I am in particular agreement with your last paragraph, well-stated. Covid was even worse than the Iraq War as an episode of incompetent "expert" liars and their media allies showing us who they are. And Menand thinks we are insufficiently deferential? I loved the Metaphysical Club but I hate to think how obnoxious that book would be if he rewrote it now.
I'd actually be significantly *more* willing to let them off the hook for Covid than Iraq...if they showed even the slighest degree of epistemic humility. Why is it so fucking hard to say "here's what we think right now based on available information, but things are dynamic and knowledge/instructions/suggestions may change" rather than "you must obey and parrot exactly what we're saying right now, and if we say something different in two days you must obey and parrot THAT without questioning the change?"
On some issues yes like mask and vaccine efficacy perhaps. On the Covid-origin deliberate misinfo campaign to cover their own asses re the gain of function funding they themselves were implicated in, and the George Floyd Racism is Suddenly More Important than Covid, absolutely not!
What I was referring to is the malfeasance described in the Nate Silver article to which Ross links. The fact is that we have good reason to believe the virus was 1) an accidental lab leak of gain-of-function research gone wrong that was 2) illegally funded with US taxpayer money by Fauci & co and 3) those same people deliberately misled the media and public about that to cover their asses, by pretending to have near-certainty in a zoonotic explanation.
The media also went right along with all of this for years. It's completely disgraceful.
I'm not inclined to defend Cheney and Rumsfeld but I think they thought the war would be a cakewalk and very few people would be killed and grateful Iraqis would be throwing flowers the week after. Just as Fauci & Co thought WIV was a sophisticated enough facility to handle GOF research.
Sure, but they thought they had a compelling reason. Just like Fauci thought he had a compelling reason to fund GoF research at WIV. I'll grant that there is a difference between whether you think some amount of innocent people getting killed is sure or just possible. But on the other hand, the Bush administration got about 300K killed and Fauci got about 7 million killed, so there's that.
(Years of “science-bashing” and “anti-government messaging have taught Americans not to.”)
Actually, it's decades of being lied to by the ruling elites that has shown us that we are, in fact, being lied to.
WMD.
Iraq's involvement in 9/11.
Desperate attempts to crucify anyone who would suggest that the strange mutant COVID virus killing millions came from the lab modifying COVID in the town where the outbreak originated.
And these are just the lies (which strangely always seem to be incredibly profitable for the donor class!) that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Then there's the economic policies:
Offshoring is good, actually!
Monopolies are fine!
Cutting taxes will make everyone rich!
Corporate profits and concentration of wealth have caused record inflation! We'd better throw more poor people out of work, because reasons!
Then predatory vulture capitalists can buy up more housing stock! The middle class not being able to build equity is good, actually!
If the government wants to be trusted, perhaps they should stop being caught in obvious transparent lies.
And if people want the government to stop lying to them, they need to hold their own parties accountable first.
Although I am echoing the sentiment of other commenters, the last paragraph is incredibly powerful and cannot be read without feeling some emotion. It is clear that it was certainly written with an incredible amount of emotion.
It had become quite exhausting as a liberal to process, support, and defend the outright lies and inconsistencies over the last few years. And if your knee-jerk reaction to this is to point out the lies and inconsistencies of the other side, you aren’t helping. We are supposed to be different. We are supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard.
The last paragraph was courageous given your audience, Ross. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
Well said as always, Ross is brave to step into some of the COVID stuff (tame and obvious though it may be at this point), hope he doesn't lose any subscribers!
Fauci et al made some mistakes. Trump et el willfully lied, adopted crackpot theories like herd immunity, anti masking etc and did cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands unnecessarily. And the liars are those that claim the lab leak
I see you are working your hardest to ignore the copious amounts of hard evidence that yes, the mutated strain of COVID that first broke out in the the town where there was an unsafe lab working on mutating COVID did in fact come from the lab working on COVID.
Maybe you should read Ross' last article, because it seems like it's about you.
I am in particular agreement with your last paragraph, well-stated. Covid was even worse than the Iraq War as an episode of incompetent "expert" liars and their media allies showing us who they are. And Menand thinks we are insufficiently deferential? I loved the Metaphysical Club but I hate to think how obnoxious that book would be if he rewrote it now.
I'd actually be significantly *more* willing to let them off the hook for Covid than Iraq...if they showed even the slighest degree of epistemic humility. Why is it so fucking hard to say "here's what we think right now based on available information, but things are dynamic and knowledge/instructions/suggestions may change" rather than "you must obey and parrot exactly what we're saying right now, and if we say something different in two days you must obey and parrot THAT without questioning the change?"
On some issues yes like mask and vaccine efficacy perhaps. On the Covid-origin deliberate misinfo campaign to cover their own asses re the gain of function funding they themselves were implicated in, and the George Floyd Racism is Suddenly More Important than Covid, absolutely not!
What I was referring to is the malfeasance described in the Nate Silver article to which Ross links. The fact is that we have good reason to believe the virus was 1) an accidental lab leak of gain-of-function research gone wrong that was 2) illegally funded with US taxpayer money by Fauci & co and 3) those same people deliberately misled the media and public about that to cover their asses, by pretending to have near-certainty in a zoonotic explanation.
The media also went right along with all of this for years. It's completely disgraceful.
I'm not inclined to defend Cheney and Rumsfeld but I think they thought the war would be a cakewalk and very few people would be killed and grateful Iraqis would be throwing flowers the week after. Just as Fauci & Co thought WIV was a sophisticated enough facility to handle GOF research.
Sure, but they thought they had a compelling reason. Just like Fauci thought he had a compelling reason to fund GoF research at WIV. I'll grant that there is a difference between whether you think some amount of innocent people getting killed is sure or just possible. But on the other hand, the Bush administration got about 300K killed and Fauci got about 7 million killed, so there's that.
(Years of “science-bashing” and “anti-government messaging have taught Americans not to.”)
Actually, it's decades of being lied to by the ruling elites that has shown us that we are, in fact, being lied to.
WMD.
Iraq's involvement in 9/11.
Desperate attempts to crucify anyone who would suggest that the strange mutant COVID virus killing millions came from the lab modifying COVID in the town where the outbreak originated.
And these are just the lies (which strangely always seem to be incredibly profitable for the donor class!) that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Then there's the economic policies:
Offshoring is good, actually!
Monopolies are fine!
Cutting taxes will make everyone rich!
Corporate profits and concentration of wealth have caused record inflation! We'd better throw more poor people out of work, because reasons!
Then predatory vulture capitalists can buy up more housing stock! The middle class not being able to build equity is good, actually!
If the government wants to be trusted, perhaps they should stop being caught in obvious transparent lies.
And if people want the government to stop lying to them, they need to hold their own parties accountable first.
Although I am echoing the sentiment of other commenters, the last paragraph is incredibly powerful and cannot be read without feeling some emotion. It is clear that it was certainly written with an incredible amount of emotion.
It had become quite exhausting as a liberal to process, support, and defend the outright lies and inconsistencies over the last few years. And if your knee-jerk reaction to this is to point out the lies and inconsistencies of the other side, you aren’t helping. We are supposed to be different. We are supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard.
The last paragraph was courageous given your audience, Ross. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
last paragraph was a bit cathartic.
The continued smugness of liberal “technocrats” is so infuriating.
Well said as always, Ross is brave to step into some of the COVID stuff (tame and obvious though it may be at this point), hope he doesn't lose any subscribers!
The last paragraph is where it’s at - a 565 foot home run.
Fauci et al made some mistakes. Trump et el willfully lied, adopted crackpot theories like herd immunity, anti masking etc and did cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands unnecessarily. And the liars are those that claim the lab leak
Has more than minimal support compared with the market origins.
I see you are working your hardest to ignore the copious amounts of hard evidence that yes, the mutated strain of COVID that first broke out in the the town where there was an unsafe lab working on mutating COVID did in fact come from the lab working on COVID.
Maybe you should read Ross' last article, because it seems like it's about you.
https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/the-twenty-first-century-category