Where We Are This Week 3/3/23
Lab leaks, student loans, F1, and Chicago gets a new mayor.
The first race of the Formula 1 2023 calendar is this weekend in Bahrain. I’m very excited. Formula 1 is like watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and fighter pilots performing at the very edge of their ability simultaneously.
The sport is the very confluence of wealth, beauty, and performance. The logistics of transporting the entire F1 paddock around the world for nine months of the year to places like Singapore, Brazil, and Monaco are a marvel all by themselves.
One of the things I love the most about sports is the stories. Redemption, deceit, triumph; they’re almost always present in any competition but with F1, more so. The racing series is a real-life drama unfolding week by week, like a traveling Globe Theatre with more horsepower.
One of the storylines this year is that Ferrari has a new boss. After repeated strategic failures from the Scuderia last year, team principal Mattia Binotto was sacked. After each race, and in frequent interviews, Binotto refused to admit the team’s shortcomings. Interestingly, Binotto sang a different tune to the Netflix crew during the filming of the docuseries Drive to Survive.
Denying something in public while privately admitting the opposite; now, what does that make you think of? Hint: it’s this week’s first topic.
The beauty of sports is the age-old narratives of man’s successes and follies. Thankfully, we can all learn a lesson from Binotto. Don’t obfuscate reality; don’t gaslight everyone else in attendance.
Let’s all prioritize the truth so that we can improve ourselves, and not get canned.
Covid’s Laboratory
Conspiracy theorists rejoice! Ye have been vindicated. But if I were you, I wouldn’t be holding my breath for any apologies in the near future.
The Wall Street Journal, colloquially known in some circles as ‘The Wall’, reported over the weekend that the US Department of Energy has come to the conclusion that the virus likely originated in a Chinese lab. The branch of government, despite what you may hear, is uniquely positioned to make such a claim as they oversee several labs doing biological research.
Granted, their conclusion doesn’t confirm the origins of the virus but it evinces that the lab leak hypothesis wasn’t reserved for crackpots.
If you’re like me, then you’re old enough to remember that until now - probably still now - you were smeared as a conspiracy theorist or - gasp - a racist for suggesting that the virus likely emanated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology; the very research center that is focused on the study of coronaviruses.
I think it was
who said it first: it’s somehow racist to accuse the Chinese lab of mishandling the virus, but entirely appropriate to suggest it was due to the exotic eating habits of the foreigners - make that make sense. The claims are so unrooted in reality that they’ve had two major consequences. 1. The epithets of conspiracy theorist and racist have been bandied about so liberally the past few years that they’ve lost all meaning and 2. counterarguments being virtually nonexistent, these insults were used merely as a tool to cudgel you into submission.
The US Department of Energy’s assertion isn’t the only one like it, either. They join ranks with the FBI who came to a similar conclusion a couple of years ago. But that won’t stop our political betters from dismissing it outright. From Stephen Colbert telling the department to “stay in your lane” to NPR saying that “the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus.”
Why wasn’t the public trusted with the truth from the beginning? Why weren’t we allowed to question the official ‘origin story’ two years ago? Is it just because the United States and the EcoHealth Alliance were funding the lab in Wuhan? They were, by the way, and made subsequent efforts to cover it up.
Do you know how I know the government doesn’t have your best interest in mind? If they did, the origin of the virus should have been of paramount interest for the last three years. Why? The answer could have indicated the best course of action for treatment and its possible eradication. But they - the dreaded ‘they’ - were far too concerned with coercion and obfuscation to prioritize the truth.
Here I go asking questions again. What have our institutions done to instill - much less deserve - our faith in them? They lied about Afghanistan, WMDs, the Patriot Act, masks, and the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine, all since the turn of the century. But sure, they’ll tell us the truth about the next Very Important Thing™.
Here’s my prediction. Just as the vaccine went from miracle levels of efficacy to needing your booster every few months, the truth about the origins of covid will eventually be accepted, but not one individual - looking at you Bret Weinstein and
- will receive the mea culpa from their detractors that is long overdue.It will be the sloppiest of retcons, but lucky us, we get to watch as they swap the old narrative for the new one, Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark-style. The last three years of discourse will be erased from memory, and the malfeasance will go unanswered for without so much as an institutional ‘oops’.
The Good People of Gotham Have Spoken
And as quickly as she arrived, Lori Lightfoot will be vacating the position of Chicago Mayor. On Tuesday, Lightfoot failed to make it to the runoff in April marking the first time in forty years that Chicagoans didn’t re-elect the incumbent of the position.
Sometimes, precious few though they are, politicians suffer the real-world ramifications of their policies. As an outside observer, Chicago has looked increasingly similar to the fictional city that relies on a billionaire in a bat costume to retain some semblance of order. No kidding, at one point, Lightfoot even drew the bridges up within the city to prevent denizens from traveling within the city. I think that happened in Batman Begins.
Crime has continued its uptick in the Windy City reaching 1990s levels. And despite championing her intersectionality, Lightfoot neglected to protect the very swath of her constituents she purported to represent.
It’s a glimmer of hope when, usually, engaging in politics, local or federal, often seems futile. I don’t tend to have the highest faith in my fellow members of the citizenry, but every once in a while it seems that a group of people are capable of promoting their own self-interest - though probably not for long. Glass half-empty?
However short Lightfoot’s reign may have been - next stop: the Senate! - she did gift us with some incredible moments. Like the time she sicced the Chicago PD on its citizens if they were found outdoors during Covid, or the time she only answered questions from black or brown journalists, citing diversity - last time I checked homogeneity was the opposite of diversity - or when she decided not to press charges on gang members for engaging in an open exchange of bullets in broad daylight because it was ‘consensual’.
Thanks to for the prescient insight.
But the most precious of gifts she imparted to us didn’t come from her tenure as mayor at all. It was her Yelp review of VIP Limo. If you’ve never read it and the response from the business owner, treat yourself. Chicagoans really can’t blame Lightfoot for all of her faults, she was very open about the dishonest, incompetent person she is; it’s more than self-evident in her post.
I constantly rail against social media, but at least, it lets the crazies identify themselves for the rest of us. How in the world did this person get elected in the first place? Maybe never having left a Yelp review should be a prerequisite for not holding political office. If I had been campaigning against her, it’s literally all I would’ve talked about.
Lightfoot’s initial successful election bid either speaks to the sheer power and will of the political machine or the stupidity of the general population. But, seeing that her comeuppance has been swift, we don’t have to delve too deeply into that dialectic. Glass half full?
Student Loan Forgiveness
The Supreme Court has been deliberating this week on the legality of President Biden’s Student Loan Relief. The bill was passed as an executive order last year, but its chances of reaching the American people appear to be stalling out in the land’s highest court.
The problem America is facing, multiple generations of students laden with permanent debt, is not a simple one - shocker. But after the left lost their minds at the Roe v. Wade ruling, it’s important to remind ourselves that the Supreme Court does not adjudicate on the morality of a particular law but its constitutional legality - big difference.
The increasing trend in D.C. to use the Supreme Court as a third legislative body is anti-democratic. Especially, when you learn that the reason Biden was hopeful his forgiveness plan would succeed is not that he thought the had the authority to do so - he doesn’t, even Nancy Pelosi has admitted as much; Biden is attempting to shoehorn his relief into a post-9/11 provision that allowed enlisted soldiers’ college debt to be absolved as they were called to war. His assurance of his plan’s success was that no American would actually have the standing to sue. Therefore, it wouldn’t be struck down in the courts.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the underhanded nature of this executive order. Biden was confident his $400 to $500 billion student loan forgiveness would prevail because no one would be harmed by his order, therefore couldn’t take legal action. Ah, but the taxpayer might be harmed you say? The American citizen who relies on the fickle fiat of the US dollar could be wrongfully afflicted? Conveniently for Biden, taxpayers don’t have legal grounds for suing the Federal government for such matters.
But thanks to the litigious nature of America - something I never thought I’d say - one of the cases that has been brought before the Supreme Court is one where the individual’s loans were eligible for the $10,000 relief, not the $20,000 maximum. If they were to win, they get nothing except for their currency to continually be devalued by the whims of an octogenarian president - that feels like something doesn’t it?
Let’s also not forget who really wins if the relief does indeed pass - the colleges; they still get paid. We could’ve avoided the looming student debt crisis - one that amounts to over $1.3 trillion - if we hadn’t subsidized student loans back in the 60s.
Tell me if this makes sense to you. We let 18-year-olds - an age that gets increasingly younger by the decade - saddle themselves with debt on which they can never default, while they choose a tailored education in hopes it will be useful to them for the rest of their lives. So, we’re asking young adults to have the wisdom to reject ‘free’ money when it’s offered to them and to have the foresight to choose an education/career path straight out of high school with largely no real-world or work experience.
It’s a recipe for disaster. Full-grown adults can’t resist the allure of the money printer, so we shouldn’t expect glorified children to be able to. It’s also created a situation where all degrees are treated as equal. You can just as easily procure a loan for a STEM degree as a sociology degree, they might even cost the same. But one holds more financial promise than the other while its counterpart just creates another debtor.
Government-guaranteed student loans have created the inefficacious administrative behemoths that we see today. In the last two decades, in-state college tuition has risen by 212%, vastly outpacing inflation rates. Now, administrators make up over half of the payroll of universities to the detriment of educators and students alike.
If the Supreme Court does indeed strike down Biden’s relief efforts - as I think they ought to - there will still be the enormous college-shaped elephant in the room that will need to be addressed - and likely reworked entirely.