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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32426 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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I wouldn't place it completely outside the realm of possibility, after all he's not the first wealthy California democrat to have issues with gay prostitutes. But a lot of the evidence I see seems like wishcasting over the fog of war. People are suddenly experts about how glass breaks, or what irrational decisions crazy people do or do not make, or how people speak under duress.

To me the larger story is a wealthy democrat finally suffered the consequences of the policies they push on the rest of us. And it's been almost unanimously used to blood libel the opposing tribe.

A part of me also finds it incredibly rich that the leading "alt-right" characteristic this person has is that he believes is "covid conspiracies". Which conspiracy would that be? One of the ones that turned out to be true? Like the lab leak theory? Or that the vaccines aren't as effective as initially advertised? Or that the entire process which approved the vaccines and is now "recommending"/requiring shots for 6 month olds appears to be entirely captured by Pfizer's profit motive?

Being violently attacked should not be "the consequences" of making unpopular policy, or of being the family of someone who has made policies that some people do not like. If you're worried about being smeared as supporting this kind of violent attack, then don't talk as if the attack was justified.

When your policy is let your city become a lawless open drug market, and a lawless druggie somehow makes it into your gated community, its hard not to see some natural law at work.

The last I checked Nancy Pelosi wasn't involved in local politics.

The last I checked Nancy Pelosi wasn't involved in local politics.

How much did you check?

Endorsing a candidate on the other end of the state hardly counts as "involved in local politics" to the extent that she'd somehow be responsible for local government in San Francisco. It's not like she's on city council or anything.

I gotta say the lab leak revisionism kills me. I remember arguing for it during the high points of covid with friends, and even though I was vaccinated masked etc, arguing for the lab leak was enough for some people to call me a 'covid denier.' Now when I bring up the studies to those same people, they just shrug and go 'what does it matter, covid is over now.'

Good lord, I am reasonably more accepting of the covid response than the median on this site, but the reaction to the lab leak really just baffles me. I can't believe more people don't see it as by far the biggest controversy in the last decade - China very plausibly released a virus, intentionally or unintentionally, that devastated most of the world economically if not biologically. And yet people just don't think it's a big deal or doesn't matter one way or another. Unreal.

China very plausibly released a virus, intentionally or unintentionally, that devastated most of the world economically if not biologically.

1950's America would haven rightly not stood so silently for this kind of shit - we would have gotten out (several) pounds of flesh; and it would have been worth it.

The pussification of our world can be seen in every single corner of our country. Kids barely even say Trick r Treat anymore, they just kind of vaguely stand there expecting candy that is worse by every qualifying measure compared to 20 years ago.

In a meta sense this is for the best; killing several million more people may not be the best thing to do. Buuuuuut, is it really better that a billion of us live in a complete untruth?

as /u/NewCharlesInCharge states ' A lab in China, most likely with funding from the United States. The geopolitics on lab leak are a wash. ' The issue is we aren't hanging our own at a near fast enough rate, or at all.

I’m generally pretty anti violence, but this is one area I’d like to see heads roll. The deaths and destruction from their negligence far outweigh the deaths even if we kill every virologist on the planet. Not that I’d recommend that, just putting it in perspective. Again I can’t understand how more people aren’t outraged.

I’m generally pretty anti violence, but this is one area I’d like to see heads roll. The deaths and destruction from their negligence far outweigh the deaths even if we kill every virologist on the planet. Not that I’d recommend that, just putting it in perspective. Again I can’t understand how more people aren’t outraged.

Yes, this is the most blackpilling thing about the whole COVID episode.

Scientists are playing russian roulette with the whole world, so they can publish some journal articles no one will ever read to burnish their metrics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics

And the world is just fine with it.

Including powerful and influential people who can nevertheless die with the billions of ordinary peons when some bigger oops happens in the future.

Trump mentioned lab leak which made it red tribe coded. Any admittance of lab leak by the left at the time would be admitting Trump was right.

Ecohealth was led by Americans and asked the US to fund the whole 'inserting furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses' program, though there were a bunch of Chinese scientists also working there and the Chinese probably ended up funding this circus since the US declined.

This was a crisis of the international medical researcher class. But it absolutely is a gigantic crisis that should see executions. War crimes and such were retroactively invented and applied at Nuremberg. 'Negligence leading to megadeaths' can also be retroactively applied.

Okay yeah the fact that the US is implicated explains a lot. Still, viral researchers need to learn I agree. I’d rather we get rid of them all than keep risking more pandemics that could’ve easily been avoided.

Okay yeah the fact that the US is implicated explains a lot.

Yeah, it explains why China wants to push the lab theory as opposed to the market theory which implies China is unwilling or unable to enforce its own laws that they knew existed to prevent pandemics.

A lab in China, most likely with funding from the United States.

The geopolitics on lab leak are a wash.

Yeah that makes more sense. Alas.

It's important to forgive the people who made wrong calls regarding the pandemic, so says an essay in The Atlantic at least which has published some less forgiving essays in previous times.

Funny how the right is now in the position the left was wrt color blind meritocratic liberal centrism. "Oh, NOW you want to wipe the slate clean, after everything was in white people's/covidians' favor that whole time?"

Well they want to hold the Atlantic writer accountable, not a politician. And even if she is on record having been on the wrong side before, people like her must never be allowed to forget. There is no moving on.

Never. Forget.

Honestly, I think motivated cognition is at fault. The scale and scope of what would be required to even the scales is so massive, so disruptive, so far out of the ordinary run of "things that happen or seem feasible" that the only reasonable response is shrugging one's shoulders and declining to sink hope, emotional investment, and/or actual effort in something impossible.

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