A Curious Little Blog

I am not interested in whether it was or was not legitimate for United to remove the guy from the plane, because by the time security got there to remove him, clearly authority was on their side.  The doctor, David Dao, undoubtedly did not know the legal ins and outs of whether it was reasonable.  His whole justification seems to have been:  I am doctor, therefore I am important.  I am more important that anyone else you could remove from this plane, therefore I am not leaving.  This is the kind of "individual exceptionalism" that I see people use all the time to break rules.  In general, we might want to favour doctors in this sort of situation, but he was in no position to determine that.  It's not as though he had an emergency that he absolutely had to deal with; no, he just had patients to see the next day.  At that point, it's not up to him to decide if his reason for going is more important than another passengers.  Sure, he has the rig...

I had been intending to write an entry in praise of Trump last week; in the meantime, I now have reason to criticize him as well, so here is a chance to do both. I have begun to appreciate one thing about having Trump as president:  he just doesn't care what the media says about him.  No, that's not right; he obviously cares deeply, otherwise he wouldn't take the trouble to respond to every attack.  Let me put it this way:  he cares what the media says about him, but his way of dealing with it is not to compromise his beliefs (whatever they are at the moment); rather, he defends what he does and does it twice as much. I have suffered through many Republican presidencies, and I'm sure anyone who shares my outlook and experience can tell you that most Republicans are absolutely disheartened by the degree to which presidents have conceded moral authority to their critics.  The whole idea that George W. Bush would push for what he called "compassionate conservat...