this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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It's a second order variant of the same logic:
Instead of "whatabout those other guys" it's "whatabout what those other guys' boss did when those other guys didn't want to do what this one just did".
Whilst it's more convoluted, it's still whataboutism because there is no causal relationship between the choices of A and the choices of B's boss, hence it's not logical to pull that into the argument about the morality of A's choices.
This lady had the option to "do evil" and keep getting the benefits she has been getting (money, prestige, career advancement), to leave and not do evil or to stay, not do evil and see how the boss reacts. She chose the option of doing evil. Guess both her own Moral and Ethics as well as her opinion of the boss' own Moral and Ethics (relevant for choosing or not option #3) defined her choice - one can only expect that she's a better judge of the boss' Moral and Ethics than most people in this World.
The whole "I shall do evil lest the boss fire me and replace me with somebody that does Evil" twist is just a variant of what the Nuremberg trials determined to be invalid as an excuse, only this variant is even weaker because it's about what some other boss did to some other people.