The evidence is everywhere: An extraordinary number of people seem to prefer living under masks rather than accepting the data that say the pandemic is over. Why? We go into that, and the extraordinary story of the lab leak in the Soviet Union that American "experts" agreed was a naturally occurring phenomenon... because saying so was taking a side in the political-cultural-ideological war of the time. Sound familiar? Give a listen.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome to the commentary magazine barely podcast, today's Bombay June twenty first, twenty twenty one. Ok, somebody help me is this the Vernal
equinox or the diurnal. What do you call
I thought it was launched. This
The sun was overdoses, but it's the something equinox right am. I am mistaken
once set what some online I turtle
Obviously, none of us here whether this is really. I wish my my mother, my daughter, serious case that really good at last make good. I could. I could ask her emphasised, as I think its eternal anyway, so we can,
their start again or we can just go on from this embarrassing. This wave of of of ignorance and and and idiocy anyway, you could stage a good production of Midsummer night's dream tonight if
where, if you wanted to jump onwards, the outer of commentary with me, as always latin scholar, associate editor no Rossman
Hi Chun apologies to make extra hold,
translator of onwards, metamorphosis, executive, editor, a green wild.
all I'm doing here and of course,
Ass, an of Julius Caesar Senor Writer, Christine Rosen hikers Christine I, like it hijacked. Thank you very much.
boy, this is silly but I'd giddy, I'm getting because the pandemic is over. Really it's over.
There was a Sunday and Sunday Report, Sir lower than other reports
but the New York Times is covered. Tracker has the United States with four thousand cases as of yesterday, and I think it was their six thousand the day before I keep telling Anthony found. She said if the case logos below ten thousand Davy pandemic is over and apparently since you're not allowed to criticise him because to criticise him is to be anti science according to achieve an interview with axis, I will not criticise
today I am citing him as an expert, because I believe in science- and I sobbing witness coding and actually than this voting so that set at ten thousand Margret Buddy
also said- and he qualifies that of late with em
probably much lower than that? Ok, we'll four thousand, is much lower than ten days
then I think we can agree. I believe not that I want to show that my math is as good as my Latin. I believe it is sixty percent lower than ten thousand four thousand, and there is no said in that incomprehensible fourteen day change chart that in your time,
says it's a fourteen day. Change is fourteen percent. If, in fact, I don't even know what that means is that meat is fourteen days from the previous Sunday or does it mean fourteen the average of the previous fourteen days, and then you do some average and therefore the average is lower. I ve never been able to figure it out
and the number makes no sense anyway, as put it put it, but but there's no, you pointed out there was only fourteen percent lower and it's at four thousand. So another words the trend line is not only does this mean that the that, where you know what an absolute terms beyond the pandemic, but the trim
I'm the percentage trendline is slowing down simply because there's no were to go once you start
I'm in these lower numbers, the decline in the number of cases is gonna shrink in aggregate percentage terms in terms of the clients of because there's gonna be less and less and less of a less by tomorrow. Nobody in America
getting covered whatsoever. Also, please note that almost everybody who is testing now, in my estimation, is almost certainly testing
because they want to go somewhere, do something that requires a test people I just like. Oh, I think I have covered. I think I'll go get a test you know like is nobody's getting covered, so they only do it because they have to show its travellers. Probably
like eighty percent of them or some people like him. My wife works in show business. If you
He had to go on a sad or do something like that. They now have served standard covered testing just simply like walked through the door, so no one's getting at no one's gotten it. No one has cases. Ok,
so let's talk about our friend Harriet in an area that has a good piece at CNN in which he points.
that, according to all relevant data, that we can see the people liberals
Its conservatives who are going out and liberals continue to act
as though they are living through a pandemic analysis headline on Harry's peace
Republicans are going out. Far more than vaccinated vaccinated. Republicans are going that far more than vaccinated democrats. Can we break this down so basically, doesn't it suggest that vaccinated Democrats actually like living under the Covid nineteen, or is it that they're too scared to get out of the covid nineteen or is it a comedy?
of the two get us. Two things are mutually exclusive. Thank probably significant amount of overlap, their anxiety, social anxiety.
General anxiety, help, anxiety and also political anxiety, solves him all the same anxiety,
I think I think, there's also there's also a sub group of of the people who want to see permanent pandemic restrictions in place,
really enjoy telling other people what to do and really enjoy feeling there on the moral high ground when they do it, which they were when during the pandemic, we didn't have vaccines and
but watch around without mass and refused to obey any sort of public health guidelines
not with it. Then they were on the moral high ground they could. They could feel really good about themselves now that the burden of proof is shifted. His the these circumstances of shit
and now they just want their going run scolding people and I think that its hard it critically in cities.
Our deeply like my own people still do
give up their virtues signally.
Mass wearing, even though even when their when there are fully vaccinated- and they want to continue to
inspire a little bit of fear and down in people's minds about the effectiveness of vaccines. By constantly talking about it
the delta? Very it now right. That's the when I heard a lot about from people this week, a delta variant delta, very
so they really that those, if there's a power, there's a psychological satisfaction in feeling one
health to be morally superior and that you can literally demonstrated by the mask on your face in some parts of this country? So you know we ve said several times that progressives ironically, have a very hard time. Recognising progress
right, let's they visit. This usually applies to things like you know the environment,
the above environment or equality before the law, or you know, civil rights, what whatever maybe and it's interesting
clearly in this case seems to extend to something like science technology in the pandemic. That is exactly.
Where were we have made extraordinary progress on this and what their comfort zone is, as pristine says too should be able to have the
to be able to to continue to say one more needs to be done see this is this is where I'm not sure. I like the idea that, what's going on his virtues
signalling, because virtual signalling itself almost has performative external, no
quality and I don't think people are doing this.
Because they are signalling exactly or were consciously signalling they are, they are doing it because they think it's virtuous, not because their signalling- and this to me has a couple of relatively profound implications, one of which is that we have lived almost my entire life in America in which progressive or serve like main stream. Liberal opinion has been that liberation from rules or old rules, work calcified rules or something is
part of the forward progress. It needs to be made for people to be their best selves and one of the things that has made me a conservative is that I, though I myself chafe at you, know serve bureaucratic
on sensible rules like everybody else. If you re not going to the dinner, the classic thing is that the envy of the post office, or something like that, where you follow some kind of weird protocol that just seems to be there for the benefit of making life as easy as possible for the people who work there and as far as possible for you as a person who is full
first to go through the system? Nonetheless, I believe
order. I believe in rules. I think people need to live in rules and an end. That rules are good. That rules provide us with a common boundary so that we do all dino kill each other whatever, and it turns out that one of the things that covet may have demonstrated, at least in terms of liberal culture, is that
Liberals progress as every by like that, they'll seize on anything to have a rule,
we ve all been living it sort of, like God, you know, ah babies, and now I am of course going up on the word
swaddling a baby, that babies love
to be swaddle, because they like the feeling of comfort that a swaddle provides, and there was something swaddling by covert lockdown culture and people respond to it, particularly in places where
Their own ideology around temperament has led them to believe that you are not supposed to say manner and women are never with. This is how people you know,
you can be anything you want to be. You can choose to be anything. You want to be your not burdened,
Biology, isn't, isn't the limit and you know.
History ancestral practice human
tradition. All these things are unnecessary limits on your freedom, and this drives people crazy and suddenly it was like. Ok here are the rules
Europe was to go outside. You're nuts was to go, will be yours was to wear a mask. Maybe you should were to use was to stand six feet apart from everybody like
I'm going to show I'm in a student I'm going to live within these rules
and there were something as it turned out extremely comforting in the red States, about following those rules and suddenly
like you know what you don't have to follow. The rules are more, it's like you. You were sick, you were taking
the marks, a sullen, you, you know you
longer sick. You don't have to take the marks. A sullen and people are still desperately taking them.
The cylinders with this was to stop. When you feel better, when your throat stops hurting you dont have struck thrown any more
and here we are and you're not that no one,
living. The were not known
what, but you know I M de Castro, has appeared in the Wall Street Journal this morning about how we went to a whole foods evangelists and he counted heap. There were few counted. Fifty people
warning him. He was one and there were falling. Rather people miss according to him, everybody else was wearing a mask. Accept him.
in LOS Angeles, where they had lifted all internal mask rules. People like the rules, they want rules,
I join with the point without overstating it, because it could be one could get carried away with this
but John, might there not be something to the fact that conservatives, ten
two already live by set of rules that
or not issued by the government. Not bad, not not expose
my concern is, but it is more likely they are more likely to be religious. They
more likely to be involved in trade
genes and have families that that
wire them to already live by set of rules so that that that that
It is satisfied among conservatives
What is more, likely to be satisfied among its heart is already
liberals they
We welcome the rules because there are less likely to have had them as part of their life. I think that's.
If I'm right, you're right Lebanon with Europe.
right- and I am even write like I think- that's a very dense up- a very deep analysis that
So when the rules and for people who who do live by rules, you know I keep kosher intensively effort
those who do live by rules and the rules are often onerous to some extent
Unnecessary rules bureaucratically imposed rules are rules that are imposed from the outside by people who do whose
worthy is asserted rather than is just a start
As a matter of with that, we don't accept as a matter of democratic practice that they have that authority.
That's not why we vote the men. Are that's not. Why will you know it's the classic thing about faulty, or any of these guys is that they work for us. We dont work for Anthony, found she
He does not make our rules.
they say? Ok, go downstairs. I guess this is actually really important point that I think, as we come out of the pandemic, we have to spend some time thinking about because the right
makers themselves were often impositions where they are.
accountability to the public which had to comply with the rules was absent,
clearly there were so many layers of the bureaucracy or or on other power brokers between them and us that it they actually over time, as is their power, continue dry.
the pandemic. They became very annoyed when people didn't instantly comply right. There was. I have to tell my weird little story this. The Sunday I went. I
one of my sons of the farmers market? It's an outdoor market
we went early before withdrew, crowded, we're both fully vaccinated. We are
Are there any and a woman comes racing up and says you have to wear masks now we're outdoors fully vaccinations isoude.
she just the air and the city, his list lifted those mass mandates. For that saying, I said, oh well, that's fine were fully vaccinate. No,
our policies, you have to wear masks, so I was, I was genuinely confused. I say: will I dont understand the policy
is kept waiting, the mask at me and yelling and unthinking cheap. She was angry that I didn't immediately complain and looking around everyone's wearing a mask outdoors, most of these people in D C, or probably fully vaccinated this point. So I took the Basque:
and walked over to the first tender? Who was unmasked- and she said, here's was going
and they have a rule that the first hour of the market is for high risk individuals. So you have to wear mask if you come up like a thank you. That's your policy. I get fine thanks for explaining to me, but she said please write to the farmers market. That runs the unity that overseas.
This and tell them that you find this ridiculous because we all hate it. They won't listen to us. Everybody just
willingly complies and you know it. It seems bizarre at this point, but the rule making like this was like, probably twenty one year old,
young woman had been badly trained.
she was enraged, hurt her little bit of power forcing mask some people had been even politely question and I
You'll like there wasn't that moment. Kind of the sense of a lot of us have had, throughout this pandemic, of our of our dealings with public health efficient
Well, it's the hall, monitor problem right. It's like out. It's like the high school hall, monitor problem where
somebody some kid gets. The authority is granted the authority by the whatever to my two watched, other kids and like get get drunk with power because he's been in power.
deserve tell somebody who was maybe older may be bigger, may be more popular whatever that they're not behaving right end, and it is a classic. There are like Phd theses, behavioral psychology Phd theses on these, but it is a way.
It is a real thing. I mean I, I remember a story going back on an close to forty years where my friend toddlers
Morgan. I were on the belt way in Washington, ah bright around where the Mormon Temple is for you, Washington was and suddenly traffic comes to a halt.
And we're just at the Georgia Avenue exit like we are like a hundred feet from the George Avenue Exit em. I think it was my car whatever and comes from exit and I've been the right lane.
so I pull off into the shoulder so that I can exit cause. I figure.
Something's, gone on, there's an accident there that there was a bad pile up, so I'm gonna get off
I am right at the exit
as I pull off. There is a highway patrol, o a highway patrol woman or whatever. Who is the one who?
as it was her standing there having stop the traffic and she violently gestures that we are to stop.
And so I serve pull again our room whose me, if I was taught nicer, pull over and roll down the window or something or Todd rolls down the window, and she said
Don't you see what I'm doing? Don't you
see that I've shut down the belt way- and it was a weird like one of those kind of signature moments, it's like.
oh my god. I've shut. I was shut down the Washington Beltway and these two pictures.
In this, for Escort S court are are breaking my rule. You know if everyone did what they're gonna do than everyone just gonna get off, and then my
The amazing thing that I just did shutting down the major artery of traffic in Washington DC area will have been in vain
our data by all of this free, though you know, and so
It remains a suggestive moment to me about serve like that. The site.
College of what can happen in these weird circumstances, I'm sure she's a perfectly decent person. She was publicly
you now. Whatever something had happened, she why're you know,
He told her. Ok, we're we need all traffic to stop, because we have to clear whatever happened in the road, but this was her. She this was her
things she had stopped the Bell way and we were ruining for her
better use of the word. I, though, right dug its eyes, shut down the highway if you're a public servant or public health professional. What not it should always be the royal ear it like. We are doing something as a community of experts to help you not I- and this is actually think what always grated on me about found.
he used, I a lot. I've said this. I've done
I'm doing this. He should be using we because it
the community of experts who mine and should disagree on some of the particulars
just a play. Devils advocate here, which that's team, the important role somebody has to that right. We all had somebody ought to do that. So just do it. I don't know if we should be sent as MRS the prospect of virtue signalling a heat that term, but it's the one that describes this kind of behaviour that were talking about here.
pulling and pulling has all the same problems with Democrats as it has returned when Harriet Utilitarians career
more global again going out and Democrats not going up which is predicated on self described behaviour patterns, and we know Republicans game,
falling because when there asked a question that is deliberately put provocative,
the liberal deliberately provocative response. Why
it isn't the same phenomenon evident here. Why wouldn't
the crowd say that what they think the poster wants to hear from them, which is that no, I'm not going up
the restaurant even other goin out tonight and when at last night
But the question is: why is that virtuous? Why do they see that as virtuous? That's
you're right, you're, absolutely right, they may be lying were misrepresenting. The question is: why did they feel that it's the right answer now, when Republican say, as thirty percent of them didn't some pole last week, that thirty percent them say that they believe that the trumpet be reinstalled,
as president in August? Do they actually believe it or is it like that question is a stand in for whether they like Trump,
and it's also a stand in for screw, you
for asking this question. I'm gonna give me the answer that is gonna make you angrier. Yes,
does it mean that thirty percent of them believe that he is actually going to be reinstall president, probably not, but but right
We understand this is some kind of weird proxy. That said, that's why I'm asking? Why is this the proxy? Why do they
think that they are supposed to say that they are not going out today feel guilty about going out. I think they feel guilty about going out. That's that's the weird parked then I feel guilty about not going out, but the great thing about the rules about the rules that everybody experienced over the course of covered is that it wasn't just a procedural. It was merely a rest. It was your. You were saving the planet, not to mention their neighbours and your phone,
members, by observing these rules, so it it had sort of investing in a component to it. I don't even think it's. A messy atta component was like good citizen ship and that's fine. As far as it went like last summer, last fall. It was a mark of good citizen ship being a good neighbour being good, you know, being a person who had a role to play in doing what
you could based on what evidence there was to ameliorate the the the problems and the dangers and the threats of the pandemic. That is not true any longer, if anything it
it is the opposite. It's like you're staying mass too, because you're worried about your self, which is where you start saying. Well, what do I care? So fine? You wear a mask. I've vaccinated. You can wear a mask where we want to wear a mask, but it's got to
weird overhang quality, because this then leads
business men to believe that they have to keep a mask mandate in their stores or they'll lose customers, or they might at any point that that's in certain places, obviously their places in the south where it's like
if you were a mask, will throw you out right, there's a lead role that it out it up, but that the better please, your larger point is important here, because it's that the denial ism about us coming out on the other ended this pandemic and trying to return to normal has political and policy implications. We saw it. We ve talked about on the spot casket
to how Biden has ruled rolled out some of his very sweeping legislative agenda is it it has
the granular level at the local community level, it it's just. As you said, John Places will still keep mass mandate until scold people who,
shouldn't had there is no scientific reason for them to be wearing a mass, and yet there is still scope.
in doing so the these you know it
has to do with. Who who has power in negotiations with say, reopening schools are reopening of you know venues where people can go and see a baseball game of your concert. There is power politics involved here, but comin,
The one that really drives me absolutely body so far this summer is covered as an excuse for the crime increase, because we received
I'll bet. You know that this, despite and violent crime in cities across the country and policy makers, who should be thinking about this in critically important terms as something that needs to be.
out with immediately can say you know it's really just a pandemic is just a bullet, we'll just wait and see what you you know.
People are dying as a result of that using covert as a cover for a lot of other other policy empower choices. So I think it is important to call it out for what it is and to push back. So I mean when I was a kid I was very polite.
this woman, but you know that I talk to all the vendors I bought items from an and ask them what their beliefs or about this policy date. They almost uniformly said they thought it was a bad idea because it was driving customers way special summer, where it's really onerous whereabouts.
Do you see worth boggy? So I wrote a letter to this end. I got home and I talk to my sudden he's. I can't we should. We should write alarmed to do something, because if you disagree,
there's something you have to act on that or else nothing changes. So we did. You know
the role of letter written who knows, if the listen to it, but more people need to push back in that way about this kind of anti scientific posturing,
so there's just one point I want to. I wanna do not forget to make about the the herons piece about,
more vaccinated, Republicans go out, then more
then do backside Democrats skip it for you,
there is there have been these psychological studies. They are not very impressive known to believe him, but there are always above.
Bout uncertain specifically here, but that the studies about the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives
These are always put out to try to make policy
into something more essential, more sort of animal to save it.
Conservative is really this type looks at the whole world.
this type of way, and
the role of the whole of the whole world, this type boy and the differences is just fundamental, observe, pre politics and in there
make up and what they always say is something like
rigorous site. Psychological studies demonstrate that conservatives,
more likely to approach the world out of a sense of fear, with a sense of fear, they're, afraid of thing,
They see threats everywhere, where
liberals are open in their thinking. They approached new people,
new experiences, new ideas with a kind of openness. So that really is the fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives,
so it is total, not its total. You know drummed up a fake science e way to insult concerted and say your clothes minded bigots right.
Fine. Where does that now stand in light of of the eight, the fact that I'm conservatives
our vaccinated, we're not talking about Anti cited. Given that backside, conservatives are more likely less afraid to go out into the world and and be among other people, then are
liberals law. I should add that the unbalanced and that's Republicans are just as likely to go out.
then that's all the polling, and I support
I'm sure that's terrible announced not yet that is likely to have on Democrats as well. I'm afraid
I don't see any evidence that on vaccinated Democrats or cowering in their homes,
either. A lot of this is there are people who don't wanna, get vaccinated for whatever reason everybody and whose loosened his on ass knows that. I think that there is that there in consequential number of people who were not getting vaccinate because they're afraid of needles and that that number could be in the tens of millions and therefore could be one of the major factors that will prevent us from reaching this mean a mystical seventy eighty percent number of of people being being vaccinated as well as the continuing you know, like horrible retailing of these, in a wild attic BP pieces of anecdotal data about one point.
sudden whose yet was vaccinated and then and then got sick. Like add that the truth is we something like two hundred million people? I think I've gotten a shot so far more than two hundred million people if people were being if if there,
was a real serious connection between
the reaction to the shot, and you know the general population getting the shot,
those numbers would be in the tens of thousands instantly. I mean. There's
Maybe I don't know the we can think of a time period in which
two hundred million people have gotten the same treatment for something
polio worse, I mean look at once in the middle of an emergency,
would be undeniable that there were like massive increase.
I'm just saying this, because I saw Alex parents and was retailing one of these stories
There would be massive increase in the number of people going
To emergency rooms I mean which is not anything that can be hidden from view it's not happening, but because of the nature of social media, which also want to get to so ever as soon as I read,
our first after her first that because of the nature of social media, of course, an end
Visual anecdote itself can stand in for two million, depending on how many p
read it. It's like you have a story, all my kid took it and then his he has an enlarged hearts and its, therefore, because of the vaccination,
one person in America, but if two million people read that tweet it
sort of like it's, two million people. It's the number of people who read at Mount the number of people who got it and that's the that's the bad part
you know by the weather. So there's a lot of talk today. Once again,
about inflation,
the Watch Wall Street Journal has a piece about how the supply chain problems that are going on or
esignal signal of of inflation, because if we don't have enough product, obviously prices are gonna, go up, as as consumers chase the things they want
I notice, for example, I need new air conditioner in the air conditioner. I want is suddenly six weeks on backwater stuff like that, so that in the future,
can signal the New York Times as a story about about love
Prices are dropping because they got expensive. People were doing. Do it yourself, lumber projects?
and now because the price went up, they stop doing it and other prices are dropping and that's a sign that inflation or that specific element that was so keen to see the inflationary spiral go upward in the first quarter of this year is now dropping. I bring this up because I want again to commend to you.
They were then CAFE that Camp David Bonds Daily NEWS Larry, you get it at the end of the day in your mailbox, if you sign up for it at evident, CAFE outcome produced by the advancement of the bonds and group, a three billion dollar by coastal management and financial services.
Firm and David is a leading exponent of the theory that we are under a wheel. We are not understanding the lead inflation problem correctly. He is the most eloquent representative of this opinion that the threat is deflation, not
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I'd cast our friend Brian Riddle did. I noticed he was looking at Pew Research, and now I gotta dig this up because of course I saved that somewhere and now I have to find it about twitter,
and why social media
even worse than we think that they are in terms of helping
understand America at any given moment. He looked at Pew research numbers and discovered that the number of people who say that they are regular twitter users. They are fifteen percentage points more likely to be Democrats as Republicans, and that of that fifteen de plus fifteen, as as, as some people call it, that the ten percent. Ok here it is the ten percent of twitter users who post ninety two percent of all tweets. Ok, so ten percent twitter users, post
nine tenths of all the tweets that are posted on twitter, r d plus forty three, which, as he says, would make Twitter America second, most liberal House district,
So. I immediately went on Facebook and said the wisest thing I ever did was to stop tweeting. I still read Twitter, I don't. I don't tween stop tweeting two years ago,
when a member that was, I was reading, a guess where I was getting annoyed by things and I started having this impulse to. You know hit the reply button and say something of noxious back to somebody who had said something, and I felt relieved that I had made this role for myself and therefore was not going to do it, because what what good would it do me? How why? Why would there be a good thing? What was I going to get out of that? A little dopamine rush, rival teeny, but it does mean rush that I had done something aggressive in that
But if we think about this, this is a very, very, very important statistic, and it is crazy, important in terms of the fact that the
those who run the mainstream media are allowing this service to be,
their story editor and their assignment editor,
the way that is deepening the
illogical, divide and and and strengthening the liberal bubble that is going to get them all into an enormous amount of trouble.
But the outcome of the silver lining, if you're, conservative and and
looking at Twitter. I dont use twitter, never had an account. I do. I do look at what's on there. For this reason, it's like there
having they're all the same party and they they get progressively drunk or throughout the evening, and they
saying the things that maybe they wouldn't have said. If they all had just met over lunch right, they just starts him. Will you know? Don't you think this is spinning wild theories and then they all start sharing the theories and in a weird way, particularly its an elected democratic official.
like say Alexandria, cause your Cortez or Corey bullshit these. These folks, who use their platforms to just say whatever happens, to cross their mind than when called to account
or else no Omar than when you try to call them to account it's as if you interrupted the party as a stranger and said how could you say
you don't belong there you're not part of the group, so it's always it still for these people.
Think of a shock when an outsider says you know, that's really not appropriate thing to save. You remember cut Chris or that's wildly anti semitic, it's a weird! That's a kind of bubble where, because of an almost a hundred percent of the people really active on Twitter, have a singular worldview
It's it's! It's interesting as an outsider is someone who ten such share their world due to see
what they really believe they have been in it. It has a strangely transparent effect. In that sense, I think
I have learned a lesson and intellectually of learned that the feedback mechanisms that are getting from Twitter is it is not a reliable source
snow emotionally it provides
individual reporters with feedback on the work of a sense of community. Particularly,
that's been de resonated over the course the pandemic and
they used to be a lot worse. We talked about briefly about hunger, sardines, new book, where she actually tasty little history.
Lesson that I have forgotten about the ways in which news rooms like the New York Times for it
people were optimizing their content for twitter and were encouraging the reporters to tweet out stuff. They were working on not that had been published but stuff that they were talking.
Other people about to generate some interest in enthusiasm in the this upcoming report to create a brand for themselves. I was like twenty fourteen, that's long out
Everybody knows that's not best practice. Now. You know, I think we should mention here that there would be
the percentage of the most active twitter users that's a bubble within a bubble, because
most Americans aren't even on twitter right, so they are completely there. They did. The agenda is being driven by
a minority within a minority, I mean it's fun.
it would be as though we
NEO con Jews who make up our minds.
but he was a minority with emolument with their minority. Let's just say in some ways believed that we were most people.
Like I'm ever everybody knows we shouldn't pull out of Afghanistan. You know every hope. Everybody abbot know buddy
The ports there. You know you're hot Omar. You know like that kind of thing, and that is part of that is very much part of the problem, but that that's an interesting point, because what twitter likes to boast about itself as a platform in its usefulness to the public converse
nation. In the end, the public sphere is just what no was talking about early with media folks. Oh, they get feedback right,
get a kind of public critique of their work.
Didn't and they'll empty assumption is, maybe they would improve, or maybe they would say all look we ve made a mistake were corrected, but weirdly twitter doesn't do that in a tent
the circle. The wagons and people double down on their mistakes in their untruth, and it hasn't had the
fact for everyone now, obviously making generalization year, but it it tend not to have that effect, even though its transparent, when people point out a flaw in
The work of a of journalist, for example, or something a congressperson said,
They circled wagons and ended it. They actually are more entrenched in their misguided views and not less are much.
I mean, I think, they're there. There are two sides that, because we talk last week about in the high
It's an Lynn manual Miranda apologizing for not having done enough representation of after Latinos him in the high
some Rita Marino apologizing for having said that people shouldn't say bad things about Lynn Manual Miranda. What are you kidding me all of that
was a secondary result of the poppy.
the realisation of these extreme,
lunatic disgusting.
racial list,
colorist arguments or whatever you want to call them on
also media if social media hadn't amplified them from you know some website
that nobody ever read? No apology? No, the there would have been no issue and no apology would have been necessary or thought to be necessary to tempt down.
controversy that didn't exist as a matter of actual controversy. In a sense, the agenda
I met a man like it will yet because that's all within the liberal bubble will little dying out on each other in a rubber trespassing. I guess I should actually have clarified that if, if it critique comes from the right about say something a journalist wrote,
a circle. The wagon, though bill earnest dragons around them right. Absolutely ok, guys, look out just want to talk to you about Bambi or second avatar,
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because every thing old is new again to quota ebbs childhood friend, Peter Alan's, famous lyric.
Everything always knew again saw you can here in all that jazz. The Bob Farsi movie from the late seventies
There's a story, the New York Times pretty great story actually about yekaterinburg. Russia, then called spread lost during most of the time.
That civilian was empowered known before this story as the place where Nicholas and Alexandria and thrown off children for lined up against the wall and shot and killed at the beginning of the russian Revolution,
there was in nineteen, seventy, nine and anthrax outbreak that killed dozens of people and second hundreds of people and the Soviets claimed that it was a naturally occurring phenomenon that had jumped from animals to humans, sound familiar jumping from animals to humans. Well, so I had it here and of course, I've lost its I'll. Give you a chemist,
find it so the article details, how guess what it turns out that it did not jump from animals
humans that it was a lab leak in said last and that the Soviets
covered up, and not only even more importantly, did the Soviets covered it up, but western experts who came to who were invited to come to the Soviet Union to check on this had had endorsed the soviet claim led by a guy
named, Matthew, Measles and a Harvard biologist, measles and and his wife. The medical anthropologist Jean again, in accordance with article came to echo, tearing burg with other american exports, were painstaking study. They documented how a north westerly wind on April second like this, and they must have scattered some anthrax borders, and that is that it added up. Ok
I talked about Matthew, Measles and Matthew. Miss Olsen became famous in the early nineteen eighties.
In the early nineteen eightys, there was a claim that chemical weapons have been used in Afghanistan by the Soviets against the Mujahideen and the Soviet and the rebels against the Soviets
and this, this chemical weaponry was called yellow rain because apparently fell from the sky. It was yellow in hue its second and kill people.
And the Wall Street Journal editorial page follow
A long research from the CIA
And the state Department had gone very heavily into research
on this yellow rain phenomenon and how the Soviets were violating chemical weapons protocols dating back to the Geneva Weapons convention
and ran after World war, one that this was the first if it had, if it were documented it within the first use of chemical weapon. Recent mustard gas in the first World war.
and the entire american scientific community, when absolutely bats about how the Wall Street Journal and the brain and the new Reagan administration
was distorting science that this was actually be pollen. It was not a weapon and
was outrageous and an unseemly, and if you look up Matthew, measles and name, if you go the New York Times and search matting, measles and name the Wall, Street Journal's website doesn't really allayed, go back and read those those old editorials which I was looking for, but
fine to not one but two editorials, one in the early eighties, one and ninety seven conclusively
celebrating how its now been complicit conclusively disproved
that Yellow Reign was, was a chemical weapon and not soviet. You know chemical warfare that is not
true, we still don't know whether or not
Yellow reign was a real thing or not, and it has not been disproven and
and yet what we have here is an example of the scientific community. In the late
nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, working as a phalanx to defend the communist regime against the charge that it had that there had been an industrial leak from a from a facility that had killed people. All this really the wicked business still at us today to review the Wikipedia
from on yellow reign. In the second paragraph, although the scientific evidence conclusively showed that Yellow Reign was not be soviet, chemical or biological weapons, the? U S, government has not retracted its false allegations and arguing that the east
has not yet been fully resolved, doktor measles and moved into the spare bedroom of a friend of the CIA nineteen. Eighty to study classified intelligent, suggesting that the soviet anthrax outbreak could have been linked.
to a military facility nearby. Please noticed that somehow his apparently reading classified information in the bedroom of a friend who works at the CIA. How is that not like a total breach of the actual security protocols?
we'll put them towards on six years later he wrote that the soviet exploration of the epidemics, natural origins, was quote plausible. The evidences of its right was consistent. He said with a thing.
The people had been stricken by intestinal anthrax. That originated,
contaminated bone meal used as animal feed.
Then in ninety ninety two Boris Yeltsin, the
then to Russia acknowledged quote our military development was the cause unquote of the anthrax outbreak. So this article than quote,
Matthew, measles and asserting yeah. I guess we're going wrong. You know it's like a great, so
why didn't you say? Oh god go? How can I finish? There is one other point, because it wasn't just the officials and it wasn't just the scientists who were complicit in this. This speaks to our current discussion of the of the wounded man lab leakage and the critique of the media's role here. The times article has
the very chilling quote which target,
The editor of the local newspaper there in the city were this happened, and the New York Times at other western paper kept calling
the sky to find out what was going on, and he finally said no one on
I've known in this building- can answer any long distance calls cause. We can't go off message that this is not happening and his quote was he who can keep a secret comes out on top and, I think that's notable impartial.
Because it's not just government officials who come out on top of such as the scientists, Aden, abetting a cover up who come out on top if they maintain the cup,
It's also people in the media who can retain positions of power by keeping
cover up going in part because
They lie themselves with the people who are initiating a cover up, but that quote really just stuck out to me, given our current debates right, so I don't know about you,
rain. All I know is that Matthew, measles and was celebrated for his handling of this matter,
why for entirely political, in any illogical reasons that he was standing against, a the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page on its crazed. Pursuit of this story led by an edge for women and bill crusoe- it
and, and you know, and the Reagan administration, so here is an editorial from the time September. Third, ninety means
having called yellow rainfalls. Ok in nineteen, if there was an article in form,
policy. That was the magazine set up at the time to be a cot counterpoint to foreign affairs, a liberal counterpoint forever, as it still exists now owned by the washing posts, but whatever its
one thousand nine hundred and eighty one Alexander Haig, then Secretary of State, announced that the United States had physical evidence of chemical warfare in Southeast Asia based on interviews with refugees in the finding of a type of toxin
a single sample of yellow reign, the State Department accuse us of it
helping allies in Southeast Asia Conduct Chemical warfare at first
One voice was raised in question by persistent inquiry Matthew.
is awesome. Hearted biologists developed another explanation. Yellow rain is the excrement of jungle, bees, its yellow from digestive pollen grants. It rained down from swarms of beast
I d be seen. His theory turns out to be exactly right, how the toxins, how did the time say this nineteen? Eighty seven?
based on a single article in foreign policy, the government's own studies still unpublished proved that the sources bees not bombs, still unpublished by the weights. Now what is it? Thirty? Four years later, those governments studies, as no isn't indicated, are still on public.
How did the government get it? So ludicrous supposition asked the New York Times and nineteenth. Eighty seven from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information ACT.
Mr Nielson and his colleagues Julian Robertson and Jean government began to focus on Richard Bert than a senior state department. Official, before the first detection of toxin could be confirmed and against the advice of low ranking officials. He pressed to release the information right is General Hague. Of course, our strategy for securing the
Maximum impact from this issue, ok, then go go along the peace in its Mr Bert. Now the ambassador in Bonn explains why the story I quickly to stop the killing quote on Quote
but the bees weren't killing anyone. The credible account comes from meticulous studies conducted by the bureau.
Creasy, yellow rain is be done, and you want to know why. Some of us don't trust the deep state glad. But I think you know I
There is also an element in this: that's not entirely ideological, which is that it shows an example of how sometimes
Experts can be more easily led down the garden path. Then lay people in others at the the quoted. Some ideas are so stupid. Only an intellectual could come up with them. I think there is something analogous in the world of science, which is to say that I think,
scientific experts, data collecting exports can be blinded by their faith in data and methods.
And miss larger pictures. Miss all sorts of context or
not be open to the idea that there is bad inputs that that they are that they are starting to bed information. Look. I accept that, but again, going back to the time because I was on my way was a merrily twenties and an end. I remember this vividly that's why, when I saw Matthew Measles his name in this article, you know- because I have this-
jeopardy memory you know get bells began to ring in my head about those annual triggered. I was triggered so
This was any illogical, though the whole point was that there was a world of liberal opinion. That believed that anything,
that the Wall Street Journal and the RE administration said about the Soviet Union was wrong.
the barbaric and evil and was designed to lead us into nuclear war and therefore opposing their arguments or whatever was itself an act,
of you were saving the world by not letting their arguments stand, and now
eagerly move forward to twenty twenty right. The argument that the that
the virus was a lab league or whatever is an act of war
are we try its its trump trying to attack Asia? China, where, where were creating
you know we're creating xenophobia, everyone go,
I want to try to town and yellow and and make out with chinese people, so you can show that that you know you're not scared
a video of global
Listen, I don't know what the hell it was and then, of course try
says ACT, so you say why the Reagan was Jason says we have credible evidence that the Soviets are using chemical weapons in and out in in Southeast Asia.
and your like will anything they say: it's gotta be a lie. So therefore we will accept any counter argument as being true.
Because they are liars and- and while I think
it's fair to say that the trumpet ministrations and trumps him trumps himself. His weakness,
believing conspiracy theories of his own and four and fourteen out lying just as frequently as he told the truth gave much more credibility to that to that idea than the re demonstration that, certainly in eighteen, eighty one, ninety eight to eighty three, that was not the case in the United States. Among liberals,
who believed that Reagan wanted a nuclear war. There was a credible body of opinion on the American left that Reagan wished to ignite a nuclear war. Ronnie Duggar, a famous journalist of the time, wrote a book called on Reagan, which he said. Reagan is
and even Jellicoe question raised by millinery and mother and he wishes to cause a nuclear war to bring about the end times.
This is an actual. I knew Ronnie Duggar. He was served
on drunken texan lunatic, but he was very well regarded and he wrote this very well regarded book, and that was the argument at the time that Reagan, one
a nuclear war to destroy the earth to bring about the end times to fulfil his mother's religious fanaticism, which a was not true about his mother and be
Was not true about Reagan and see was an act of cycle of of
intellectual psychosis, but it was, but it was a perfectly legitimate opinion being expressed at the time. I him. So, that's why savers
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so what else do we need to talk about before we go? I met there was some other. It was one other thing that I was like. Oh, this is gonna be a great choke, as we have so much talk about. I now have forgotten what it has. Oh yes, I know I know so there is a writer others out. There's a election expert made Michael Mcdonald. This goes back to the beginning of a shovel.
will serve finisher Michael Mcdonald, who, like calculates election results and stuff varied out. One of those guys who tabulate everything election time I hears is set here here says that tweet storm observations from driving cross the road South Florida, the city,
Louis Aerosol or architects are few of any people amassed and given a lower vaccination rates in these areas, it seems like the delta variants is looming disaster at what hotel I stand and personally
coughing away in the common area in the front during breakfast and everyone was,
fast. I wasn't mask and I'm fully vaccinated, but
clear out of that disaster, a sap. So let's get this straight, a person is coughing in America,
I already there's a person, S needs coughing. America, that's.
This also goes back to your social media. The segment
Has ninety thousand followers on twitter
twitter to say that he was in a hotel lobby in somebody was coughing.
Different time. At a better time. This would have been an unexpressed thought for
was expressed. We would never have encountered it but now
We have to contend with it. It's right in your face. You didn't solicit this thought. It's just forced upon you
and your expected to react in a particular,
No, I didn't love well sure, did
maybe maybe you're the kind reacts negatively today
sort of thing: there's a stigma around that sort of thing, but also open
People who react positively to add doesn't attaboy in a pat on the back. For being
so anxious that you essentially are socially responsible? This is the the anxiety that we cultivate now.
and all of it is probably unhealthy uncovered the lack of cooperation of thought of just thought that is now broadcast
probably not very healthy, for human beings as a tribal species were probably not supposed to encounter. All this on added
well there's. Also, I'm sorry, there's a lot of snobbishness in his remarks to as someone who grew up in Florence had lots of friends or other rural south. The the attaboy he gets, which I know is right, is from other elite members of deep knowledge, class
that's why he wrote it, but it should and does it least, for me from two different reaction than then sort of laughing at him or being astonished. It's to say. I don't trust this guy's work. If he's supposed to be telling us would voters believe in his contempt for certain kinds of voter
is. He feels perfectly comfortable expressing at on social media, then why? Why am I gonna trust his judgment about why voters do what they do, but that's a very sad actually cause. He provides a valuable service at election time he's one of these guys who does a tabulation of the ongoing vote after the elect
does over this people know now, as they never have you? No tens of millions of votes are often cast after election. Now, it's like tens of millions of votes before was two or three or four million votes, but it was, he was the one you watched. His tables were the when you watch to see say week or two exactly elect
where'd numbers actually were ending up after you know, as absentee ballots rolled in and and stuff like that was happening. This is now something that everybody does but
he was a very hard data guy and here is just giving his YO impression and it's too bad if he is ruining his credibility by tweeting out that he was in a hotel lobby. Were somebody
coughed and he's vaccinated and he's wearing a mask and he's running out of the room, because this is a disaster. There is someone among the three hundred and thirty million people in this country who was coughing. How does he know that guy's not vaccinated? Also the guy was coughing. I was on the street yesterday
I was walking with my wife. I was coughing. She said you'd better. By about water, we stopped at a new, I bought a bottle of water, I drank it and then I stopped coughing Michael Mcdonald would have run down the street screaming
because I was coughing near him, I was going to say think of the fear you might have been spreading among your fellow new Yorkers by we're having it
though bodily functions, and now since all I do is sit over, there was attacked the mainstream media. I just want to conclude this pike S with one thing I just want to say I finished yesterday, Jake Tapirs Second novel, which is called the devil, may dance, which is a which is a kind of a mystery thriller set in Hollywood. In the early nineteen sixty three
who was first, the Hellfire club? And I say this- I I don't know Jake Tapper, I'm going to survive known of him for twenty is not a friend of mine. I don't think I've ever even been on a show with him or anything like that. This book is so much fun. It's about frank! It's about the rat pack.
And Scientology and old Hollywood and there's a there's a really horrifying, seen set in
Disneyland at night in nineteen sixty two and the making of the mentoring candidate, and it is so much fun
going into the you're going into the fourth of July, weaken
Whatever it is, just it's great
Each reading- and I say this again capital- is that there are no social connection to Jane temporary whatsoever. I'm just saying this because I really enjoyed, and with that we will come back to the moral fur neighbour state. No one jump on words, keep
camel.
Transcript generated on 2021-07-26.