Moral Outrage (Getting One's Undies in a Bunch) a Sign of an Unhealthy Conscience

Hey,hey! Ho, Ho! Kelly Anne Conway's Pumps Have Gotta Go! Some folks losing sleep over feet on the couch?  Not this bag of smelts.  And I doooooooooooo love smelts!

I sleep like a log.  Some might say. "well, so do psychopaths."  Yeah?  Name two.

Sleep is the benefit people cash-in because brave men and women stand guard over all of us. Better men than me have said so -

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. George Orwell

I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’beer,/The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here./”The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,…/O makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep/Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;/An’ hustlin’ drunken sodgers when they’re goin’ large a bitIs five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.   Rudyard Kipling

Orwell wrote an essay on this Kipling  1890 poem Tommy Atkins and noted:

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases. It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, ‘making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep’.

This here sleeper is as  yellow as a duck's foot, but  honors the people who stand watch over his crib.

Moral outrage works well with 'humanitarians' - people who wouldn't give a starving blind girl a Confederate dime - and seem to ignite great group fuses of carbon foot-prints.

My moral outrage pencil-detonator must not be American made.

Michael Moore neither amuses, nor impels the Hickey moral tinder to spark.  Fat old guys in baseball hats scare little kids off the playground. Stranger Danger!

A recent study that I found in a magazine from the UK, the home of Orwell and Kipling, points to some interesting and telling features about folks who get morally outraged with every Tweet.

Feelings of guilt are a direct threat to one's sense that they are a moral person and, accordingly, research on guilt finds that this emotion elicits strategies aimed at alleviating guilt that do not always involve undoing one's actions. Furthermore, research shows that individuals respond to reminders of their group's moral culpability with feelings of outrage at third-party harm-doing. These findings suggest that feelings of moral outrage, long thought to be grounded solely in concerns with maintaining justice, may sometimes reflect efforts to maintain a moral identity.

No problem where I come from - guilt and shame are the real breakfast of champions.

I get yelled at by family, friends and neighbors whenever bumptious, boorish, or boastful bad old me surfaces.  Stay moral and stay at peace.

This study by Bowdoin psychology professor Zachary Rothschild and University of Southern Mississippi psychology professor Lucas A. Keefer in the latest edition of Motivation and Emotion is most telling.

Here's a list of their finds from Reason magazine.

• Triggering feelings of personal culpability for a problem increases moral outrage at a third-party target. For instance, respondents who read that Americans are the biggest consumer drivers of climate change "reported significantly higher levels of outrage at the environmental destruction" caused by "multinational oil corporations" than did the respondents who read that Chinese consumers were most to blame.
• The more guilt over one's own potential complicity, the more desire "to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that target." For instance, participants in study one read about sweatshop labor exploitation, rated their own identification with common consumer practices that allegedly contribute, then rated their level of anger at "international corporations" who perpetuate the exploitative system and desire to punish these entities. The results showed that increased guilt "predicted increased punitiveness toward a third-party harm-doer due to increased moral outrage at the target."
• Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased guilt in people threatened through "ingroup immorality." Study participants who read that Americans were the biggest drivers of man-made climate change showed significantly higher guilt scores than those who read the blame-China article when they weren't given an opportunity to express anger at or assign blame to a third-party. However, having this opportunity to rage against hypothetical corporations led respondents who read the blame-America story to express significantly lower levels of guilt than the China group. Respondents who read that Chinese consumers were to blame had similar guilt levels regardless of whether they had the opportunity to express moral outrage.
• "The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers" inflated participants perception of personal morality. Asked to rate their own moral character after reading the article blaming Americans for climate change, respondents saw themselves as having "significantly lower personal moral character" than those who read the blame-China article—that is, when they weren't given an out in the form of third-party blame. Respondents in the America-shaming group wound up with similar levels of moral pride as the China control group when they were first asked to rate the level of blame deserved by various corporate actors and their personal level of anger at these groups. In both this and a similar study using the labor-exploitation article, "the opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doing (vs. not) led to significantly higher personal moral character ratings," the authors found.
• Guilt-induced moral outrage was lessened when people could assert their goodness through alternative means, "even in an unrelated context." Study five used the labor exploitation article, asked all participants questions to assess their level of "collective guilt" (i.e., "feelings of guilt for the harm caused by one's own group") about the situation, then gave them an article about horrific conditions at Apple product factories. After that, a control group was given a neutral exercise, while others were asked to briefly describe what made them a good and decent person; both exercises were followed by an assessment of empathy and moral outrage. The researchers found that for those with high collective-guilt levels, having the chance to assert their moral goodness first led to less moral outrage at corporations. But when the high-collective-guilt folks were given the neutral exercise and couldn't assert they were good people, they wound up with more moral outrage at third parties. Meanwhile, for those low in collective guilt, affirming their own moral goodness first led to marginally more moral outrage at corporations.

Hell, I ain't mad at nobody.

Love my straight eight.

Rev. Jesse Jackson - Homeland Security for Chicago?

" ICU!!!!!! - Next!  I see You; ICU!!!!  . . . Next!"

“A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.” 
― George Orwell, Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 2 My Country Right or Left 1940 - 1943

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security forcethat's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." (emphasis added) Barack Obama 2008

Chicago, IL (Friday, February 1, 2013) — Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. and
Rainbow PUSH Coalition call for immediate Federal Intervention and Homeland
Security in Chicago as January homicide totals exceeded 45. This morning, in Chicago,
a woman’s van was riddled with bullets as she was executed on a major highway. Two
days ago, a 15-year-old Dr. Martin Luther King College Prep honor student, who had
recently performed as a majorette at the President’s inaugural ceremony, was killed
after trying to seek shelter from the rain less than a mile away from the President’s
home. Another student was shot but survived. The gunman is still at large. Days before
these tragedies, seven people were killed, 6 from gunshots, all in one day; most of
their murders have been unsolved. Reverend Jesse Jackson reaffirms that gun control reform is critical and the ban on assault weapons paramount. The REV.

With Junior set to attend Federal 'college,'  the 7th Ward up for grabs and unhappy fact that Rev. Al Sharpton is more cuddly to MSNBC, Rev. Jesse Jackson is thinking outside of the box again.
The same crowd of deep thinkers and civil libertarians who have destroyed any and all public support for Chicago Police officers will love this idea!  They also loved Rahm's gift to the Gang-banger pensioners of CeaseFire and Calypso Louis' March of the Bow-Tied Brothers all over Gresham and the Englewood.  Murders spiked, but that's Okay.

Now, the REV. doesn't draw an un-calculated breath on-camera or within range of audio reception and it makes perfect sense that he had cleared his latest "Stop the Madness" gambit following a call to Slum Dog Billionaire Real Estate Mogul and Presidential Ramrod Valerie Jarrett and the lads at the Obama Aeterna Stipendium eodemque Consule Vita  headquarters.

Imagine, DHS security forces in thick competition, not with Chicago Police Department professionals, but the Millions Dollar Ceasefire  Quartet ( Gary Slotkin, Tio Hardiman, Wesley Skogan and Dan'l Webster) and perhaps the contracted players of Rainbow Putsch Coalition's Community For State Security.

Anyway, the good REV tossed that trial balloon out there.

Alvarez Agonistes: "60 Minutes" Had No Time for the Root of Its Interest in Anita Alvarez - David Protess

Under the spreading chestnut tree/I sold you and you sold me/.There lie they, and here lie we/ Under the spreading chestnut tree. Orwell's 1984

The Two-Minute Hate Drill was crafted by George Orwell in his novel 1984 - George was off by twenty-eight years.  These days the we get a heaping helping of the Two-Minute Hate Drill every day and no time off for Sunday. We have Hate Week cycles: We got Burge; we got Palin: We got Ryan; We got Blago; We got Charlie Sheen; We got Lindsays -Lohan and Graham; We got Joe Walsh: We got Chick Fil A; We got 1%-ers: We got Catholics and We always got Israel!  We have Vanecko and we now have the Random Judge!


My favorite Chicago reporter and one of the best in the business, Natasha Korecki reported this in today's Sun Times about the "60 Minutes" tune-up:

“We are appalled, absolutely, unequivocally appalled by the lack of information [in the ‘60 Minutes’ report],” Alvarez’s spokeswoman, Sally Daly, said. “They did not include information that is critical to this case. Anita spent an hour doing this interview. We were ensured that we were going to get a fair shake ... I didn’t expect that from ‘60 Minutes.’ She could have easily not done the interview. She stood up and explained the cases publicly.”
Daly said the piece failed to report key facts in the cases — the so-called Engelwood Four case and one in which a group of Dixmoor men’s cases were dismissed after they spent years in prison. That included some suspects pleading guilty and testifying against others before judges and juries.
“These cases were presented multiple times to judges and juries,” Daly said. “Our office did a very, very thorough, careful review of these cases. She found that there was not enough evidence.”

The object of the Two Minutes Hate Drill, or a Hate Cycle are determined by the needs of the agreed upon tautologists of the academic, legal, political  and journalistic interest complex: Progressive academic, clerics (UCC, Unitarian, atheist and secularists), elected officials, funding sources (Eychaner, Van Amerigen & etc.), and the cadres of lawyers and law professors in symbiotic solidarity with Medill fashioned editors and columnists. Their reach is national but most effective when pounded out locally.  E.G. David Protess' Innocence Project, rock-rooted on the campus of Evanston, Illinois' Northwestern University and buttresses by the MacArthur and Blum Centers for Law, has trained and sent forth the hundreds of journalists to CNN, Newsweek

Dave Protess no longer operates within the ivy of Northwestern, because Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvares out-ed Professor Dave as a phony and the university booted the Tweedy Fagin - The Chicago Tribune Company's Chicago magazine tried to parse Protess back into a good light: 

“That the university had seen fit to issue a one-sided, nasty, vituperative broadside against him in the form of that press release seemed to be a violation of trust, not only of the university’s relationship with David Protess as a faculty member but a breach of trust with us.”

Cubbage responds by saying that Protess forced the university’s hand. “Northwestern University generally does not discuss publicly actions regarding its faculty and staff,” he says in an e-mail. “However, statements in the media by Professor Protess and our desire to be as forthcoming as possible on an issue of great importance to the University, its faculty, our students, alumni and our community prompted us to make the statement.” . . .A few weeks later, an article by a Medill senior, Brian Rosenthal, appeared in The Daily Northwestern, questioning the reporting methods of Protess and his students. On the same day, a lengthy piece in the Chicago Tribune raised similar questions. Both articles cited two identical episodes (neither of them denied by Protess): that one of his students said she had misrepresented herself as a U.S. Census Bureau employee to learn the whereabouts of a potential source and that another had posed as a ComEd worker to help track down a witness.

Both incidents were contained in the Ferkenhoff report, according to sources. And Protess says Jenner & Block questioned him about both. When I asked Cubbage whether the report had been leaked, he responded, “The University has no knowledge as to whether the report was shared, other than it was not shared by the University’s Office of General Counsel or its outside counsel.” Rosenthal told me that he “had no direct contact with the so-called report.” The Tribune reporter, Matthew Walberg, declined to comment.

The stories could merely have been the result of increased scrutiny brought on by the controversy over Protess and the nature of the accusations against him. Whatever the case, the effect was palpable. Protess’s reputation, as well as his 30-year legacy, suffered a staggering blow. More than that, media attention had shifted away from outrage over Protess’s ouster and onto his and his students’ professional ethics.

Protess offered his defense: There’s a long tradition of reporters going undercover, including for a Pulitzer Prize–winning series in the Tribune in which the reporter William Gaines posed as a janitor to detail hospital abuses.

And several practitioners back him up. “As a longtime investigative reporter who also holds a doctorate and specializes in the history of investigative journalism, I can tell you this,” says the University of Maryland’s Feldstein: “Exposing wrongdoing is not easy. Powerful interests do everything they can to block such challenges to their authority. I can tell you that flirting with a source or paying a source’s cab fare is a routine practice among journalistic professionals, not even a misdemeanor compared to the literal felonies that Protess exposed.”

Others disagree with the practice of journalists misrepresenting themselves. “I don’t say I condone that, and it’s not what I do as a journalist,” says American University’s Lewis. “I always disclose who I am, and that’s how I conduct myself. [But] I also understand that this is a slightly gray area.” In the end, the point was moot. Protess was out. The damage was done—both to him and to the school. “It has a long-term effect that will take a long time for the institution to get over,” says Foster. “It’s one of those moments in the 90-year history of Medill, one of those chapters in the [university’s] history, that I think will remain heartbreaking.

”Not just heartbreaking, adds Leff. Ironic. “From the minute I heard about the Anita Alvarez subpoena, I felt that she set out to ruin David’s reputation and to derail the concept of the [Medill Innocence] Project. And I think she did a damn good job. And I think that, wittingly or unwittingly, the university played right into her hands.”

At the bottom of it all, the question still remains: Why would the university go to such great lengths to not simply reprimand Protess—or even push him out—but to publicly attack him, his work, and his integrity, to virtually excommunicate a man who had brought such renown to the school? (emphasis my own)

And that, boys and girls, was how Anita Alvarez was bumped to front of the line for Two Minute Hate and now in the Hate Cycle.

"60 Minutes" sent their hard hitting team to do a job on Cook County States Attorney Alvarez and they chatted up an Innocence Project talker from a its New York affiliate, Peter Neufield to dig up necrophilia in order to smear Alvarez, but not the hometown cabbie briber and Fagin Dave Protess.  Alvarez was set up and she is now a subject for the scorn of Zorn, the malice of Marin, and eggs of the editorial boards of both papers.

Alavarez was Bush-whacked. Given the editing, the snide and syrupy slurs of CBS 'Byron Pitts, Anita Alvarez did a commendable job with the 60 Minutes advocate. She held her ground and stated the case.

Ms. Alvarez fell afoul of the Medill/NorthwesternLaw/Lawsuit-Lotto Lawyer complex when she out-ed Chicago’s Fagin – David Protess – for the hypocrite-corner cutting phony that he is; causing Northwestern to deep-six him after years allowing The Wrongful Everything Gang to burnish the university’s reputation as Progressive Dreamworks and Hogwarts Illinois

Max Weismann's Letter to George - Orwell

Letter to George Orwell

RE: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)

Dear George,

Many of us Americans scoffed at your book when it came off the press in 1949. Now 60 years later, events are occurring that sadly give us pause and respect for your early vision.

Alas, your terms "Big Brother" and "Newspeak" reflect the direction of our current society of excessive governmental paternalism, control and the dangerous absence of a real press.

Unless we wake up as citizens, I'm afraid we will end up as your Winston Smith.

Best regards,

Max Weismann