Category Archives: Morality

Steve Bannon Said Ivanka Trump Is ‘Dumb As A Brick.’ You Can Take That To The Bank.

I said so myself in “What Ivanka Wants, Ivanka Gets“:

Donald’s daughter has no place in the White House, no matter how cutely she “argues” for her ambitions:

“I want to be a force for good.” (Who defines “good,” Ivanka? Limited and delimited government means that it’s not you.)

“I want to pursue my passions.” (Your passions, Ivanka, are not necessarily the people’s passions—or even within the purview of their government.)

Whether she’s tweeting about the accomplishment that is the war on Syria or about inflicting her kids on China’s first couple, Ivanka’s tweets have the insipid emptiness of a contestant in a beauty pageant.

“Proud of my father for refusing to accept these horrendous crimes against humanity.”
“Proud of Arabella and Joseph for their performance in honor of President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan’s official visit to the US.” …

In the same column, I also called Jared Kushner her poodle, and asked readers “to study Mr. Kushner. The man’s a mouse. Have you ever heard Jared Kushner utter a word in public? Do you even know what he sounds like? The poor man looks low T—like he might one day go the way of Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn Jenner. (I love LGBTQ, so long as they come in peace.)”

It transpires now that, “Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner reportedly agreed that if either ran for president, it would be Ivanka.“ Well of course.

From “Steve Bannon says Ivanka Trump is ‘dumb as a brick’“:

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, called Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and top White House adviser, “dumb as a brick” in journalist Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed a manuscript of the book on Wednesday.

Earlier Wednesday, The Guardian and New York Magazine published excerpts of the book, which included a host of critical comments by Bannon about top West Wing advisers and members of the president’s family.

A spokesman for Ivanka did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This isn’t the first time Bannon has taken a public shot at Ivanka.

NEW COLUMN: A New Party Boss In South Africa Is No Reason To Party

Africa, Communism, Democracy, Morality, Political Philosophy, Race, South-Africa

THE NEW COLUMN comes abridged and unabridged. “A New Party Boss In South Africa Is No Reason To Party” is the short and not-so-sweet version, now on Townhall.com.

“In Africa, You Oust A Tyrant, But Not Tyranny” is longer with lots of “inside baseball” for the nerds. It’s on the Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine.

An excerpt:

READERS were angry. I had rained on their parade by venturing that the appointment of a new party boss to head South-Africa’s dominant party was an insignificant game of musical chairs.

But perhaps it is I who should have been annoyed. Nobody with a modicum of cerebral agility should see in the new South-African Strong Man, union boss-cum-tycoon Cyril Ramaphosa, a significant change of the guard.

Surely by now it should be common knowledge that in Africa, you replace a despot, but not despotism; you oust a tyrant, but not tyranny?

There’s a reason Ramaphosa riles crowds at a South African Communist Party rally just as easily as he excites the head of Goldman Sachs’s South Africa office. (For a clue, ask yourselves how a union boss becomes a tycoon.)

In the tradition of dimming debate, the chattering class has reduced systemic corruption in South Africa and near collapse in Zimbabwe, respectively, to the shenanigans of two men: Jacob Zuma and Robert Mugabe.

Emblematic of this is a thematically confused article in The Economist, offering a description of the dynamics set in motion by the Zuma dynasty’s capture of the state.

At first, the magazine explains the concept of “state capture” as “private actors [having] subverted the state to steal public money.”

Later, the concept is more candidly refined: “The nub of the state capture argument is that Mr. Zuma and his friends are putting state-owned enterprises and other governmental institutions in the hands of people who are allowing them to loot public funds.”

Indeed. Corruption invariably flows from state to society.

And, “state capture” is quite common across Africa, even if “unfamiliar elsewhere in the world,” which is all the “context” The Economist is willing to provide.

“To avoid a dire, two-decade dynasty of dysfunction, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress should ditch the Zumas,” the magazine concludes.

That’s it? If only.

“The Corruption of South Africa,” courtesy of The Economist, hurtles between being an excellent exposé, yet providing nothing more than reportorial reductionism.

Continental context, if you will, is essential if one is to shed light on the “Dark Continent.”

To wit, the seductive narrative about the ANC’s new boss, Cyril Ramaphosa, gets this much right: There is nothing new about the meaningless game of musical chairs enacted throughout Africa like clockwork. The Big Man is overthrown or demoted; another Alpha Male jockeys his way into his predecessor’s position and asserts his primacy over the people and their property.

Elections across Africa have traditionally followed a familiar pattern: Radical black nationalist movements like the ANC take power everywhere, then elections cease. “One man, one vote, one time,” to quote the book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Or, if they take place, as they do in South Africa, they’re rigged, in a manner.

For a prerequisite for a half-decent liberal democracy is that majority and minority status be interchangeable and fluid, and that a ruling majority party (the ANC) be as likely to become a minority party as the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA). In South Africa, however, the majority and the minorities are politically permanent, not temporary, and voting along racial lines is the rule.

So, as the dictator Mugabe hung on to power for dear life, reasonable people were being persuaded by the pulp and pixel press that if not for this one megalomaniac, freedom would have flourished in Zimbabwe, as it has, presumably, in Angola, Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, and the rest of strife-torn Africa south of the Sahara. …

… READ THE REST. “A New Party Boss In South Africa Is No Reason To Party” is now on Townhall.com.

“In Africa, You Oust A Tyrant, But Not Tyranny” is on the Unz Review.

Roy Moore: How Ethical Is It To Overturn The People’s Democratic Decision Via An Ethics Committee?

Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Government, Morality, Republicans, States' Rights

It isn’t.

By now you have to have noticed the ethical and moral corruption baked into the vaunted American system.

In the event Judge Roy Moore is elected in the Alabama special election by the people, The Establishment is waiting to unseat him and overturn the election via a Senate ethics investigation when he gets to Washington.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters last week that he expects Moore will face a Senate ethics probe if he wins.

“If he were to be elected I think he would immediately have an issue with the Ethics Committee, which they would take up,” McConnell said.
Young, the Moore strategist, cast the Senate election Tuesday in Alabama as a referendum on President Donald Trump.
“This is Donald Trump on trial in Alabama,” Young said on “This Week.” “If the people of Alabama vote for this liberal Democrat, Doug Jones, then they’re voting against the president who they put in office.”
“It’s ground zero for President Donald Trump,” Young added. “If they can beat him, they can beat his agenda, because Judge Moore stands with Donald Trump, and his agenda.”

It’s unethical for a politburo to overturn The People’s democratic decision via a far-removed ethics committee. They do it anyway.

Ethical Ignorance Guarantees Voters Won’t Detect Transgressions In Their Candidate Or Collect On Campaign Promises

Democracy, Donald Trump, Elections, Ethics, Intelligence, Morality, Reason

Republicans—blind followers of the Big Man—often lack even an elementary idea of what’s ethical and what’s not. Take the fact that former daytime talk show host Geraldo Rivera is a bosom buddy of Sean Hannity. The fact of the two’s friendship makes a mockery out of their canned TV “debates.” Differently put, it’s intellectually dishonest to rotate your friends on your opinion show. You shouldn’t hire your friends.

A talker should feature interesting, independent opinion and avoid in-house hires. You could say Geraldo Rivera is a Hannity friend with benefits. Responses to this no-brainer on social media tell me that people no longer grasp elementary ethics.

Ethical practices entail keeping your (journalistic) work and friendships APART—just as you should keep your wife out of the office of the president (Mugabe) and your kids out of the White House (Trump). Avoiding conflicts of interest, and the commitment to intellectual honesty implicit in your relationship with your audience (Hannity’s): These were once understood by people. I think the populace is too dumbed-down and consequently corrupted to have a feel for these finer points.

Certainly when it comes to their guy, Trump (or Bush) voters lack a basic sense of what’s ethical and what’s not. This ethical ignorance and hyper-partisanship guarantees voters will be powerless to detect transgressions in their candidate or collect on campaign promises.