Republicans like Donald Trump. That culmination includes printing outright lies, for instance about what Trump said about our soldiers, while openly refusing to retract their stories when those lies, for instance about what Trump said about our soldiers, are disproven.

And this:

Now President Trump and his allies head to court with charges of widespread vote fraud, charges so far unsubstantiated, raising doubts about the integrity of voting in states across the map.

Leave aside the fact that no one is going to prosecute a fraud case—or a widespread error case, or a case involving State Executive Branch officials violating State Election laws, even if for the Very Best of reasons—in the press. Such cases will be prosecuted in court, and that includes providing evidence to support the allegations.

No, contrary to Seib’s assertion, what Trump and his allies are doing is seeking to preserve confidence in the integrity of voting by holding to account the personnel responsible for overseeing and protecting the several voting systems. Personnel who, by coincidence, have created doubt through their mishandling of their responsibilities primarily in Progressive-Democrat-controlled jurisdictions.

National Healing

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It has nothing to do with the Progressive-Democratic Party. And that includes Party’s head, Joe Biden.

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who tweeted:  ”Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not to follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into ‘polite’ society. We have a list.”

And this from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D, NY):

Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future

Enemies lists aren’t consistent with healing, or even a desire to heal.

Biden’s slurs against blacks—”superpredators” and if they don’t support him, “they ain’t black”—his not wanting his kids growing up in “mixed” neighborhoods; his open lies about Trump’s attitude toward our soldiers, repeating a magazine’s debunked smears; and his refusal to condemn BLM or antifa along with his claim that 15% of Americans are “just no good:” it’s beyond the pale to expect such a bigot to be connected in any way with healing.

A Misapprehension

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John Yoo, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY), and others, are suggesting that, given the apparent irregularities (because I’m being polite) in several States’ ballot acceptance and counting procedures, “the courts may decide the election.”

McConnell, et al., misunderstand the situation. The courts won’t decide anything. This election has been decided by American voters. It may take the courts to enforce our decision, though.

There would seem to be strong cases, too, for reversing those…irregularities. Our Constitution’s Article I, Section 4 says pretty explicitly that State legislatures set the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections… and that Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations. There’s no wiggle room there.

State non-legislative officials—elections board commissioners, Secretaries of State, governors, et al.—do not have the legal capacity to alter States’ laws, for instance, deadlines for receiving ballots, requirements regarding signature comparison and witness signatures on absentee ballots and mail-in ballots. They do not have that capacity even under the guise of emergencies like the Wuhan Virus situation.

In particular, the virus situation was in full bore by last spring, and both Congress and the States’ legislatures have had months in which to adjust election laws to account for the virus’ impact—and they universally chose to make no adjustments.

Those non-legislative officials’ adjustments are not merely illegal, they’re unconstitutional.

Full stop.

“Journalism”

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There is much bodice-ripping and manufactured angst among what passes for journalism and journalists as the still in progress election counting has exposed their “expertise” as just so much holier-than-thou lecturing of us unwashed and that “expertise” shown to be wholly non-existent.

Here, for example, is self-styled news journalism “critic,” Howard Kurtz discussing his fellows’ bad misses regarding this election and journalists’ claimed voter concerns in this election. Notice that: a journalist commenting on journalists. A truly objective bit of commentary. Sure.

Why were the media so utterly convinced that President Trump would be trounced in the election?

They never were convinced—they were making it up from the jump.

Why were all the expectations for a substantial Joe Biden victory, to the point that many news outlets were running lists of his possible Cabinet members…?

They never had such expectations—they were making it up from the jump.

They were convinced that Trump’s handling of the pandemic, with 230,000 Americans having died from the virus, would sink him.

No, they weren’t. They were making both of those up from the start.

Kurtz is operating from the false premise that the press is honest. He’s not that naive, but he is operating in his own bubble. When has he talked to or read anything written by anyone other than a journalist?

When has Kurtz gone into the wilds of flyover country and talked to folks in Dinky Town, IA, Cornfield, KS, Smalltown, MT, Ranchland, TX, Wheatsilo, OK, or the middle of our southeastern States—the little towns, not the cities?

A Response

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Recall that Twitter had censored a tweet by Customs and Border Patrol’s Mark Morgan, Senior Official Performing the Duties of Commissioner (i.e., Acting Commissioner), both deleting his tweet and suspending his—CBP official—Twitter account.

Here is the offending tweet, as quoted in a letter to Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, by Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolfe:

CBP & US Army Corps of Engineers continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It’s a fact, walls work.

Here is Dorsey’s response, through his censors:

You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.

The disconnect between Dorsey’s response and Morgan’s tweet is so obvious and blatant that Dorsey can only be committing rank censorship and his response considered deliberately dishonest.

Dorsey ultimately backed down under public pressure and restored Morgan’s access to his account. Notwithstanding, Wolfe wrote his letter to Dorsey, and he didn’t pull many punches. Here is that letter; note, too, the footnote:

October 30, 2020
Mr. Jack Dorsey
Chief Executive Officer
Twitter
1555 Market Street, Suite 900
San Francisco, CA 94103
Dear Mr. Dorsey:
I write to you about Twitter’s recent censorship of Mark Morgan, the Senior Official Performing the Duties of Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Not only was Twitter’s act of censorship unjustified—the tweet is supported by data—it is disturbing.  As the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other Federal agencies continue to rely on Twitter to share important information with the US public, your censorship poses a threat to our security.
Hours after you concluded testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 28, 2020, Twitter suspended Mr. Morgan for tweeting: “CBP & US Army Corps of Engineers continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It’s a fact, walls work.” Twitter’s moderators, apparently triggered by the tweet, emailed Mr. Morgan to say, “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.” The Acting Commissioner’s tweet did none of these things.  Read it. Watch the video.
The fact that the tweet was removed and the account locked is startling.  It is hard to understand how anyone believed Mr. Morgan’s tweet promoted violence, threats or harassment.  Especially considering that the facts about the border wall system support the tweet.
Whether you know it or not, CBP guards the front line of the American homeland.  CBP repels and arrests thousands of violent criminal gang members each year. CBP rescues young girls who are forced into cross-border sex trafficking.  CBP intercepts dangerous drugs and contraband, including enough of the opioid fentanyl to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States several times over.  CBP fulfills the United States’ most obvious and essential law enforcement and national security responsibility to the people of our country.  Your company may choose to be ignorant of these facts, but it is no less censorship when you choose to suppress them.
There was no reason to remove Mr. Morgan’s tweet from your platform, other than ideological disagreement with the speaker.  Such censorship is disturbing.  Twitter’s conduct censoring US government officials also endangers the national security.  It is dangerous and damaging when any publisher arbitrarily and unfoundedly decides, as it did here, that the facts and policies of a particular Presidential Administration constitute “violence”—in order to censor them. And in the case of Twitter, this can cut off an essential mode of communication between US Government officials and the public. In doing so, Twitter is sabotaging public discourse regarding important national and homeland security issues.
Further, it is clear that Twitter’s gross censorship was intentional, not accidental.  Twitter notified CBP that it had censored Mr. Morgan’s message and locked his account.  In response, CBP communicated with Twitter’s office of government affairs, and also appealed Twitter’s censorship decision.  But Twitter denied the appeal.  And Twitter’s office of government affairs ignored CBP’s communications.  Only after CBP reached out to Twitter’s office of government affairs a second time and went public with this censorship, then finally Twitter admitted its bad judgment and unlocked the account.1
I call on you to commit to never again censoring content on your platform and obstructing Americans’ unalienable right to communicate with each other and with their government and its officials, including the thousands of law enforcement officers at the DHS who work vigilantly and diligently to protect your safety every day.
Sincerely,

Chad F. Wolf

Acting Secretary

[Footnote] 1: Adding insult to injury—and insult to Americans’ intelligence—Twitter then spread disinformation by misrepresenting Twitter’s intentional censorship. Specifically, “[a] Twitter spokesperson confirmed that Morgan had been locked out of his account but said ‘the decision was reversed following an appeal by the account owner and further evaluation from our team.'”  Caitlin Oprysko, Trump’s Border Chief Slams Twitter for Locking His Account After Border Wall Tweet, POLITICO (Oct. 29, 2020, 03:05 PM), https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/29/mark-morgan-twitter-border-wall-tweet-433617. It makes the false impression that Twitter’s appeal process remedied a mistake, but in fact Twitter’s appeal process failed. Twitter actually denied CBP’s appeal. Twitter only reversed itself after controversy and embarrassment escalated.

This sort of thing, by Sundar Pinchai and John Hennessey at Alphabet and Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook as well as by Dorsey, will continue, though—this response regarding Morgan’s tweet will simply be a one-off used by those three to claim purity—unless and until these social media platforms are brought under control and their censorship ended. That will take pressure from us citizens on them and on the folks we elect to represent us and our positions in government to rein them in.

The letter also can be read here.