Club Mentality

           Old Gadfly:  IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind), I have a hunch what you intended by your message to me about club mentality.  I anticipate the analysis relates to current events.  Tell me more.

            IM:  Let me frame my position with the banner:  “Scrushy-in the club; and Paterno-out of the club.”  I learned about Richard Scrushy through one of your ethics case study texts.

AM (an American seasoned aviator with an inquiring mind):  Who’s Scrushy?

IM:  Scrushy founded HealthSouth, a very large chain of hospitals and rehabilitation centers.  From 1987 through 1997, stock prices increased by 31% each year, going from $1 per share to $31 by 1998.[1]  To make a long story short, Scrushy created a corporate culture that led to “cooking the books” in their reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission (i.e., the SEC).  Scrushy and 15 other executives were the first to be indicted by the federal government for violating provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.  The 15 other executives were found guilty of a variety of violations.  Scrushy was acquitted of all 36 felony charges. 

AM:  What accounted for the difference in convictions?

IM:  Two major reasons.  First, despite every other co-defendant claiming to take their direction from Scrushy, Scrushy claimed he had no knowledge that questionable accounting practices were taking place.

AM:  Sounds like a familiar defense given some of the scandals currently playing out in Washington DC today.

IM:  The second reason is that Scrushy went out of his way to engender his public personality with the people who would populate the jury for his trial.  Here is how Gadfly’s case study text described it:

Mr. Scrushy joined a church in his hometown just prior to the trial and made substantial contributions.  The pastors of the church attended the Scrushy trial each day.  Leslie Scrushy, Mr. Scrushy’s second wife, attended the church regularly and often spoke in tongues from the pulpit.  Mr. Scrushy’s son had a daily television show on one of the local television stations that Mr. Scrushy owned.  He provided daily coverage of the trial, complete with interviews of the pastors and others attending the trial.  The show enjoyed very high ratings.[2] 

Old Gadfly:  IM, if I correctly interpret what you are saying, public popularity influenced the jury to accept Scrushy’s ignorance claim.

IM:  Yes.  However, Scrushy was later found guilty of political bribery in a civil case and held liable by a judge for nearly $2.9 billion.  So, in the end there was some justice, but it does not correct the complicit behavior of the jury in the criminal trial.  As we have discussed in previous discussions, emotions trump reason.  In Scrushy’s case, the evidence that would shape reason could not compete with the likeability of Scrushy.

AM:  Now, we see similar dynamics playing out on a national level.

Old Gadfly:  OK, I see your argument for the “Scrushy in club” part of the banner.  Despite the news cycles about Benghazi, the IRS, and the DOJ secret subpoenas for phone records, Obama still sports a 53% approval rating.  How about the Paterno out of the club analogy?

            IM:  Coach Joe Paterno left this world in infamy.

            AM:  Let me just say, before you go further, that I watched the Joe Paterno public execution with great pain and disappointment.  I will always remember a Reader’s Digest article I read about Paterno while waiting for some car maintenance.  According to the article, Paterno was being aggressively recruited to be a head coach for a variety of National Football League teams with potential salaries that were orders of magnitude greater than what he earned at Penn State.  He consulted the wisest person he had ever known, his wife, about what he should do.  She reminded him of their values, how much Joe loved coaching, not just about the sport of football, but about being good citizens, living their lives with purpose grounded in traditional virtues.  Coach Paterno was not motivated by pay.  He was committed to bringing the best out of his players.

 

            IM:  I agree, but the NCAA leadership, and others such as politicians and the media, chose to punish Paterno and those who followed him because he did not do enough regarding assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s criminal behavior.  Former FBI director, Louis Freeh was paid $6.5 million to investigate the Sandusky scandal.  The report did more than wound a living legend.  According to news sources: 

Ten days after the Freeh report was released, Penn State removed Paterno's statue outside Beaver Stadium. The next day, the NCAA hit Penn State and Paterno with an unprecedented string of penalties relating to the scandal: a university fine of $60 million, the vacation of 112 victories from 1998-2011, a four-year postseason ban, scholarship losses and other sanctions. The NCAA acknowledged using the Freeh report to mete out penalties instead of doing its own investigation.[3]

 

Old Gadfly:  Did Paterno do anything illegal or violate University policy?

            IM:  No.  When told about Sandusky’s alleged behaviors, Paterno followed University reporting policy and notified the appropriate authority within the University’s administrative structure.

            AM:  Yet, Paterno was demonized for not going above and beyond University protocol as if to suggest he was fully aware of the egregiousness of Sandusky’s behavior, thus condoning it by not doing more.

            IM:  Yes, and now, because of Freeh’s rushed, yet generously rewarded report, the nearly five decades of legacy leadership and mentorship by Joe Paterno has been erased by the removal of many visible symbols and achievements.

Old Gadfly:  If your logic is correct, then NCAA leadership imposed punishments upon many who had no connection to Sandusky’s actions, like the players who were part of the 112 vacated wins, scholarship opportunities for those who had already been recruited into Penn State’s program, and countless others. d Gadfly:  If your logic is correct, then ore.

e assistant coach'ersity protocol as if to suggest he was f AM:  This is what progressive social justice is all about.  It’s a win-lose proposition.  In this case, there had to be clear winners and losers.  Because Sandusky was a football coach, this impugned anything related to football at Penn State.  The NCAA executioners happen to be university presidents, none of whom ever coached let alone run an athletic program within a university.  University presidents are political administrators.  They get hired to build networks for political and financial influence.  They are like executive directors for nonprofits, hired for the main purpose of keeping the organization handsomely resourced.  Yet, without the millions, perhaps billions of revenue Paterno generated with his successful football teams, many programs, including women sports programs, would not have been funded.  It will be interesting to see all the unintended consequences stemming from the NCAA’s ruling.

            Old Gadfly:  Who were the winners?

            AM:  The politically correct moralists who consider college football a mere manifestation of capitalism.

            Old Gadfly:  Do you think football, because it is a contact sport, also poses some kind of threat?

            AM:  Of course, because the sport requires men with chests.

IM:  Wait a minute.  Is your argument in relation to C.S. Lewis’ observation about “men without chests” in The Abolition of Man?

AM:  Yes.  Those who play or have an interest in following college football refuse to be “conditioned” by the “conditioners,” who think we all should hold hands and sing Kumbaya while the conditioners ensure equality when providing for our personal needs.

Old Gadfly:  I’m pleased to see your arguments supported by seminal works.

AM:  While it was not the easiest book to read, I see why you wanted me to read John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice.[4]  Based on what we have discussed, proponents for social justice believe in Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” concept, where individuals step behind the veil (pardon my aviator candidness), where they step behind the veil and engage in mutual mental masturbation, emerging from behind the veil enlightened as to how to tell other people how to live their lives—ultimately picking winners and losers, rewarding sycophants and punishing dissenters.[5]

Old Gadfly:  So, we have two analogies—Scrushy and Paterno—to demonstrate how people are classified as in the club or outside the club.  Based on the analysis, it looks like Obama and his team are still in the club for all three scandals.  If people feel like Obama is giving them what they need or want, then why would they care if he lies or misleads through manufactured narratives?

IM:  So far, it looks like Obama is following the Scrushy model.

AM:  Eventually, Scrushy was voted out of the club with a conviction based on indisputable evidence.  Here is the evidence under Obama’s watch: four Americans killed due to terrorism at Benghazi at the peak of the Presidential campaign; hundreds of dissenting voices were silenced by the IRS during the last Presidential campaign; and journalists and editors have now been warned by the DOJ that their sources can be identified and prosecuted. 

Old Gadfly:  Do you remember the Pentagon Papers scandal?

AM:  Absolutely.  Daniel Ellsberg leaked 43 volumes of top secret material to The New York Times.  Among a thorough treatment by the media of the Papers, here is an excerpt from the front page of the Times years later:  “[the Pentagon Papers] demonstrated, among other things, that the Lyndon Baines Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance."[6]

 IM:  As I recall, the Justice Department secured a federal court injunction to force the Times to cease any further publication of Pentagon Papers material.  The case reached the Supreme Court, which ruled on June 30, 1971 in a 6-3 decision that the federal government failed to meet the burden of proof for its actions.  In his opinion, Justice Black argued:  “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.  And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

AM:  Ironically, the Pentagon Papers was a Defense Department Study of a period before Nixon.  The study indicted the Johnson administration.  But, a combination of events and the effort to enlighten the American public left Nixon holding the bag.  How many times did you hear people lament about “Nixon’s War”?  Nixon had nothing to do with the lies and deception captured in the Pentagon Papers.  But he certainly inherited the security issues that followed Ellsberg’s leaks and their violation of security laws and regulations.  Johnson escaped any infamy associated with his own practices of lies and deception.

Old Gadfly:  Do you see any of these dynamics currently playing out under this Administration?

AM:  Absolutely!  As we discussed in our last conversation, this Administration has mastered Sun Tzu’s concept of tactical dispositions.  This Administration’s most serious threat is any American political ideology that is not progressive.  This is why disagreement is not part of its lexicon.  This Administration has pure, unadulterated contempt for views right of center, especially for those who hold and express them.  This is why members of the Administration have no reservation in accusing Republicans of manufacturing scandals, conspiracy theories, fishing expeditions, and so forth. 

The AP and IRS scandals are mere smoke screens for the most egregious activities that have flowed from this Administration.  Yet, the AP and IRS resonate more with the American public.  The Administration wants these two scandals to percolate for as long as possible, which will make Benghazi look more and more fictional over time and the “speed bump” Obama wants it to be in his rearview mirror.  Obvious questions have not been asked:  Why was the Ambassador in Benghazi in the first place?  The facility in Benghazi is not a consulate or diplomatic facility.  Remember the large caches of weapons that went missing during the Qaddafi regime change?  Check out the port facility at Benghazi below.

 

            Old Gadfly:  What are you insinuating?

            AM:  Do you remember Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal?   The U.S. was covertly selling arms to Iran and then providing the funds from those sales to anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, known as Contras.  The activities were in direct violation of the Boland Amendment.  So, was the U.S. involved in transferring any of these weapons caches to other parties in the region?  Further, how did the jihadist terrorist groups know about the facility?  Did they know the Ambassador would be there?  Or, were they merely focused on the opportunity to take on more resources?    

Old Gadfly:  Very interesting AM.  I wish we had more time to chase this rabbit down its hole, but a similar analysis might be argued with Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine in which he aggressively pursues a journalistic prosecution of the Bush Administration.[7]  I was amazed at all the classified information Suskind included in his book, yet disappointed in how he distorted the picture by not aligning his evidence with the broader historical and geopolitical context.  This could have been deliberate or just the result of too much time behind his club’s veil of ignorance.

IM:  Given the media’s gentle treatment of the three current scandals, it appears there may be an unholy alliance between a progressive media and a progressive government.

AM:  Jefferson must have anticipated the possibility of these types of developments when he included the following passage in the Declaration of Independence: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

IM:  I must admit: if our conversation is being recorded, then we will probably be audited.

AM:  I’m tempted to stop paying taxes because California Democratic Congressman Becerra assured me during the IRS hearing hosted by the House Ways and Means Committee that paying taxes is a voluntary effort (Becerra’s segment starts at 1:27:56 in the C-Span video).  All my life I thought it was mandatory.  Perhaps my fears of the IRS involvement in implementing Obamacare are unfounded.

Old Gadfly:  Perhaps we just need to demonstrate a club mentality to avoid any scrutiny?

AM:  That’s called going along to get along, a common affliction for Copernican drones.  Ellsberg was no drone.  Nor is James Rosen of Fox News.  Let’s see how the club mentality plays out in his case.

Old Gadfly:  Good analysis and reflection, IM and AM.           

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[1] Helyar, J.  (2002, July 7).  Insatiable King Richard. Fortune, pp. 76, 82.

[2] Jennings, M. M.  (2012).  Case 4.6, HealthSouth:  The Scrushy way.  In M. Jennings (Ed.), Business ethics:  Case studies and selected readings (7^th ed., pp. 183-192), Mason, OH:  South-Western Cengage Learning.

[3] Joe Paterno family releases report.  (2013, February 13).  ESPN.com.  Retrieved from http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/8930657/joe-paterno-family-report-calls-freeh-report-sandusky-scandal-total-failure 

[4] Rawls, J.  (1999).  A Theory of Justice.  Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

[5] Ibid, pp. 118-123.

[6] Apple, R. W.  (1996, June 23).  Pentagon papers.  The New York Times.  See also, Lewis, A.  (1996, June 7).  Abroad at home; “Bare the secrets.”  The New York Times.  Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/07/opinion/abroad-at-home-bare-the-secrets.html?ref=pentagonpapers   

[7] Suskind, R.  (2006).  The one percent doctrine:  Deep inside America’s pursuit of its enemies since 9/11.  New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster.

President Epimenides

IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind):  AM (an American seasoned combat aviator with an inquiring mind), last month, Gadfly and I discussed a segment on The O’Reilly Factor.  The gist of our discussion was how easy it is to spin reality even when one is critical of any such spin.

Old Gadfly:  Did you see spin in yesterday’s press conference with the President?

IM:  Absolutely!  Especially the part about Benghazi.  In fact, the rhetoric went well beyond spin.

Old Gadfly:  Tell AM about Epimenides.

IM:  Epimenides was a philosopher from Crete.  There is a modern paradox based on Epimenides and it refers to self-referential logic.  It starts with the premise, all Cretans are liars.  Epimenides then declares himself to be a Cretan.  He appears to be honest in his declaration.  Yet, if the premise is true, then he must be lying.  Do you see the paradox?  The premise is critical in self-referential logic.

AM:  Yes, but I’m trying to see how this links to Benghazi.

IM:  The President called the Benghazi investigations “political circuses,” “political sideshows,” and “politically motivated.”  Yet, it is clear now that the Susan Rice talking points during the five Sunday news programs were deliberately spun to present a false narrative.

AM:  I remember Rice wanted viewers to believe what happened was the result of a spontaneous mob motivated by an anti-Muslim video.  What initially struck me about this scenario is why was Rice the one selected to deliver the narrative.  The combat mission planner in me quickly realized this action was straight out of a chapter in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, on tactical dispositions.[1]  Sun Tzu said, “The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.”[2]  Rice is African American and a woman.  To attack Rice would be an attack on African Americans and women.  Symbolically, any such attack would be labeled racist and misogynist.  Thus, the incumbent and his lieutenants were placing a shield around the “premise,” or narrative told by Rice.  Jonah Goldberg explains this tactic in The Tyranny of Clichés:  How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.

Old Gadfly:  Excellent analysis, AM.  The tactic described by Sun Tzu implies a temporal context when he said, “and waited for the opportunity of defeating the enemy,” obviously Romney in this case.  Did context shape the tactic?

AM:  Shack!

IM:  What do you mean by “shack”?

AM:  It’s aviator jargon for “bulls-eye.”  Keep in mind, the attack on Benghazi was on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.  So, there are two “shacks” in what happened here.  The first was on the part of the terrorists who demonstrated that “terrorists are not on the run,” which was a major campaign argument in favor of the incumbent in the presidential campaign.  Despite these circumstances and given the incumbent was within two months of the general election, it was existentially important to keep the terrorist victory (and the false premise) a secret until after the election.  If this tactic worked, then who would care about what happened at that point?  After all, the spoils of victory go to the winner.  This was certainly demonstrated by Hillary’s “what difference does it make” declaration.

Old Gadfly:  So, would you conclude that the spinning of Rice’s talking points was politically motivated?

IM:  Yes, and the irony is that the president-elect, perhaps more justly named President Epimenides, accuses Republicans of engaging in a dishonest investigation based on political maneuvering.  He wants the public to believe Republicans are Cretans, which is why the public is so confused.  If the premise that Republicans are liars is true and they advance arguments that the Administration is guilty of presenting a false narrative, then Republicans are lying which by default makes the narrative advanced by Rice true.

Further, President Epimenides shows little diversity in his tactics.  When his gun control legislation went nowhere, he blamed a lot of his opponents (which should have included Democrats who also were against the legislation) as liars.  President Epimenides was confident that the “gun control” premise, shielded by family props, would be sufficient to pass in a Democrat-controlled Senate and then fail in the Republican House.  This would have been powerful “ammunition” for demonizing the GOP.  As analysts have already indicated this was part of a broader strategy to position the political battlefield for 2014 elections.

AM:  As for me, having served with great Americans who demonstrated outstanding leadership during tough circumstances, I am embarrassed to see an amateur diminish the greatness of a once great office of leadership.  And, when I think about one of the two investigators of the Accountability Review Board being a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now a board director for General Motors, I cannot help but smell “conflict of interest” when the incumbent and his sidekick loved to brag “bin Laden dead, GM alive” throughout the presidential campaign.

Old Gadfly:  It looks like Americans are getting a potentially lethal dose of Lord Acton’s dictum:  “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  What happens next?

AM:  It will be difficult to connect all the dots.  Remember, when Congressman Issa’s Government Oversight Committee was getting close to a smoking gun on the Fast and Furious Operation that killed two Border Patrol Agents and hundreds of Mexican citizens, President Epimenides imposed executive privilege.  This action indicated either (a) prior knowledge of the operation when publicly claiming no such knowledge or (b) abuse of executive privilege power.  Now, we hear about the IRS targeting certain conservative groups and the Justice Department secretly seizing phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters.

IM:  Unless the liberal media realizes and attempts to mitigate how they have been duped beyond their ideological complicity, people will agree with President Epimenides, who shrugged off what happened in Benghazi as a speed bump.

AM:  Complicating any attempt to find a moral compass to navigate these politically rough seas are attempts to eliminate or emasculate any spiritual inspiration or set of principles.  I was disappointed, and quite concerned, to see current efforts to criminalize expressions of faith within the military.  Being a fellow Air Force Academy graduate, I just do not understand Mikey Weinstein’s motivation for what he does.

Old Gadfly:  Ironically, just last weekend, a friend encouraged me to check out the Mexican Constitution and its history.  Religion was completely suppressed until the 1990s.  In the 1930s, “socialist education” was mandated for all schools, public and private.  It makes me wonder about the political orientation and logical affiliations of our Latino immigrants, legal and illegal.  It may explain certain behaviors stemming from our own political ideologies.  Perhaps we can discuss this topic at greater length in a future conversation.

IM:  Meanwhile, remember:  President Epimenides went to a Christian church in Chicago.

AM:  You mean the church whose Pastor declared, “God Damn America”?

Old Gadfly:  It looks like we have a lot to discuss.  I look forward to our next conversation.      

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[1] Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Edited by James Clavell), (New York, NY:  Delacourt Press, 1983).

 

[2] Ibid, p. 19.

"My Forehead Is Bleeding"

IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind):  Gadfly, just before you arrived, I bumped into a good, progressive friend.  I asked what he thought about today’s labor report, and he said, “Obama’s policies are working—unemployment rates are down.”

Old Gadfly:  Doesn’t he have a good argument?

IM:  I showed him the following graphic that I retrieved from the Bureau of Labor Statistics just this morning.  I suggested that this graphic is a much better picture of the current job situation, because it’s a better measure for the percentage of the employable population that is actually working. 

I added, “The percentage began its decline in 2007 when Democrats seized large majorities with a vocally vehement anti-business sentiment in both houses of Congress; and the decline accelerated at the end of 2008 when Democrats took control of two entire branches of the government.  The sharp decline leveled off with Tea Party movement warnings and Republicans taking control of the House.” 

I continued, “Politicians spin the statistics despite the number of real people affected.  The illusion of a lower unemployment rate does not account for the number of previously employed people that have dropped out of the job market.” 

Old Gadfly:  How did he respond?

IM:  He was in a daze, looking right through me with no facial affect and eyes glazed over.

Old Gadfly:  What happened next?

IM:  I said, “Look at this spreadsheet from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that I downloaded just this morning.”

 

I then raised my voice a little more and said, “Listen.  Since December of 2006, Bush’s last month in office with a Republican-controlled Congress, there now are 4.9 million fewer people working in America.  Sure, there have been job gains, but there have been job losses as well.  What these numbers do not tell us is how many of these new jobs are full-time with healthcare benefits, especially with concerns about the mandates and costs of Obamacare?  Frankly, the current job situation means significant loss of esteem for many American workers and their families, and major increases in income inequality.”

Old Gadfly:  Wait a second.  AM (a seasoned combat aviator with an inquiring mind) just walked in.  “Good morning, AM.  IM and I were just talking about this morning’s labor report.  Are you familiar with it?”

AM:   Yes.  Remember, numbers and stats can & DO LIE. We have been in trouble now for too many years, and NO, “things” are NOT getting better, but worse, with the next big “down-turn,” just around the “corner” with mandated changes in 2014.  One can LIE so much, it becomes “truth,” but with that kind of “truth,” nothing will ever get better 

Old Gadfly:  Thanks, AM.  I would add to what you said the notion that numbers are simply data.  Statistical methods can provide some useful information with the data, provided the approach is well-designed.  When statistics support a false reality, it is because the statistician was incompetent or the statistical “spinner” deliberately distorts reality. 

Your observation is on target.  It reminds me of a conversation IM and I recently had on Spin in the No Spin Zone.  

IM:  Welcome to the conversation, AM.

Old Gadfly:  You were pretty blunt with your progressive friend so early in the morning, IM.  How did your friend respond?

IM:  He said, “I cannot hear you because my forehead is bleeding.”  And then he stormed away.

Old Gadfly:  Your friend appears to be a Copernican drone. 

IM:  Perhaps so. But, he’s a good friend, and I’m hoping he’ll rationally engage in a future conversation on this and other topics.

AM:  What’s a Copernican drone?

IM:  Believe me, AM.  You are not one of them because you listen carefully to counterarguments and can explain how you arrived at your position on issues.

Old Gadfly:  AM, knowing that you are a seasoned and highly decorated combat aviator with over three decades of service to our nation, I truly understand you dedicated your life, not to mention the extensive sacrifices on the part of your family, to protecting the American way of life.  Your thinking is deeply grounded in insights regarding the meaning of the American way of life and the risks our nation faces.

IM:  Amen to that!

Old Gadfly:  Let’s meet again soon, IM and AM, to discuss many other issues that threaten America’s way of life. 

AM:  Thanks.  I look forward to it!

IM:  Me too!