13 Jan Sanctimony Fallacy – FT#189
Show Notes
The Sanctimony Fallacy occurs when someone claims to be morally superior to their opponent, either without evidence or in the face of contradictory evidence.
Trump
We started out by discussing this clip of Trump sanctimoniously accusing Democrats of sanctimony:
Then we talked about this clip of Trump claiming he did the right thing with regard to Roe v Wade:
Mark’s British Politics Corner
Mark talked about this clip of Kemi Badenoch justifying Trump’s attack on Venezuela:
Then he looked at this clip of Zack Polanski’s response to an attack on his morality:
And finally these clips of David Cameron on the morality of tax dodging:
Fallacy in the Wild
In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from Witness:
Then we discussed this clip from The Big Bang Theory:
And we finished up with this clip from Ted 2:
Fake News
Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:
Mark got it wrong again this week, and is on 88 out of 177 – below 50%!
The extent to which ICE can go fuck themselves is not a logical fallacy
We talked about the murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, and the administration’s gaslighting.
The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about
- Trump’s New Year’s resolutions were to cut back on the McDonalds and the international war crimes, and like most of us, he didn’t make it more than a few days into January before slipping up, eating a Big Mac, and kidnapping the President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. Let’s be absolutely clear, he’s a very bad guy who can totally go fuck himself. He’s an authoritarian dictator and criminal whose administration has caused the deaths of thousands of his own people, and collapsed the economy. But Maduro is also very bad, and that doesn’t justify just fucking invading a sovereign country and dropshipping their leader to a US jail. It’s like the FIFA Peace Prize doesn’t mean anything anymore.Trump’s allies have of course claimed all kinds of noble motives, including liberating the oppressed Venezuelans, and holding Maduro to account for drugs trafficked from Venezuela to the US, but Trump has made it as clear as he’s ever made anything that this was about the oil. Sure it was a little bit so that they could do a photo opportunity of Trump and his pisshead Secretary of War looking tough while they watched the invasion in a pillow fort they built in Mar a Lago’s most secure ballroom, but mostly it was about the oil. In fact, not only did Trump not get Congressional approval to start his new war, he didn’t even tell them it was happening. But he did tell the oil companies, so they would be ready to start exploiting the heavy crude that makes up most of probably the largest underground oil reserves in the world. The oil companies, however, aren’t jumping at the opportunity, with one energy industry insider telling the Financial Times: “No one wants to go in there when a random fucking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country.” Because that foreign policy is, for now, being dictated by Trump, similar to how a dictator might, because while Maduro’s VP, Delcy Rodriguez is currently nominally in charge, Trump told the Atlantic that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” As far as Trump is concerned, he’s now running Venezuela, which at least gives him something to do while the authors of Project 2025 continue to run the US. Aside from the oil companies, someone else might have got a heads up about the attack, since an anonymous trader on the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket bet $14,000 over the New Year that Maduro would be ousted by the end of January. Late on January second, that same trader increased their wager to $34,000, just 48 minutes before Trump gave the order to strike. By the morning, they had made over $400,000 in profit.
- White House press secretary, and increasingly bad advertisement for the empathy of Christianity, Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Trump “has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region”. So I’m a bit confused; who are these adversaries given he’s so pally-chummy with Putin and Xi. He loves Vlad, Trump is the major apologist for the Kremlin’s imperial expansionism, he so badly wants to be in the dictators-we’ll-never forget club he’s taking pages out of Vlad’s playbook in Venezuela ferchrissake! Who then are the adversaries in the arctic circle; Bjørk? As Richard Thunder Hopkins so rightly pointed out to us – it’s the oil isn’t it? It’s always the oil. Needing therefore to hide that fact, and not having a murderous despot in charge that they can bomb the drug-smuggling-fuck out of and manufacture some Chomskyesque consent, Leavitt goes on to add “The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal.” We are witnessing here the kind of thing that prompted Neville Chamberlain to say ‘we are therefore at war with Germany’. A long-time friend of NATO and resident of the flippin’ North Atlantic here’s Leavitt gaily stating that Trump is prepared to go to war with a NATO ally. And in accordance with NATO’s Article V, which declares an attack on any member of the 32-nation alliance an attack on all, Trump’s gonna end up at war with himself. Rest assured that Keir Starmer will say little or nothing for fear of an abusive social media post in ALL CAPS and Kemi Badenoch will change her tune and believe it to be morally right after all; let’s face it won’t someone think of the muskoxes… muskoxen. However we can relax cos recently disgraced ex-US Ambassador Peter Mandelson – who’s always been sooo right about very many things – assures us all that Trump won’t take Greenland by force, I suspect he can’t risk any bombs revealing yet more caches of deep frozen Epstein files hey!
- Say what you like about illegal wars, extrajudicial killings, and threats to invade Greenland, but they sure do distract people from all the evidence pointing to the leader of the free world being a pedophile. Or, I should say, from the fact that they still haven’t released even 1% of the documents the Epstein Transparency Act required them to release last month. So far, we’ve seen 12,000 heavily redacted documents, and the DOJ claimed last month that there were over a million in their files, but then on Christmas Eve announced that they’d just found another million documents down the back of the FBI’s sofa that are going to take a few more weeks to scrub Trump’s name from – I mean to “review”. Given that one of their attempts to pretend there was nothing to see here involved claiming all the files had been reviewed, the sudden appearance of a million files the DOJ didn’t know about, calls into question their thoroughness. It’s also worth mentioning that the law required the DOJ to submit a report to Congress with a summary of all redactions and the legal justification for each redaction within 15 days of releasing the files. That deadline was January 3rd, and the DOJ has not produced the report. Consequently, Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, who championed the Epstein Transparency Act in the first place, have asked a federal judge to appoint a Special Master to oversee the process because, as they say in their request, “Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act.” I think when it does all get released, it would be fair to give all the world leaders a five minute warning to head to their various bunkers, because Trump’s going to have some major distracting to do.
- An update on the Nobel Peace Prize manqué’s desperate attempt to be on everything involved with America and Americans, and despite cutting funding for the national park service by $1.24 billion, appearing on the America the Beautiful National Parks Pass gurning next to George Washington. A recent email from the Department of the Interior appears to have suddenly updated its “Void if Altered” rules for 2026, to include the addition of stickers to the front of the credit card-sized pass. The Park Service’s pass policy has long stated that passes can be voided if the signature section of the card is altered which seems fair enough, somebody masquerading as a legitimate person attempting to muscle their way onto the national landscape but now the policy mentions stickers on the front of the pass as well as it seems people are planning to put a smiley face or an elk or anything on the front to cover the narcissist masquerading as a legitimate person in order to muscle his way into the national landscape. “Defacing the pass in any way, including writing on it or adding stickers or other coverings, is a form of altering the pass,” reads the policy. “Altering a pass can cover up important information and required security features necessary to prevent fraud.” The interior department didn’t respond to SFGate’s questions about the levels of fraud that led to the introduction of security features on park passes in 2017 or any details about fraud since then. Still not like Trump’s lackeys haven’t bandied unsubstantiated claims of fraud about before. An employee who works in the damn park service and inspects people’s passes said “I’ve personally accepted passes that people put stickers on because they just like stickers and it’s never been a problem,” “If you buy a pass from REI, they have a little sticker on it” anyway “that a lot of people don’t take off. We’ve accepted those and never had a problem.” At what point will somebody stand up and point at Emperor Trump and say “FFS he’s got no fucking clothes on”?!
- Back in December we talked about how US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie had ruled that former insurance lawyer and former Miss Colorado semifinalist Lindsey Halligan had been illegally appointed as US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia – a job she neither had the experience or the ability to do, and that resulted in the case against James Comey getting thrown out. Well, Lindsey took a page out of George Costanza’s book, and just kept showing up to work, and government legal filings continue to list her as US attorney. The week, a Trump appointed federal judge, David Novak, took it upon himself to ask the legal equivalent of What the Fuck – he gave Halligan seven days to respond in writing “explaining the basis for … identification of herself as the United States Attorney, notwithstanding Judge Currie’s contrary ruling. She shall also set forth the reasons why this Court should not strike Ms. Halligan’s identification of herself as United States Attorney from the indictment in this matter.” The judge’s order goes on to say Halligan “shall further explain why her identification does not constitute a false or misleading statement.” He also alluded to potential disciplinary action and demanded that Halligan sign her response. Personally, I think it’s a bit unfair, as Lindsey definitely does not know how to make a legal argument like this and seven days is way too short a time for her to learn. He could at least have pointed her towards the YouTube channel of a proper lawyer so she could get some pointers.
- The White House rolled out a new website Tuesday with a full-blown recast of the historical record of January 6, 2021, hailing the pro-Trump mob who stormed the US Capitol five years ago as “peaceful protesters” who were provoked by law enforcement. The new site baselessly claims the violence on January 6, 2021, was instigated by law enforcement and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It recasts the rioters as the victims that day, and depicts President Donald Trump as a hero for granting sweeping pardons for the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the deadly attack. That fiction novel 1984 and the Ministry of Truth is out there folks “we are at war with Oceania, we have always been at war with Oceania – The constant, meaningless war with shifting alliances serves to maintain power and control, not for victory, embodying the Party’s motto: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”.- and I’m simply too depressed by the whole fucking thing to say any more than that! Except quick get to the way back machine and print everything off.
- One of the most recognisable faces of the pro-Trump mob who definitely didn’t do anything of note on January 6th was Jacob Angeli-Chansley, aka the QAnon Shaman. He’s the barechested guy in buffalo horns and face paint. Chansley has been back and forth on his support for Trump, claiming when he went to prison that he had been duped by Trump, then after his release reaffirming both his respect for Trump and his delusional belief that Trump had declassified patents for infinite free energy and other non-existent technologies that would lead to a whole new socioeconomic/geopolitical system. Despite already being out of prison, he was super happy with the pardon of all J6ers in January last year, but now calls the Trump Administration a corrupt disaster, based on its relationship with Israel and handling of the Epstein files. Man, that’s rough. Trump’s doing such a bad job even the QAnon Shaman, who believes Freemasons designed DC so that the buildings on the National Mall amplify the Earth’s magnetic field, is calling him on his bullshit. It’s got so bad, that Chansley now identifies as an Independent. At least that’s what he plans to file as, when he runs for Arizona Governor this November. Katie Hobbs seems to be kicking ass in that role currently, so obviously I don’t want him to win, but I would be very pleased if he does better than Kari Lake ever did in that race. Meanwhile, someone who hasn’t denounced his support for Trump is Adam Johnson, who’s currently running for an at-large county commission seat in Florida. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, perhaps you know him better as Lectern Guy. Yes, he’s the one who went viral for smiling and waving at a Getty photographer in the Capitol Rotunda while he made off with the House Speaker’s lectern. Rather than try to sweep his role in the insurrection under the rug, he goes by The Lectern Guy in his various social media accounts, and uses the Getty photo as his profile shot and as his campaign logo. It is Florida, so yeah, that’ll probably work.
- Given the rate of pub closures in England and Wales in 2025 stood at one per day! Not ‘come on please drink up time gentlemen please ain’t you got no homes to go to’ kind of daily closures this is permanently shutting down – one every day. Against this background Chancellor Rachel (no thanks, just a cup of tea for me, without milk or sugar, or tea – can’t afford it!) Reeves was going to be introducing a reassessment of the business rates applied to pubs which would substantially increase their bills. Following thousands of Labour MP’s being banned from pubs and no doubt Farage snickering his frogface into a carefully staged fag’n’beer moment, there’s been a u-turn. I guess with fewer and fewer pubs the business rates would have to go up and up to generate the income Reeves mooted. As part of the climb-down the business rate hike is not now going to happen, the Treasury is also thought to be ready to relax licensing rules to allow longer opening and more pavement areas for drinking – yeah look if you want to raise money don’t shut the places that bring in hefty tax on alcohol sales down, let them open longer, with the added advantage we can all stay mightily pissed for an increased number of hours a day to help us cope with this effing government and it’s thinly disguised Tory-ness complete with Truss-sized u-turns! Meanwhile Badenoch says the Tories will channel anger at Labour – amidst sounds of door being shut after Reform has bolted – in the same week that the Tories say they will ban social media for under-16s – yeah way to promote anger in the next voting generation whilst satisfying the moral outrage of old-guard Tory-voting boomers who need their under 16 yr-old grandchildren to help them log in to Facebook to whinge about the goings on in their neighbourhoods FFSaaaaakkkee!!!
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