Spoiler alert: This post contains spoiler material about the third season of The Good Fight. I enjoyed The Good Wife, even though it leaned left. The Good Fight leans even further left, but I’m watching it anyway. 

+JMJ+ I’ve been watching the third season of The Good Fight and I’m wondering how far Diane would go to achieve her goal of ridding the White House of what she perceives to be, apparently, the biggest problem her country was facing. She knew it was wrong but she wanted to affect the number of votes (that both sides counted, more for the Dems, fewer for the GOP). And she wanted to accomplish that so badly that she was willing to be part of a group of women who would act badly to do it. She did put up a weak fight at first, but she backed down.

The fight began with hacking voting machines, then doxxing people who were, it’s true, starting a riot. But things took a decidedly nasty turn when the group decided to “Swat” a White House official. To “Swat” someone is to sic a Swat team on them by calling in a false report to police, accusing someone of violence or the threat of violence in their home or wherever they happen to be. It’s a dangerous and despicable trick to play on someone and this time the trick resulted in the death of the target. 

Diane thought things had already gone too far and wanted it to stop. She didn’t just want out, she wanted the group to stop. But most of the other women in the group believed that the ends justify the means, that anything goes as long as it gets the results they want. This is known as consequentialism:

Consequentialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of one’s conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (or omission from acting) is one that will produce a good outcome, or consequence. [And what makes a result ‘good’ is that it’s what one wants. It goes thousands of years back, if not more; and it didn’t originate with Saul Alinsky, though he did popularize it in his book, Rules for Radicals (links at the end of this post) in chapter two, entitled Of Means and Ends.]

From the Wikimedia article on Consequentialism.

Trying to discuss morality with someone who believes that the goal makes anything they do or don’t do, will do or won’t do, perfectly alright can make your head explode. It’s like arguing with a two-year-old: you won’t get anywhere except frustrated really fast. I really do think that people who believe that the ends justify the means suffer from stunted moral growth. Well, they often don’t seem to suffer, it’s the rest of us who suffer because of them. 

If something is good, it’s good. If something is evil, it’s evil. You can argue about ways to go about accomplishing something good. That can be a matter of prudential judgment. But to argue for a way or ways to accomplish something evil–well, that’s just evil. That didn’t come from a book, it came from me.

Diane decides that getting people killed is not what she wanted and what she wanted does not justify getting people killed. In the last episode I watched today I think she decided to put a stop to it. But I don’t know how she will do it. Hopefully, she’ll stand up for what is right and defeat this group of mad sister resisters. It’s one thing to work to promote your party and to work to get legistlation passed and programs put in place that you believe in. It’s quite another to resort taking the law into your own hands or to slaughtering people who disagree with you, or tricking someone else into doing it for you.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’re enjoying your visit. Until next time, whoever and wherever you are, may the Lord bless you and keep you, and may the peace of Christ be always with you. +JMJ+

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Notes and Links

• Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals, by Saul Alinsky: Paperback. Kindle. (Affiliate links)
• Wikimedia article on Consequentialism.
• The Good Fight is on CBS All Access. I’m not promoting it. I’m watching it because I’m interested in the way the world is seen by leftists and Democrats. (But I repeat myself. I wish it weren’t so the two have become almost completely synonymous, but there it is.)

Image: The Good Fight logo, from Wikimedia, public domain.

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