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Excellent analysis. I consider myself a democratic socialist/realist. I believe vaccines generally work. And the "virus escaped from the lab" theory makes just as much sense to me as someone eating bat stew.

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I have always considered myself to be very far left - probably more eco-socialist or anarcho-syndicalist if I were forced to have a label. I have been flabbergasted by the self censorship of the people I consider to be my comrades at Jacobin, etc. I support so many podcasters on patreon including all of your friends. I have always read alternative media on both sides, including Zero Hedge, but I have always understood that libertarianism is mostly right wing, so I enjoy the rants but take them with a grain of salt. Everything that I read at the beginning of the pandemic led me to conclude that the virus was an accidental lab leak, that Iver*** was probably reasonably effective and that it would be impossible to develop the vaccine quickly if anyone admitted that. In fact, my first exposure to Dr. Kory was on the Michael Brooks show (reruns of course.) I called a local doctor and got a prescription and then watched astonished for the very reasons you state. I had family on both sides of the issue and no one in my family could be considered right wing. I have three thoughts: First, we should have been allowed to discuss the situation. The censorship was/is unbelievable. But, that would have threatened the vaccine. At the time I thought that the vaccines were probably in the works anyway since the military was experimenting with them anyway. So I thought that whoever makes the poison probably is close to having an antidote. Now I am not sure. I just don't think we know but it is not looking good. Second, I had underestimated the totality of regulatory capture. Third is a bit hard to explain, but I think that there is a fine (or maybe a non-existent) line between advertising and trolling. Somehow our brains are just not able to deal with all of the visual and auditory stimulation that we have to deal with for hours every day. People are confused and angry and everyone knows that something is terribly wrong. Right now I think the left is setting itself up for failure because it is super urban and insists upon supporting techno utopianism that the corporations need in order to convince us to dig up the world for electric cars. I believe that big tech is trolling all of us and the amount of money they have makes it pretty much impossible to have a conversation. I am very scared.

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Partisanship is all most people understand. The Democrats are just as mindless as the Republicans, just with a little less racism.

I mean, that Obama speech for Johnson, where he had the stones to talk about the mean people trying to cancel social security. I pointed out to a couple of well educated, good hearted, intelligent people that Obama created not one, but two commissions, which he made 50/50 Dem and GOP, with the intention of cutting SS, and was greeted with rage.

Was I in some weird alternate universe where the Super Committee and Simpson-Bowles existed before sliding to this one?

Tell an NYC Democrat that Obama could have codified Roe in his first two years, and people will fly off the handle screaming about how mean the Republicans are.

Where does this mindless partisanship come from?

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This long commentary covers more than one serious issue.

So, going by parts:

The Department of Homeland Security is the result of a forced amalgamation of largely, or totally unrelated government organizations, with some new ones quickly thrown in. It was concocted and made into law by politicians of both parties that were desperate to show just how tough they were on "Terrorism" and, or not wanting to be branded as "Weak on Terrorism" on the aftermath of the outrages of September 11, 2001.

The result has been an organizational Frankenstein Monster that became almost instantly one of the most sacred of sacred cows in US politics. One that, so far, no party has dared to touch, much as Guantanamo and for the same reasons. Because, with so many other important things that a politician may do something about, why jump on this mouse glue-trap of US politics?

Asian issues: I have a number of friends and acquaintances both from China and from the Chinese Diaspora. They do not eat bats or use medicine made with rhinoceros horn as an ingredient.

So Wuhan has been the excuse for this latest outbreak of anti-Asian hate crimes and harassment?

Live and learn.

We, in the US, may not eat bats, or even monkeys, but have our own record of scary viral outbreaks at and even from facilities where exotic animals are normally used in research, both with humanitarian and military objectives. Consider the following:

In 1989, in Reston Virginia, there was a Primate Quarantine Unit belonging to a private company that imported animals from abroad and provided them to virology and medical research organizations, including the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Ft. Detrick, Maryland.

In October of that year a shipment of macaque monkeys from the Philippines arrived to the quarantine facility. The monkeys soon after started to die of an unidentified illness that was clearly very contagious.

It took a number of days of diligent work to identify it as one caused by a particular virus: the Ebola one, the agent of a plague that was 90% fatal and extremely contagious (now there is an FDA approved vaccine against it).

This resulted in a very serious scare. Fortunately the outbreak was contained without spreading to humans. Had escaped, the disease would have raged through one of the most populated areas in the USA: the nearby Washington DC and its extended metropolitan area, where virtually no one had immunity against it.

As to why some issues that are not political by nature are discussed in terms of Left or Right?

I think because being argumentative without a full understanding of what is being argued or whether there is anything to argue about, as well as trying to frame as political issues some that are not, is a form of ignorance and, or disingenuousness that is not the exclusivity of Ted Cruz.

Besides, most people here, I have found, have no idea of what "the Left" is like.

Why? Probably because it has been a very long time since there was an organized, active and typical Left to behold and, on so doing, learn to recognize it in all of it's real-world complexity.

So the statement that this or that "is a Left's issue", or one coming from the "extreme Left" is to be taken with a considerable lump of salt.

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I strongly recommend the book: What really happened in Wuhan by award winning Australian Sherri Markson. Here is the a link to the SkyNews 1 hour documentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh2Sj_QpZOA

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