Doppelmoral

We are living under two different set of rules...

This morning I read one of the best substack articles I have read in a long time. Written by Holly MathNerd on a hypothesis around the reactions in the Karmelo Anthony trials. You can find it here. Her hypothesis is so good that I secretly wish I had written such an intelligent observational piece layered with my own research on the topic and the origin of our two-camp reactions.

Holly was able to express what I know is true in words I would not have been able to find myself nor did I have the background knowledge she demonstrated. I felt a little twinge of envy but pretty quickly it turned into something different: inspiration. Firstly, I am proud to say I know Holly personally as she a few years ago had helped my daughter get through a depressive state and math hurdle by tutoring her for a test. Not only did she validate some of the concerns my daughter had around how her teacher taught math, she gave her that much confidence that she aced the exam and found the courage to pursue a science degree. And she is thriving in it. Secondly, I love seeing people demonstrate intelligence and be successful.

It is the inspiration I need to pursue my own thoughts and dreams. I love being challenged. And I love if someone is able to put something into a hypothesis that I am only observing as patterns and trends without having put it into a cogent thought.

Thank you for that.

It is very unlike what I am seeing on X these days (formerly known as Twitter) and in other media. I get the first hand knowledge around what people in the US are thinking and how that translates into what German people are thinking about the Anthony case. The reaction of the US is the raw two camp / two tribe reaction I am not surprised to see. The German reaction feels like a room of the movie “Backrooms” where everything is ever just so slightly distorted. Not quite on point, not quite right. However, Germans are more convinced than others that their point is the only acceptable truth.

I am not going into too much detail of the Anthony case reaction as Holly captured this much better than I ever could. However, it is very clear that we are seeing that Black America is living under a different moral code than the rest of the US. Literally, they seem to expect that a Black man deserves different treatment than what a non-Black would receive. They literally expected for Karmelo Anthony to get away with murder. Because in that moment under the tent his entire identity and honor required him to stay under this tent and removing him by touching him or even shoving him warranted this fatal reaction.

We see this defending of honor frequently in cultures of the Middle East or Africa. Where demonstrating weakness by walking away from a confrontation is seen as the equivalent of rolling over and peeing yourself: ultimate shame. In those cultures, no real man would see his honor attacked without massive push back and deathly violence towards the offender. It is not just a choice, it is mandatory.

This explains the mass brawls in German streets from migrants, this explains many of the riots in inner cities, this explains the honor killings of female family members, it explains the violence coming towards minor offenders. Things for which the Christian belief asks you to simply turn the other cheek. Arab and African men turn to violence and often enough… killings.

Germans have heard about the Karmelo case, but they only see what is being reported to them. What Germans have heard through the news is that a white supremacist boy attacked a black men who defended himself. Then an all white jury put this person into jail for 35 years. Cleary unjustified. Germans tend to only look at one set of facts. They stop listening when someone contradicts mainstream news. In particular when these facts contradict the moral paradigm of whites being bad and inherently Nazi.

It is so unfortunate that this same week, Elon became a Billionär. Yes, the German word for trillionaire is Billionär. This is confusing a lot of people, because the German word for billion is Milliarde. A word that does not exist in English. So, many people in Germany do not really know how much money he has because of this word problem. Or why there are so many billionaires in the US when there should be only one Billionär.

I digress. More Germans than Americans truly believe that no-one should have as much money as Elon. Just this morning I was blocked by some German man named Rudolph, because I asked him what he thinks the cap should be for how much wealth someone could own. He did not answer my question but basically stated it consolidates too much power into one individual and wealth should instead be governed by “democratic processes”.

So, I asked him if he believes that the government and politicians are better equipped to handle all that power. He shouted at me for not understanding his term “democratic processes” and urged me to not spout Fox News nonsense. Mind you, I had just asked questions. I then listed about four dictators of the past (mostly communist ones) and suggested we see how they handled wealth management for their country to come up with a conclusion. He then proceeded to call me Nazi, because I did not list Hitler and said he was no longer willing to engage in this game of “Taubenschach”. Per google AI: Taubenschach (literally "pigeon chess") is a German figurative idiom that translates to the famous saying: "Debating an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon — it knocks over the pieces, craps on the board, and struts around like it won."

Interestingly, now I have to thank him because I had never heard of pigeon chess as this word was popularized in 2005 in an Amazon book review. This was way after I had left the country. But him using the word is also a good example of projection so often used by Germans when they feel cornered in an argument. So cluster B.

I was instantaneously blocked before I could ask more questions.

This was just one example. There are so many people in the US and Germany that are attacking Elon and Trump for the amount of wealth now accumulated in one person. As if he had a bank account holding all this money robbed at gun point from each person in this world. Some seem to think it is Elon’s responsibility to solve world hunger. To which I am wondering how much more money we want to throw at it? For decades we have tried to reduce hunger in Africa by throwing billions onto the problem. With basically no real impact. Starvation is still happening. So money and the famous “Entwicklungshilfe” (development aid) are clearly not solving the problems.

And it is not like people do not want to receive help. They do. However, equipment delivered gets destroyed and stolen. Maintenance of what is remaining is not happening. And money gets sucked up by the surrounding bureaucracy and bribery that it hardly ever reaches who it is supposed to reach.

I once received backlash, because I cited a woman from Pakistan who sat in my business ethics class in college and she stated when the topic came up: “We want children to work, because otherwise they will make money through prostitution, factory work is so much better.” It was shockingly honest. And I am quite sure most western people would agree: both solutions are bad for children whether it is factory work or prostitution. But it shows a fundamental misconceptions and naiveness of westerners who think that it is a pure exploitative move for companies to employ children for factory work. What they neglect is that children are working in factories when they need money; aka when the family needs the money. When they simply cannot afford to send their kids to school.

What if you take these factory jobs away from children by making child labor illegal?

Nothing good will happen to these kids.

That is the inconvenient and hard truth. Solutions need to pre-assess unintended consequences and provide full solutions that are not just replacing one problem with the next making things worse.

My sister in law for example has a gambling problem. A severe one. Affecting how she lives, her health, and her social life. She is no longer really functioning in society. There is not one week passing by where we are not asked for money even though we have not given her any money ever. We even called her out on her gambling problem, just for her to deny that there is one.

Have you ever tried to help a homeless person by housing and bathing them and giving them a job for a while? And where are they now? In almost all cases, they are falling off the wagon. Because homelessness or should I say “un-house-ness” is not a problem of no house, it is a problem of addiction and mental illness. And it needs to be treated as such.

The gist here is, you cannot help someone who is not able or willing to help themselves. They need to have both the ability and the willingness. If only one is present, there is no chance. Often mental capacity and / or culture are in the way of advancing and recovering. Yes, I know there are indeed cases, where a child in a third world country made it and is now successful somewhere. But this is rare.

The same way only a very few people make it from poverty and child abuse into a successful life and career even here in the US or Germany. And almost always the people making it have superior intelligence. It takes an immense amount of capabilities to overcome cultural and religious doctrines, even more to go against your parents, and to enable healing of your own mental distortions that are so often caused by abuse in ones childhood. Not rarely do these people cut off ties to their families in order to not fall back or to make recovery real for them (full recovery is often not possible, but to live as if might be).

We used to think we all have the same mental capabilities. Someone on Twitter today described it as a car. We often believe that some people drive a Ferrari and others an old Honda, but overall that we can all drive on the same roads given time and a map. This is not true. Some of us will always be walking. Some of us are in wheelchairs. Others may get an electric bike.

Some are simply swimming.

The point is that if we continue to allow people to operate and live under different codes of conducts, the Karmelo Anthony instances will continue to exist. Fraud like we have seen in Minneapolis will continue to exist. We absolutely need to ensure that we have one common law valid for everyone.

It sounds simple.

But the fact that we have operated for so long allowing people to get away with crimes, rapes, and murder is enough to show that the dream of multiculturalism has failed us all. Europe is falling. The US is not that far behind.

Happy rainy Sunday.