The Banality of Virtue

Let me start by defining what I mean by virtue. Virtue is bonding with those in the conversation over your shared superiority to those who are not. I often say that my modus operandi is ‘love the person, challenge the ideas.’ The only basis on which I challenge ideas is for their underlying belief in our superiority to others not in the room. And that keeps me in near constant conflict. This will be no exception.

In this episode, I give three examples in the realm of politics, ponerology, and mean Nextdoor posts slandering nail salons. I look at why moral superiority is illogical but also the fastest way to get other people to like you. There is an unspoken code that friends don’t disagree with friends, especially in public. They present a united front against the other side. This is, I believe, the key to how we’re manipulated.

It’s hard to criticize someone for judging others as inferior without them feeling you’re making yourself superior by judging them. It may be easier to see if you’re not the one being challenged. So while I’m sorry to be making these individuals who I respect into an example, I hope it will help us recognize that critiquing a behavior is different than disrespecting the person. And if that behavior is disrespecting others, we can’t ignore the behavior without joining them in hate.

The cold form of hatred is superiority. When challenged, it leads to hot hatred in the form of anger and violence. If we want to end the latter, we need to nip it in the bud—in ourselves and each other by naming it without offense. We’re trying to change the paradigm by which the exploiters get us to go along with them, by promising ‘our side’ will win and the bad, stupid people will lose. If the only ones who critique us are on the other side, they win. It’s the thinking we’re critiquing, not the person. On that distinction, the future rests.

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be kind … of a bitch

My first example is a comment thread with Jenna McCarthy from Doc Malik’s interview of her. Jenna writes Jenna’s Side Rocks, which she says is a play on words:

#249 - Jenna McCarthy: From Kamala to Trump: Humour, Politics, and the State of America

To put this in context, Jenna is all in pink with a MAHA cap on the day after the election. She’s spunky and funny and smart. She and Ahmad start by doing impressions of Kamala, Biden and Trump. Her Kamala is hilarious, but Ahmad’s Biden—yelling at Hunter off-camera—takes that round. On Trump it’s a tie. I post my first comment saying “I adore this woman” and continue with why.

Jenna says, “I think Trump truly loves America.” At some point she says, “I don’t know anything about Israel and Gaza.” Ahmad asks her, if Trump was a dating prospect, what are the signs that would make her say, “Nah, he’s not who I thought he was”? Jenna tells a charming story about her first date with her now-husband, where he used her bathroom, washed his hands and left the towel scrunched on the counter. She thought, “He’s a slob! I can’t go out with him!” She almost ditched him then but was talked out of it, and now they have several kids.

Towards the end, Jenna shows Ahmad a necklace she has that says “Be Kind.” But then when you extend it, it says “Be Kind of a bitch.” She claimed that proudly. So that will enable you to get the references in my comment to Ahmad:

Tereza Coraggio

When Jenna asks if you think Trump loves America, I wanted her to define both love and America. I looked up one of my favorite quotes from Ursula K LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. The character Estravan says:

How does one hate a country, or love one? I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks. I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country, is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love?

And when Jenna says she doesn't know anything about Israel and Gaza, what she means is that she doesn't care. If she did, she would find out—nothing's stopping her. As far as I could tell, her goal for Trump is to change the food pyramid and put ripped Bobby in charge.

I'm trying to put this kindly but I am also kind of a bitch about these things. It's like not caring that your husband works for the Mafia and tortures the kids of shopowners who don't pay ... as long as he folds the towel in the washroom.

Another quote from Estravan: "A man who doesn't detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government on earth, it would be a great joy to serve it."

It's not Trump who's corrupt, it's the whole system. And my plan to change it isn't simplistic and naive: https://www.amazon.com/How-Dismantle-Empire-2020-Vision/dp/1733347607.

Jenna McCarthy Author

I'm so sorry I didn't say what you wanted me to say! Let me fix that: To love one's country is to feel pride, devotion, and loyalty toward it; to want to protect it and see it thrive; to respect its history and its heritage. Your quote sounds very globalist to me in the way I believe "white privilege" is racist to the core. Why would anyone infer that patriotism implies hostility or hatred toward other countries? If I say I love my kids fiercely, does that suggest that I unlove all other children? As my daughters would say, that sounds like a you problem.

Let's address this: "And when Jenna says she doesn't know anything about Israel and Gaza, what she means is that she doesn't care. If she did, she would find out—nothing's stopping her." Smug and condescending much? What do you, Tereza, know about the cholera outbreak in Zambia or insurgent violence in Mauritania? What's stopping you from knowing everything about everything? I am not afraid to admit when I don't know enough about a topic to weigh in confidently and definitively. You should try it. ;)

I also am not afraid to concede—as I did a dozen times in this interview—that I *can* see your side's points. I'm open to the possibility that Trump is a puppet who was only allowed to win this (s)election because they sanctioned it. Are you open to the (vague, remote, surely unlikely) possibility that you've gotten any of this wrong?

Ahmad and I talked about a hundred different goals for Trump, but you heard what you wanted to hear (so that you could plug your book; clever!). By your estimation I'm a fool, simplistic, and naive. "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." (Shakespeare)

There's one thing we can agree on: you ARE kind of a bitch.

(You said it; I just agreed. :)

Tereza Coraggio

I'm sorry, Jenna, I clearly didn't express that well. My motto, that I express in posts like Disagreeable Women, is to love the person, challenge the ideas. Women are typically good at the first but bad at the second. Men the reverse. And by 'love' I mean seeing the other person as an equal and looking to understand.

I think that 'speaking truth to power' is virtue-signaling, it's speaking truth to our friends that's risky. By your 'be kind ... of a bitch' necklace, I jumped into challenging your ideas and skipped over telling you all the places we agree. When I posted my first note that I adored you, based on your Kamala impression, that didn't change by the end of the interview. I love your energy and fire and honesty.

I've written much about why I couldn't support Kennedy because of his unwavering support for Israel. Mary McLaughlin asked if I was a single-issue voter. I explained my position that ethics isn't what someone does for us, but what we do to other people. With all three candidates, I am forced to participate in the most unethical and immoral acts humanly possible. What could they offer me that would make me be okay with that?

What happens in Zambia or Mauritania isn't something I'm doing by proxy. But Israel wouldn't even exist if it hadn't been for US interference in the Great War, which would have been peaceably settled except for the Balfour Declaration. WWII would never have happened. And none of what Israel is doing now would be possible without US money and weaponry.

Israel, or rather the powers behind it, run US policy, not just foreign but in all of the propaganda we call media, the medical hegemony, the global finance system, education, law and police. Mossad carried out 9-11. They are the Deep State. So Ahmad is not crazy to predict another faked assassination by a Palestinian-American, where Trump is whisked off to Epstein Island and Vance takes his place. Vance is their man, Trump is the martyr who would get red-blooded Republican men to fight in the Middle East.

When you say you love your children and you say you love America, do you mean the same thing by that word? Do you love Democrats in America just like your children? Do you feel a loyalty to those Democrats that you don't towards Ahmad, because he was born on a different plot of land? Is America (which really should be two continents, not the default for one country that doesn't even have a name—United Statesians?) the land, the people, or an ideology? To love an ideology uncritically seems dangerous to me.

To me, this isn't a one-time battle between Kamala and Trump. It's a 3500 yr war between empire and sovereignty. I'm hoping it's the last time we fall for a handful of people ruling over us while they goad us into fighting each other. I'm glad Trump won, which I think was inevitable. It means that we're in the last stretch of their plan.

Some people critique those who eschew electoral politics as not having an alternative, and just giving up. Or they have poorly thought-out alternatives that don't hold up to scrutiny. I don't think it's possible to present an alternative to the global economy in a comment box. But it's a question I spent ten years researching. So yes, if I didn't link my book as an alternate framework, I would be disparaging your solution of Trump without putting myself out there for your critique.

You and I agree that things need to change. You are hoping that political change is enough to solve the problems. If you find that it's not, will you move to another country? I'm saying that's not the only alternative. We can divorce the oligarchs and keep our property, which never belonged to them in the first place. As you go through these four years of trying to make the marriage work, I just wanted you to keep that in mind.

We're on the same side. And so is everyone else.

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the perils of ponerology

The next example is from a comment thread from the excellent Decode the World’s 25 People You Didn’t Know were Linked to WEF:

25 People You Didn't Know were Linked to WEF

To set the stage on ponerology, which is the study of evil, this was my comment to Decoding the World:

I see good and evil as adverbs, not adjectives. They're qualities of actions, not inherent qualities of people. I believe that people are all inherently good, which is the only belief I have that I won't raise to question. If I believed otherwise, I'd believe in my moral superiority, and I refuse that belief. When people behave badly, therefore, flawed systems and stories are to blame.

I define doing good as alleviating suffering and doing better as enabling others to alleviate their own and others' suffering. To do bad is to inflict suffering but to do evil is to cause others to inflict suffering. Without systems of obedience and the stories that justify them, there couldn't be the mass infliction of suffering there is. Being coerced into committing acts that go against our nature creates a cognitive dissonance that kills the conscience. They can't think about it clearly without believing they're a bad person.

A commenter called Nimble Navigator responded on who was in the WEF:

Here’s an easy way to remember. Anyone in power in a member of that club. See? Easy peasy!

I replied:

I still require quotes, facts, money traced before I dismiss anyone as a fraud just because I've heard of them. Even if you're right 99% of the time.

Nimble Navigator wrote:

Many pretend to start out small. Rags to riches. Most are children of the dark ones that have the power in this realm. If not, they pay a huge price to join the club. If one is aware of that price, it’s horrific!

I answered:

I suspect even the children of the dark ones pay a horrific price. I describe these as pedo-sadist cults that make their own children complicit in acts done to other children, to bind them through shame and blackmail. Maybe they have hidden fathers who are in this club, maybe they sold their souls for fame. In either case, they deserve more pity than scorn. By acknowledging what goes on in these cults without blaming the victims, we can end their power: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/pedo-sadist-cults-and-anneke-lucas and https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/hollywood-and-pedosadist-cults

Nimble Navigator concurred:

I would agree with you on having compassion for those who’ve made choices for fame, power and money as ultimately they will pay the personal price of having lost sovereignty over their own souls. I don’t understand how that would end their power but it sure puts our own personal power back into our hands instead of playing victim to the powerful.

I returned:

We were talking about children born into powerful families. Can a child give up its soul? And how do you know what happened to those who became the puppets of these cults, used by them to send subliminal messages to the public? Did they know what they were getting into? Or were they drugged, rufied, set up with children groomed to be sexual, put into macabre rituals while under the influence of psychedelics?

Your hypothesis rests on your moral superiority to others, that you never would have made the choices they did. The only way that's possible is if you were born morally superior and would have carried that with you no matter whose life circumstances you were dropped into. That's what the concept of a soul is—superiority that follows you from body to body. I don't believe in that.

Nimble Navigator retorted:

You’re projecting, Tereza. You have no idea who I am and you’re showing yourself with your judgments. You’re looking into a mirror and seeing yourself, then having the moral superiority to judge others. Take a rest, go within and tend to your own traumas, dear.

I clarified:

You're taking my comment personally but I don't mean it that way. When you say, "they will pay the personal price of having lost sovereignty over their own souls," you're saying others are so immoral they no longer have a soul. Is there a different way you mean that? And unless you believe that you also have lost sovereignty over your soul, you're making a statement of moral superiority. Please explain if I'm wrong.

I'm not saying that's unique to you—it's the whole basis of Christianity, free will and the soul. What I'm saying is that moral superiority is illogical. It's something I've argued in many episodes on why, if we're born morally equal, our behavior in our life is because of our circumstances. We all tend to the good and want to do good, imo.

I'm not judging you, I'm explaining why I don't think you—or any of us—can judge others.

Nimble Navigator continued:

You’re spot on about judging others. We don’t know their circumstances or what traumas they’ve faced in their lives. I just have a belief, not based on any evidence other than resonation in my heart, that some people have sold their souls to attain fame and fortune. The children are innocents yet we cannot judge that as truth either. What have they brought with them into this life/this realm? What experiences did they want? We can’t even begin to make pronouncements or judgements about anything. Even the right and wrong proclamations are judgement.

So I don’t feel morally superior to anyone. I had a choice to sell my soul for notoriety, and I chose not to. Just a personal choice. Those that do, do so for their own reasons. It’s a huge price to pay…I’ll venture to make that statement.

I don’t know if I’ve answered your questions or if I’ve gone off on a separate path of discussion. I’ll leave that to you to decide.

I demurred:

Kathleen Devanney quoted her mother on a thread about this topic, "If we knew everything people had been through, we could never judge them. And since we'll never know everything, why not skip right to forgiveness?"

You state, based on the resonance in your heart, that other people have sold their souls as a 'belief' not based on evidence. My only dogma, or belief that I don't raise to evidence, is that I'm no better than anyone else. You may not 'feel' morally superior to anyone else but your belief, on which you base all other perceptions, is that you are. It would be contradictory to say other people have sold their souls—possibly before they were born—and you could have but you chose not to, but that doesn't make you morally superior. Of course you believe it does, it's the basis of your belief system.

I'm not criticizing your belief in your own moral superiority. I'm merely acknowledging it, based on your own statements. If you didn't sell your soul for notoriety because the price was too high for the value of what you would have gained, that's a business calculation not a moral decision. You don't know what the price was for others, both for refusing or accepting the deal. You don't know what you would have done in their shoes. All you have is a belief, which I define as making up your mind in advance of the evidence.

Nimble Navigator concluded:

I’m going to have to end this conversation, Tereza. You seem to be fixated on the term “morally superior”and truly i don’t know wtf you’re carrying on about. You and I live in two different dimensions it seems and therefore we cannot communicate properly. I don’t care that you continually judge me. That’s specifically about you. That’s called projection. You judge and you project. It’s quite clear. What you think about me makes not a lick of difference to me. I just feel for you. There’s a mental imbalance going on and I hope you get it squared away, my friend! Godspeed!!

I ended with:

Thanks, Nimble. It's a useful example you've provided, that I've copied into my stack for the future in an episode called 'The Banality of Virtue.' It's always hard to show the underlying belief system without people thinking that I'm judging them ... for judging other people. But I think you've made my point quite nicely.

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hitting the nail salon on the head

On Tuesday, I went to my favorite nail salon, which is usually bustling. It was strangely deserted. The guy a couple chairs down said, “I’m glad to see someone else who wasn’t scared away by the awful Nextdoor post. I’ve known Pauline and Fred (the Vietnamese owners) since they opened and I can’t believe someone would do this to them.” After my mani-pedi, and getting more information from the owner, I reactivated my Nextdoor account so I could see for myself:

Dan Marshall Lighthouse Cowells since 1991

I feel obligated to let everybody know what I heard about Mission Nails on Mission Street. A former employee informed me that the lady that owns mission nails does not wash the towels after she treats our feet and hands. She sits them out on the back of the building to dry and then reuses them a couple times before she washes them. She also told me one of the customers got a foot infection. This is very inappropriate. So I investigated myself and drove around back and sure enough all the towels were out there drying.. I personally do not go there anymore. Just want to let everybody know what's going on on the Westside.

Some of the responses:

• Report this! XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX times.

• Sacramento board of cosmetology will ticket them with a big fine & possibly shut them down

• Inexcusable! That place should be shut down!

• 🤢

• Dan it’s your responsibility to follow through. If you don’t follow through it’s like dropping the ball and someone who doesn’t see this might end up injured all because YOU decided to drop the ball?

• 30 year cosmetologist here. super gross and scary. She can get shut down for this!

• Disgusting. I used to own a salon. So gross.

• the rest of the place is disgusting also. Tons of dust, cobwebs, nail trimmings on the floor, I would not let my dog use their bathroom.

• Won’t be going back there again for my pedi’s 🤢🤢🤢

• 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢

• Other recommendations for nail salons XXXXX XXXX times.

• I use them but never will again. I had c0v1d a year ago last August and had a very strong feeling that is where I got it. Thanks for the information!

  • [a sane reply] they all wear masks and how would you know you got it there? Is that the only exposure you’ve had? Sheltered life

• So thrashy! If they can afford a cleaning service then they shut shutdown.

• OMG! These comments are like villagers with pitch forks! Some of you all need to check yourselves, my goodness.

  • you remember the place In Watsonville where all those people got MERSA? Mission Nails needs to be reported to the health department

• Ick!

• that’s disgusting 😭!! SO UNSANITARY , they probably don’t disinfect properly either

• Disgusting! Definitely needs to be reported and people to stop going there.

• Someone Needs to call State Board XXXXX XXXXX times w/ phone number.

  • You should! The more people that do that, the more it will get dealt with faster. Everyone in the comments is saying “someone needs to do something” instead of actually doing something.

• Yuck!🤢

• You are much appreciated for letting this unacceptable practice to continue by speaking up. Hopefully they'll catch word of it and make some changes. You might even take it a step further and inform the proper agency inspectors so they can give them a visit.....

• Oh hell no! Not paying for faunchy, foot fungi.

• gross!!!

• Rancid and decrepit. Disease ridden.

• Gross and unsanitary, to say the least🤬😩

• Wow how said!i will never go there again thanks for the heads up!

• Ewwww...

• Ooooh that's nasty

Dan then posted:

I'm done with it, I just wanted to let everybody know... Feel free to report it to the city. I just didn't want to go through all the hassle. I don't even know who to contact and anybody can inform them so you can if you feel like it... Just keeping all of us westsiders informed.

I answered Dan:

Dan, so you're done with this, eh? Clapping your hands together and saying, "Mission (Nails) accomplished!" Without a shred of evidence, other than cleaning rags hung to dry, you're ready to ruin this business. How did you meet this ex-employee? Was she doing your nails at a competitor's salon? Is she the ex-employee who left there to open her own salon? Why didn't you report this to the health authorities INSTEAD of posting hearsay on ND? Anyone who actually cared about the health of their neighbors would want to catch them in the act and shut them down. If this rumor was true, you've given them notice to clean up their act before the inspector shows up. If this rumor is FALSE, you've slandered innocent and hardworking people and defrauded them from the reputation of a business that holds their life savings. I don't know how you sleep at night damaging people you don't even know because you can't be bothered to contact the proper authorities—so much easier to fling a little mud on ND and hit send!

I have been on a rampage and answered MANY of the 220 comments. This is the one I posted to the group:

Tereza Coraggio

My daughter Veronica, who is over-the-top on her cleaning fanaticism, got me started going to Mission Nails five years ago. I'm not a manicure kind of person, I don't like the third-world servant vibe. But the owner is a person of so much integrity and compassion, I've been hooked. Besides being an absolute perfectionist (don't go if you're in a hurry) she treats all her workers like family. I know all about her son in the military and her daughter studying medicine. My daughter has a real bond with her, and she always asks about her. The salon has fresh towels, sanitized tools, and not a speck of dirt that I've seen—and my daughter sees everything!

Today, when I went there, it was practically empty. Dan has 'felt obligated' to ruin this woman's business based on a comment by an ex-employee WHO LEFT TO START HER OWN SALON. I'm certain it's the same one who bent my ear for my whole manicure complaining about her ex- and why she needed more money. She guilted me into a big tip but I was relieved that she wasn't there the next time. However, she has great English and that makes her credible to Dan—who didn't care enough about the community's health to report it.

If this was false, that would have been no harm. But it certainly wouldn't have smeared the competition for the ex-employee. So Dan did the NOBLE thing and destroyed their reputation without ever bothering his petty little head about reporting it. Now there's no way they can ever clear their name. If they're inspected now and pass, Dan can just say they were forewarned. I don't know how he sleeps at night casually crushing the livelihoods of innocent people to impress his new manicurist.

And my ending comment:

Let's look at what Dan's post and the reactions to it reveal. People are grossed out by the idea that a towel that dried someone else's feet might touch their feet. This evokes outrage in them because who knows what kind of people with their horrible feet go in there. And people do have horrible feet! I won't mention genders but it's not women.

Why is it considered just fine that these Vietnamese are spending their days touching and caring for people's horrible feet, doing a job we would never do, when the idea of a common towel coming into contact with our precious feet grosses us out? Again, I'm not saying they ever reuse towels. That is BS made up by a disgruntled ex-employee and posted irresponsibly by Dan. But the reaction of all the people who are okay with humans being subjected on the daily to something that horrifies them as a possibility of secondhand contact says a lot. I'm sure their ancestors said the same about how they just don't make slaves like they used to.

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"There is no reciprocity. Men love women. Women love children. Children love hamsters. Hamsters don't love anyone; it is quite hopeless." ― Alice ThomaElliss. I look at a post on Toxic Old Divorcees, 'hypersexual tribal sh*t', sociopaths on love & marriage, the war of the sexes and 'hoes, horndogs & hookers.' I end with dragon dreams and womb wealth.

I define good and evil, and apply the definition to theology /metaphysics, politics & candidates, ethics vs. issues, parenting & governance, and life choices. I examine whether judgment of people makes it harder to end evil actions.

Love the person, challenge the ideas. Women are good at the first but not the second. Men are good at the second but not the first. If we’re going to get out of this rat race, we need to be doing both. I’m on a mission to make women more argumentative and claim logic as their friend. And perhaps a mission to make men less judgmental, which is to say more loving. I look at two discussions on moral superiority and semantics of anti-Semitism to make my point.