Faced With Their Own Idiocy On The Lab Leak, Media Double Down On Calling You A Racist Rube

This week, two government agencies — the Department of Energy and the FBI — announced that they had concluded the most likely origin of the Covid virus, which has killed 6 million people worldwide, was that it leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This news was not an unexpected one, but it is interesting because of the question it raises about American discourse. How can you argue with people who won’t admit to being wrong?

It’s not coincidental that you might be interested in the late-night state. “comedy” — I have to explain to my kids that this used to be a sector of popular entertainment that people actually watched and enjoyed — here’s “Daily Show” guest host Hasan Minhaj Contributing to the discussion: “By the way, [the Department of Energy’s] conclusion with ‘low confidence’ is such a f-ckboy move,” He said that he added, “And now, every f-cking idiot I went to high school with is like, ‘Apologize to me right now, Hasan! I told you I was right, and if your hand is bigger than your face, you’re gay.'”

Minhaj has hosted the White House correspondents’ dinner and I haven’t laughed as hard since then. That is to say, I will also tell my children that the White House correspondents’ dinner was a decadent exercise in self-congratulation in speaking truth to power that no respectable person didn’t revile.

To paraphrase a comedian maxim, Minhaj’s statements are not funny because they aren’t true. Minhaj might get a pass, but he’s a comedian. And Fairness is importantMinhaj says that he isn’t sure what to believe about the virus’ origins if you view the entire clip. However, his bit does reveal a deeper, if unintentional, truth — he’s channeling a concise distillation of the textbook two-step that was broadly and institutionally adopted to downplay the significance of the DOE and FBI coming out and admitting they think the lab leak is the most likely explanation for the origin of the virus.

The FBI and Energy Department made the first move to discredit the validity of their conclusions. Yes, other government agencies also concluded that the aforementioned conclusions were correct. “zoonotic” origin — that the virus jumped from animals to humans — is more likely. Do the agencies who came up with the opposite conclusion have the same qualifications as the FBI or DOE? It is hard to know. And, most importantly, who cares. It’s irrelevant that there are differences.

The second step was to intentionally revise the history in order to completely misrepresent what the original debate about the virus’ origin was. This was done to ignore the true reason people feel vindicated. The DOE and FBI have not settled the issue. We were not allowed to debate the virus’ origins.

The media consensus regarding the lab-leak theory grew so quickly that it completely distorted two other debates

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