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There's zero actual evidence to support the lab leak theory (which for certain people is in itself some slam dunk 'evidence' that there's been a coverup) so it's a plausible theory but at this point that's all it is. People who are interested in talking about the possibility it escaped from the Wuhan lab seem to fall into two distinct camps: 1) Hey we need to talk about biosafety protocols, this is an ongoing issue across the globe and we would see a similar pathogen escape in any number of countries at any time. 2) China needs to be held accountable, they must dearly pay for this President Trump leapt straight to 2 and kept screaming about it for months, even after it became super super clear that the CCP wasn't going to give any ground so the argument was always a non starter. It was pretty much the same deflection maneuver as his classic "Mexico will pay for the wall" bullshit which was also always an obvious non starter but people really fuckin' loved it. People loved the "China must pay for releasing this virus" line for the exact same reasons. banned from Starbucks posted:Heh 4mil deaths world wide. Oh well the particulars aren't important..just take whatever story China feeds us because we can't look racist. Hate crimes against Asian-Americans increased by nearly 150% in 2020: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anti-asian-hate-crimes-increased-nearly-150-2020-mostly-n-n1260264 That was directly caused by Trump screaming about the  CHYNA VIRUS for months on end. That's the racism aspect of the discussion.(For the record I don't discount the lab leak theory at all, I just haven't seen sufficient evidence to buy into it any further)
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Jun 16, 2021 05:16
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:There's zero actual evidence to support the lab leak theory (which for certain people is in itself some slam dunk 'evidence' that there's been a coverup) so it's a plausible theory but at this point that's all it is. People who are interested in talking about the possibility it escaped from the Wuhan lab seem to fall into two distinct camps: I dont give a poo poo about what Trump said. The virus was from China and the rest of the world has suffered immensely and deserve some sort of explanation regardless of what some racist Americans do.
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Jun 16, 2021 05:52
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banned from Starbucks posted:I dont give a poo poo about what Trump said. The virus was from China and the rest of the world has suffered immensely and deserve some sort of explanation regardless of what some racist Americans do. I mean, they will never do an investigation and we will never know the answer...which makes Stewart's rant kind of a pointless temper tantrum. It's like being mad at the tides or the wind... 
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Jun 16, 2021 05:57
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Conspiracy theories are very comforting, they're the unsupported belief that an awful thing that happened was actually due to deliberate acts by [hidden actors] and if we could only uncover the truth the world would be able to hold them accountable and things would be put to rights and all the anger and frustration and fear and confusion we went through could be levied at a specific outside force. The other option is to accept that the world is a chaotic place where horrible poo poo could just happen at any time and in many cases there's not really much that anyone could have done to prevent it, which is an extremely uncomfortable thing to have to accept. E: the furious anger over the China lab leak thing has a real "We have to go into Iraq to find the WMDs which we know for sure they have" vibe, we've all been here before. E2: I should also add that politicians in the UK and here in Australia were also getting very saber-rattle-y over a supposed CCP coverup, it's not just a US thing Snowglobe of Doom fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Jun 16, 2021 |
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Jun 16, 2021 07:25
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I'm not surprised that prisons are horribly inhumane in yet another way, but that was also the laziest idiot defense I've ever seen. I was surprised that local car dealer commercials aren't original. I guess it makes sense for them to outsourced to somebody else because it's not like the car dealers are all that creatively driven, but you'd think if they were buying from a professional source they'd get better stuff. It was like the Springfield anthem. I hope somebody takes Oliver up on his offer. I get a reflexive discomfort about the Wuhan Coronavirus lab, and it's possible that there wasn't good containment at the lab, but it also sounds extremely predictable that the pandemic is following in the pattern of all the other epidemics China has seen throughout the years (some of which have been coronaviruses) and this one finally broke out across the world like what epidemiologists have been predicting would happen one day (and it doesn't hurt that this outbreak happened at a time when leadership around the world was particularly derelict). I hope Jon Stewart goes on to focus on something more worthwhile in his time. He seems really stressed from the whole pandemic.
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Jun 16, 2021 07:49
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SlothfulCobra posted:I get a reflexive discomfort about the Wuhan Coronavirus lab, and it's possible that there wasn't good containment at the lab, but it also sounds extremely predictable that the pandemic is following in the pattern of all the other epidemics China has seen throughout the years (some of which have been coronaviruses) and this one finally broke out across the world like what epidemiologists have been predicting would happen one day (and it doesn't hurt that this outbreak happened at a time when leadership around the world was particularly derelict). There's a BSL-4 lab in my state that studies ebola, hendra, SARS and the like and apparently it takes their researchers an entire hour every day just to go through the security protocols to get to the area where the viruses are stored https://www.sbs.com.au/news/a-rare-look-inside-australia-s-high-security-ebola-lab The popular online theory of "Maybe a cleaner at the Wuhan lab fished a dead bat out of a rubbish bin and decided to make a few extra bucks by selling it at the wet market across the road" is somewhat fanciful to put it mildly. (And just because I know people are going to bring it up and accuse me of being a tankie or something, I'm more than aware that the CCP has a long long history of covering up heinous acts up to save face and I don't trust them as far as I could throw them, but that still doesn't count as evidence of a lab leak)
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Jun 16, 2021 08:03
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banned from Starbucks fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Jun 16, 2021 |
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Jun 16, 2021 08:29
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Again it doesn’t loving matter if the theory is plausible in any way, it’s insane fear mongering and just leads to more dumbass conspiracy poo poo. An investigation will take years either way, and most likely people like Jon Stewart will still be spouting this poo poo regardless of the results. John Oliver JUST did an episode about how loving harmful and irresponsible this kind of rhetoric is for a whole group of people.
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Jun 16, 2021 09:53
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banned from Starbucks posted:What is it about the Wuhan lab theory that people find so unbelievable The only point of the theory is: China=Bad.
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Jun 16, 2021 10:18
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Usually I find it good advice that if something I believe happens to be believed and pushed by a whole host of ghoulish horrible people I need a moment to go: Hold up, let me just re-examine this for a bit after seeing what kind of company I am keeping and get back to you.
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Jun 16, 2021 10:35
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Wait so I catch a probe for racism for saying the term "Kung Flu" is inherently funny (in spite of also being racist), but seriously espousing the lab leak theory once the US propaganda machine dredges it up again to gin up popular support for a renewed imperialist attempt at isolating and destabilizing China (see recent G7 and NATO statements) and deliberate ratcheting up of tensions is perfectly acceptable? Alright then, carry on.
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Jun 16, 2021 14:17
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banned from Starbucks posted:Heh 4mil deaths world wide. Oh well the particulars aren't important..just take whatever story China feeds us because we can't look racist. In one corner we have a thing that's never happened and has no evidence of happening this time and in the other corner we have the numerous zoonotic pandemics. And what does it matter that it came from China? They handled it better than most other countries it wasn't inevitable that we'd all gently caress up the response. Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Jun 16, 2021 |
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Jun 16, 2021 15:27
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The Spanish flu was caused by rogue time traveling virologists, prove me wrong
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Jun 16, 2021 15:29
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Orange Devil posted:Wait so I catch a probe for racism for saying the term "Kung Flu" is inherently funny (in spite of also being racist), but seriously espousing the lab leak theory once the US propaganda machine dredges it up again to gin up popular support for a renewed imperialist attempt at isolating and destabilizing China (see recent G7 and NATO statements) and deliberate ratcheting up of tensions is perfectly acceptable? There was a bizarre moment a few weeks ago when Fauci made some noises about the lab leak sort maybe being plausible and the Biden administration saying they were going to look into it and the social media platforms that'd been policing the topic pretty hard suddenly had to do a 180 because a bunch of news media outlets started reporting on it and a whole lot of conservative assholes who'd been dinged for sinophobia got all smug and to go "I told you so!!!"
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Jun 16, 2021 15:50
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:There was a bizarre moment a few weeks ago when Fauci made some noises about the lab leak sort maybe being plausible and the Biden administration saying they were going to look into it and the social media platforms that'd been policing the topic pretty hard suddenly had to do a 180 because a bunch of news media outlets started reporting on it and a whole lot of conservative assholes who'd been dinged for sinophobia got all smug and to go "I told you so!!!" Yeah I know and this very coincidentally coincides with the US making a major diplomatic push to get its vassal states and others to form a united front against China. All Im saying is at least Trump's top-down racism to achieve geopolitical (read: benefit the western, primarily US capitalist class) was funny. And, no, I dont mean that the consequences are funny, in case I need to spell that out. Biden does the exact same thing and we're all suddenly supposed to take it seriously. Like the problem with Trump's racism was that it was gauche, not that it was racist. Lmao. Also, gently caress Jon Stewart for being such a terminal loving liberal.
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Jun 16, 2021 17:37
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Hey guys here's a neat idea let's found out where this virus came from, huh? Maybe figure out how to prevent the next one? If it's a natural thing, great! Let the world's best scientific minds have a look at that totally natural occurrence. If it's a lab leak, well, that's a different conversation but the goal is the same - preventing the thing from happening again. "The country says no so why bother. Also it doesn't matter." "It's a racially charged issue, which makes not knowing more important than knowing." "I confidently believe X already, so logic has no sway over me and your skepticism of X causes me to argue in bad faith." Meanwhile the virus itself, biologically incapable of higher thought, appears to the the smarter opponent here, as we continue to own ourselves.
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Jun 16, 2021 17:46
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lol
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Jun 16, 2021 17:47
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Orange Devil posted:Biden does the exact same thing and we're all suddenly supposed to take it seriously. Like the problem with Trump's racism was that it was gauche, not that it was racist. Lmao. The super annoying thing is that there's been a whole series of instances where the official line has suddenly flipped 180 degrees (there's no evidence of human-to-human transference/oh poo poo it's super contagious, masks are not needed/everyone has to wear a mask/wear two masks, social distancing is essential/eh it's fine for kids to sit 3' apart in class, etc etc) and also a series of cases where the Biden administration did the same thing as the Trump administration or did even less (Bernie bucks???) but was still lauded, it's been a crazy pandemic and the constant stream of inconsistencies has been super annoying sure okay posted:Hey guys here's a neat idea let's found out where this virus came from, huh? Maybe figure out how to prevent the next one? There are approximately four dozen species of coronaviridae that have been identified and deeply studied, some of them for over a century now. Some of them (gammacoronaviruses and deltacoronaviruses) infect mostly birds whereas others (alphacoronaviruses and betacoronaviruses) mostly infect mammals, including beluga whales, cats and dogs, mice, bats, and humans. Some of the ones that infect humans or are capable of zoonotic transfer to humans have been studied since the 1960s. Epidemiologists have been warning for years and years that a coronavirus pandemic was highly likely and probably imminent which is exactly why scientists in China were studying bat coronaviruses. None of this poo poo is new, or surprising. sure okay posted:"It's a racially charged issue, which makes not knowing more important than knowing." That's a heinously bad faith way of describing the discussion that just happened and you know it
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Jun 16, 2021 18:17
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Orange Devil posted:Like the problem with Trump's racism was that it was gauche, not that it was racist. Lmao.
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Jun 16, 2021 19:17
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I feel like there probably should be some kind of comprehensive investigation into what the Chinese government was doing in the earlier stages of the outbreak, because I remember a lot of shady stuff like trying to tamp down on whistleblowers (although once the word did get out, certain other big powers in the world squandered their chance to be pre-emptive about anything, and that needs to be examined as well). There's a whole lot I don't really know, and if the leading experts are starting to say there's things they don't know and that they want an investigation, sounds like an investigation could be handy. Of course, I also kinda doubt how much information you can actually get out of China when the government was already of a mind to be secretive about things, and the pursuit of an investigation on the world stage could become a whole mess on its own that could also dovetail into how a lot of people have already been wanting to go after China for various other reasons and giving one big reason at the forefront could dramatically change how things are on the world stage. Orange Devil posted:a renewed imperialist attempt at isolating and destabilizing China (see recent G7 and NATO statements) and deliberate ratcheting up of tensions is perfectly acceptable? I feel like imperialism isn't really the right word for when two separate empires are clashing.
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Jun 16, 2021 20:12
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Orange Devil posted:
This is the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a very long time. There is a very deep, significant difference between “We’ve heard credible information that there may have been some kind of lab related issue, and we are going to look into if there is any truth there” And “The virus came from China! It’s chinas fault you’re all dying! China China China. They will pay for all of your suffering. We need to smack them down. China. China. “ This is the same both sides-ism argument that gets thrown around by people without the ability to critically think, or that are purposely arguing in bad faith due to racism, xenophobia, et al.
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Jun 16, 2021 20:22
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SlothfulCobra posted:I feel like imperialism isn't really the right word for when two separate empires are clashing. World war 1: not an imperialist war? Also, what credible information?
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Jun 16, 2021 20:36
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Even if we assume that China manufactured COVID in a lab and released it into the US with the explicit purpose of murdering every last American in an act of global war, the incontrovertible fact of the matter is that the US government completely and utterly abandoned the country and let half a million people die while the richest got even richer. That abandonment continues. Trying to “investigate” where the flu came from is nothing more than a deflection. This shithole country pours trillions into the military and the police all in the name of “protection,” yet does nothing to even slightly mitigate a pandemic. If China is guilty, then we’ve somehow managed to turn the actual perpetrators into scapegoats for our own failure.
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Jun 16, 2021 20:46
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I feel like normally when people throw around "imperialist" they're talking as if it's an empire vs. a non-empire, like one of the participants is some kind of underdog, whereas if an empire's trying to push around another empire, it's not like any non-empire has odds of making any headway. I assume that Fauci who has been the US's lead guy for dealing with Covid19 throughout the crisis isn't just saying things out of nowhere. He has credibility from being a leading expert on that matter, so I assume he's not just pissing into the wind when he says something like that.
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Jun 16, 2021 21:02
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Just actually watched the Jon Stewart clip and it has big Blue MAGA energy...
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Jun 16, 2021 22:28
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Toxic Fart Syndrome posted:Just actually watched the Jon Stewart clip and it has big Blue MAGA energy... he was always a dumb piece of poo poo (dude loved gay and trans jokes and was genuinely a complete credulous rube to the point where he believed loving Bill O'Riley was a genuine good faith actor and all) and had the moral backbone of a slug but yea this is a new level even for him
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Jun 16, 2021 22:42
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Pilfered Pallbearers posted:This is the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a very long time. 'may we see the credible information?' 'no. Also if we don't find anything China clearly destroyed the proof'
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Jun 16, 2021 22:43
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Slamhound posted:Even if we assume that China manufactured COVID in a lab and released it into the US with the explicit purpose of murdering every last American in an act of global war, the incontrovertible fact of the matter is that the US government completely and utterly abandoned the country and let half a million people die while the richest got even richer. That abandonment continues. It's almost like you can think both things are bad at the same time. Hard to imagine but it's true. sexpig by night posted:'may we see the credible information?' More like Hmm odd that this happened near a lab and whistle-blowers were mysteriously silenced. May we investigate further? No and if you question any of these coincidences you're the reason people are getting punched in the face in New York.
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Jun 16, 2021 23:51
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sexpig by night posted:'may we see the credible information?' Again, strawman bullshit. Credible information does not equal true information. They’re not announcing the start of a loving war. Then it’s valid to demand details (a la bush/Iraq). But they’re launching an investigation. You don’t put out a bunch of potentially false information, you say you’re verifying and will come back with more info. Learn some god drat critical thinking skills. Not everything is a loving conspiracy.
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Jun 17, 2021 00:21
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banned from Starbucks posted:It's almost like you can think both things are bad at the same time. Hard to imagine but it's true. No whistleblowers were silenced, the one example of this is one person who, while multiple other doctors were being actively lauded by the government for saying 'hey this Covid-19 thing could be an issue', was running around telling people to panic and not listen to lockdown advisories and such. The Chinese government was literally working with various doctors as soon as it became clear this was a proper outbreak and not just a few cases. Pilfered Pallbearers posted:Again, strawman bullshit. There have been multiple investigations that have said 'this virus has behaved exactly like a natural virus including plotting a course through known bat territory and such' and the response is 'yea but china lies', that's not critical thinking that's, in fact, conspiracy bullshit.
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Jun 17, 2021 01:41
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sexpig by night posted:No whistleblowers were silenced, the one example of this is one person who, while multiple other doctors were being actively lauded by the government for saying 'hey this Covid-19 thing could be an issue', was running around telling people to panic and not listen to lockdown advisories and such. The Chinese government was literally working with various doctors as soon as it became clear this was a proper outbreak and not just a few cases. Also if western governments had cracked down on people spreading this kind of bullshit then less people would have died and less people would have suffered long term health consequences. Something about shouting fire in a crowded theatre.
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Jun 17, 2021 07:19
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Let's say it turned out one lab in China caused all this. We don't scapegoat an entire race for that poo poo. That's so hosed up and horrible that I can't believe I have to even say it. We don't blame Germans for Nazis, even, but they're white, so of course we don't.
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Jun 17, 2021 07:35
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LividLiquid posted:We don't scapegoat an entire race for that poo poo. That's so hosed up and horrible that I can't believe I have to even say it. The US (and western society at large) has a really bad track record in that regard so unfortunately it's a discussion that we still need to keep relitigating over and over. Japanese-American internment camps during WW2 are the obvious example but there's plenty more that came after that, and we've also got factions like the Boogaloo Boys whose stated aim is to initiate another civil/race war. We had race riots here in Australia not that long ago so it's not like we can point fingers either.
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Jun 17, 2021 08:37
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Everyone has a really bad track record in that regard. Different than us == bad
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Jun 17, 2021 09:04
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We *needed* Jon Stewart. He got Americans away from Reagan and Bush in a way that let the next generation kill that and become actual leftists. Stewart should've kept up and he didn't. That's why this hurts so bad. Dude has sway and he used it backwards.
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Jun 17, 2021 09:40
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LividLiquid posted:We *needed* Jon Stewart. He got Americans away from Reagan and Bush in a way that let the next generation kill that and become actual leftists. yea the guy who constantly had Newt Gingrich on to jack off about how the queers and blacks need to be removed from society really gave birth to the leftist movement by going 'come on' a couple times before thanking him and inviting him back again. He had no fuckin issues with Bush during the war lead up, when he was eager to mock anti-war people and present idiots going 'dur we gotta kill em for 9/11' as smart people willing to make the hard choices. Funny enough I went looking for that clip and instead found one in 2005 where he was STILL making GBS threads on anti-war people for being so dumb and saying things like 'racism is bad' https://www.cc.com/video/3f9bp8/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-headlines-march-of-the-peaceniks This was the same guy who's stupid little 'rally for sanity' literally involved saying calling someone racist was just as bad as them saying the n-word.
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Jun 17, 2021 13:12
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Azhais posted:Everyone has a really bad track record in that regard. Different than us == bad
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Jun 17, 2021 14:12
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I'm not sure why everything has to be a dichotomy. I mean, yeah, it lets us make bad faith arguments so that we can pigeonhole people into one of two categories, and pretty much anyone can point to at least one of those groups and tell them how wrong and dumb and bad and maybe evil they are, but where does that get us? I don't think the current "lab leak" theory, at least what the serious government officials are ostensibly investigating, involves people trying to prove that China purposefully released an engineered virus as a weapon against the West. Scientists are saying that the virus displays all the hallmarks, whatever those are, of a natural virus and its expected mutations. I believe them, though to be fair, I'm not a virologist, so who knows. (I hope they know.) I don't think that it has to be either "China is evil and so they engineered a virus and purposefully released it to kill all the capitalists" or "An amateur Chinese spelunker sniffed the wrong bat turd and started a pandemic the good ol' fashioned way." I think it's entirely possible and plausible that researchers studying this virus had a containment leak, someone got sick, and before they even realized it, they'd started spreading it outside the lab. It could have happened anywhere viruses are studied. Protocols exist, but they are not perfect, and they are updated all the time because of things like this. I'm going to assume that the Chinese lab in question has protocols, and that they were followed. It's still worth trying to trace the source of the virus because if we can figure that out, then we can see if we can prevent such an occurrence from happening again. If it was just a totally normal, non-controlled environmental thing--i.e., closer to that spelunker huffing guano--well, there's not a lot you can do about that. No matter the race or nationality, people who love sniffing bat poo poo are a special kind of crazy. But, if we can prove that it was just a lab accident of some kind, then we can look at the procedures and protocols at that lab and see if there is room for improvement. You know, we can learn from the mistakes that were made. And it is worth looking into, because the Chinese aren't the only ones with labs that study deadly viruses. We do, too. And if we identify a fault in their protocols, we can see if it exists in ours, and if so, we can account for it. And I get that there is no evidence that the virus started because a researcher caught it in the lab and carried it home. That's a valid point. At the same time, I do not think enough objective investigation has been done to develop that evidence one way or the other. The Chinese government has every reason to thwart an international investigation; let's not act like they're paragons of openness and freedom of information. But the American right is also looking for a place to point its finger so it can further excuse The Grand Cheeto's loss in the 2020 election, which wasn't a loss because election thievery conspiracy pillow. So maybe on the whole, we are not the most objective party to handle an investigation, and our bias is so well-known world-wide that the rest of the world, even our allies, could be forgiven for eyeing the results of an investigation led by us with skepticism. And what if this didn't actually start in China? Did the Spanish Flu start in Spain? (Seriously, I think I read somewhere that it didn't.) The way to find out where it all started and how to maybe avoid this from happening again is to investigate all plausible theories, and when you have a lab that studies viruses situated near the suspected epicenter of a viral outbreak, then it's a good idea to look into that. tarlibone fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Jun 17, 2021 |
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Jun 17, 2021 15:53
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No one is saying that the origins of the virus should not be studied and there is not a world in which they won't be.
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Jun 17, 2021 16:35
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I guess we've sorta gotten back to the Israel issue, where criticism of a foreign country's government constantly gets conflated with prejudice for a related domestic ethnic group.sexpig by night posted:yea the guy who constantly had Newt Gingrich on to jack off about how the queers and blacks need to be removed from society really gave birth to the leftist movement by going 'come on' a couple times before thanking him and inviting him back again. Well, the joke in there is specifically about a disunited message, which isn't a great joke, but that's the joke. I think when looking back at Jon Steward, you gotta look at his context in the world. When the Daily Show was doing its earlier run, it didn't actually believe it had like some kind of responsibility about news and issues. It was just another comedy program that used the news media as its resource for material. If there's something happening, they'll make fun of it. It was the widespread belief at the time that dumb jokes and stupid clowns could not have some kind of major effect on the world. I'm not really sure if the Daily Show had that much net effect on the world, but it did really appeal to people to see open mocking of important figures, especially when the "patriotism wave" post-9/11 was silencing a lot of legitimate non-satirical criticism. Which I do think gave it a higher overall hit rate when it came to comedy, while the later Daily Show and its successors started to be more aware that some people would end up being informed by the comedy news parodies they watch, and they started to try being responsible, which led to some of them becoming a kind of news-lite with the occasional dick joke, which is overall less funny. Last Week Tonight tries instead to be ambitious about making its researched portions informative and just bring up the mood with its dedicated "look at the news media being silly" joke segments. You still have the issue of comedians lacking journalistic standards, but as shows slide further into news-lite, you have less of the defense of being primarily comedy because that's less in focus.
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Jun 17, 2021 17:28
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