First bluebonnets for 2023

 

On February 26th the bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis) along Mopac had been coming up for a few days already. At least this time none of the passing drivers called Emergency Medical Services about some guy lying by the side of the road. One did honk, though I don’t know why.

 

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Also on February 26th the New York Post ran a piece by Jonathan Turley headlined “COVID lab leak is a scandal of media and government censorship.” Here’s the beginning:

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Energy Department has concluded that the COVID pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak.

The conclusion is reportedly based on a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. Many will be exploring why the scientific evidence of a lab leak was so slow to emerge from intelligence agencies.

However, for my part, the most alarming aspect was the censorship, not the science.

There will continue to be a debate over the origins of COVID-19, but now there will be an actual debate.

For years, the media and government allied to treat anyone raising a lab theory as one of three possibilities: conspiracy theorist or racist or racist conspiracy theorist.

Academics joined this chorus in marginalizing anyone raising the theory. One study cited the theory as an example of “anti-Chinese racism” and “toxic white masculinity.”

As late as May 2021, the New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory “racist.” 

 

Along those lines, thirteen months ago I wrote a commentary about the origin of the Covid-19 virus in which I pointed out how

the origin of Covid-19 quickly became politicized. In mid-2020, as if a switch had been thrown, virtually all establishment sources suddenly began calling the lab-leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory and asserting—with no supporting evidence whatsoever—that the lab-leak theory had been debunked.

On February 2nd [2022] I read a substack post by Matt Taibbi and Matt Orfalea entitled “TK Mashup: The Lab Leak “Conspiracy Theory,” with subtitle “‘NOT MAN MADE OR GENETICALLY MODIFIED,’ they cried in unison, until they didn’t, as Matt Orfalea’s latest trip back in time shows.” Embedded in the post is that 9.5-minute “mash-up,” which is to say a collection of many brief video clips documenting the groupthink that took place. The video would be funny if it weren’t such an indictment of herd mentality.

 

In light of the latest news, it’s worth reading Jonathan Turley’s full article and also going back to watch the 9.5-minute “mash-up” packed non-stop from beginning to end with well over a hundred clips showing the plague of disinformation that had infected so many in the media.

 

© 2023 Steven Schwartzman