Aristotle: Articulated the Principle of the Mean and Nicomachean Ethics, thereby establishing the most fundamental moral framework - and before Christianity
"The national media has looked into these allegations and has been unable to corroborate any of them." - Lis Smith (NY Times), this morning on 'Morning Joe'
"You waited 27 years. You think it couldn't wait a few more months? That's what I'd like to ask Ms. Reade. Why now? I'm not saying why not 27 years ago. I understand it can take victims years to come forward. I'm saying, why not before Super Tuesday? Why not last fall when we still had a dozen other candidates to choose from? Why wait until Biden is our only hope against Trump and then take him down?" - Bill Maher, on his 'New Rules' REAL TIME segment Friday.
The tragedy of Tara Reade and her sexual allegations against Joe Biden is that she chose the middle of the most existentially critical presidential campaign in U.S. history to voice them. Indeed, she also - in a recent interview with Megyn Kelly- called on Biden (our putative only hope to take down Trump)- to "drop out" of the race. And who, may I ask, would then step in with Joe Biden now the only human element standing between us all and a potential Trump re-election, and the shattering of every last vestige of morality, civility and rule of law?
In the wake of the Barr DOJ torpedoing the prosecution of Michael Flynn, inviting total corrupt rot of our justice system, and almost 80,000 dead Americans because of Trump's incompetent response to the pandemic, we see only the tip of the carnage to come if he is re-elected. Indeed the Sunday Denver Post ('Trump Rolls Back 60 Environmental Regulations'' p. 1A) shows the extent of harm this maggot has already perpetrated on the environment which include (ibid.):
-- Lifting all bans on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve
- Relaxing air pollution regs for plants that burn waste coal - increasing asthma and respiratory problems for millions
- Cancelling requirements for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions (Methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2)
- Lifting a ban on chorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to developmental disabilities in children
- Revoked rule preventing coal companies from dumping debris, waste into nearby streams
- Scaled back water pollution protections for tributaries, wetlands
- Rolled back a 40-year rule to protect migratory birds
-Currently conducting a sweeping overhaul of National Environmental Policy Act which will limit the environmental concerns federal agencies will be permitted to address, take into account.
It doesn't take a Mensa level IQ to see that all the above, not to mention the Trump cabal's war on women in removing reproductive rights, outlawing abortion and possibly even birth control (especially if yet another Right winger is appointed to the Supreme Court) bode ill for us all. Indeed, another Trump term has the potential to finish this nation off as a functioning democracy.
Here, Marlies, (a German friend of Janice's) comments come to mind, when Janice skyped with her last Friday: "My God! What is happening now in your country reminds me of what happened after Hitler came to power in 1933!"
Overwrought? Exaggerated? Nope. That's how a lot of our German friends (many relatives or friends of my late sister-in-law Krimhilde, see it. We may not see it so, because: 1) we have become too inured to the constant exposure to Trump's countless transgressions and their magnitude, and 2) we are deterred from proper perspective by a misreading of "Godwin's law". (I.e. the first person who mentions any comparisons with Hitler and Nazis loses an argument, see e.g.
So there is no doubt that this election is perhaps the most pivotal in our 230-odd year history. It may well mean the difference between preserving the constitutional foundations we have (and shoring up what's left), or losing them all in a Trump reincarnation - thanks to Reade's accusations against the only viable candidate left to take him on.
Here, it is instructive to return to the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, perhaps the most fundamental moral principles ever conceived, e.g.
"The Just then, is a certain proportionable thing. For proportion does not merely apply to number in the abstract, but to number generally, since it is equality of ratios and implies four terms at least (that this is the case in what is called discrete proportion is plain and obvious, but it is true also in continual proportion, for this uses the one term as two and mentions it twice, thus A:B:C may be expressed A:B::B:C. ....It will stand then thus: A:B::C:D, and then permutando, A:C::B:D and then (supposing C and D to represent the things) A+C:B+D::A:B. The distribution in fact consisting in putting together these terms thus: and if they are put together so as preserve this same ratio, the distribution puts them together justly. So then the joining of the first and third and second and fourth proportionals is the Just in the distribution, and this Just is the mean relatively to that which violates the proportionate, for the proportionate is a mean and the Just is proportionate. "
That leads to the conclusion:
"The Unjust is that which violates the proportionate"
This warrants further elaboration by way of his "Principle of the mean". To briefly put it into perspective: Every considered action - for whatever reason - has a "mean" or middle choice, as well as two extremes, one deficient, the other in excess. The "just" or "mean state" of action then - based on the above articulation - means one avoiding either extreme. For example, "moral virtue" exercised in moral action can lie between the excess of extreme moral indignation leading to persecution, and laxity or dismissing said transgression. And this cognitive assessment of the mean is not easy! As Aristotle reminds us (p.32, The Nicomachean Ethics):
"And so it is hard to be good, for surely hard it is in each instance to find the mean point...and so to act in due proportion, at the right time, with the right object, and in the right manner."
Based on the above, what is evident to me is that Tara Reade violated Aristotle's ethical proportion (and principle of the mean) by first not attending to the "right time". She chose, wittingly or otherwise, the absolute wrong time to raise her complaints (which have also contradicted each other at different times), in the middle of the most critical election campaign ever. And for which the wrong decision by the electorate could usher in a holocaust of moral dissolution if the morally bankrupt Trump is re-elected.
Reade's accusations also flout two other aspects of the Mean by demanding a standard of "compensation" (Biden departing the campaign) totally disproportionate to what personal satisfaction merits. Hence, Aristotle would argue her demand for Biden's departure violates the "right manner" and "the right object" by punishing not only Joe Biden but the likely 190 million citizens (and immigrants) who will be injured if that is accepted, i.e. if Biden is the optimal hope to end Trump's increasingly malignant reign of terror.
Thus, by seeking a perceived personal justice and harming Biden in the process (as a candidate to oppose the vastly more morally compromised Trump) she risks vitiating any effort to remove the threat of Trump. Also, in this context, arguably harming millions of women whose lives will now be upended by his re-election, i.e. when they will be denied access to birth control, abortion or even basic health care (say if the ACA is overturned) Not to mention the millions of immigrants who stand to also become the targets of Trump and his Gestapo aide Stephen Miller.
In other words, Reade demands a standard of satisfaction that promises to compound the existing evil by many orders of magnitude- while trying to expunge and obtain satisfaction for the vastly lesser evil she attributes to Biden. But by violating the Principle of the Mean in this "Trifecta" (time, manner, object) Reade, in effect, has failed to meet the most basic of moral standards for justice, as embodied in the most fundamental Aristotelian ethics.
What should Reade have done if convinced she merited "justice" for what she believes Biden did to her? Applying the Principle of the Mean, in respect to the elements of time, manner and object, she ought to have brought forth her complaints when the Democratic field still had 10-11 contenders. Then, by calling for Biden to drop out, there'd have at least been other choices of candidate which could practically be made at that time. There would also have been sufficient time for an investigation - say by the DNC - as opposed to barely three months before the Milwaukee convention. Failing that window of opportunity, she ought to have waited until after the election to bring out these charges, as opposed to this critical period in the campaign (and in the middle of a pandemic) which questions the role of her own ego - and desire for attention.
Reade's choices and actions transpired in the most parlous time in our history, with no room for any margin of error, or adverse distractions. Especially with Trump dangerously consolidating power using lackeys like William Barr - destroying the DOJ and the rule of law - while bragging that the "winners will write the history". Well, we cannot afford to have these vermin become repeat winners in November. Hence, there is no other option now than to ignore Tara Reade, especially as no 'there' has been found there (unlike with Trump.). Too much is on the line, and in respect of too many millions of lives being derailed or lost - to allow one' woman's disproportionate quest for "justice" to upset the whole damned national "applecart". (With which, btw, Janice totally concurs.)
Or to put it another way: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.
See Also
by Michael Winship | May 13, 2020 - 5:50am
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Excerpt:
"There must be one mission above all, one goal supreme: Vote this monster out of the White House. And along with him, tow to the nearest dump the clown car of malefactors who gave him license to cripple our republic.
Donald Trump’s defeat and the defeat of those in Congress who have enabled him with nary a word of protest are Priorities Number 1 through 100. Focus. Don’t be diverted by ideological hairsplitting and intraparty squabbling. Drive this creature and his army of creeps, leeches and miscreants back to the wet market from which they came."
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