The Left's Imaginary COVID 'Reckoning'

In Chait's telling, the Left remains uncannily open-minded, always striving for truth, while the dogmatic Right remains hopelessly bogged down in "pathological incuriosity." Even when conservatives are right, they're right in the wrong way.

These days, people on the Left, Chait contends, "have engaged in searching self-reflection — on school closings, the lab leak hypothesis, the political aftereffects, and other unanticipated lessons. Conservatives have used the occasion to engage in a round of self-congratulations and taunting of the libs."

Now, you and I may believe dunking on libs who accused you of committing mass murder for going to church is perfectly normal behavior. Chait, though, is irked by all the "gloating" and "football-spiking." Especially because a handful of left-wing outlets have published columns (five years late) begrudgingly admitting that lockdowns were a failure.

Sure, in a "bout of confusion in the face of fast-moving events," mistakes were made, he says, but Democrats merely engaged in a good-faith debate. Which is why, I guess, Chait wrote a COVID-era piece headlined "American Death Cult," accusing Republicans of deliberately murdering their own citizens. Nothing says "self-reflection" like accusing your political opponents of being psychopathic nihilists.

It should also be mentioned that very few "reckoning" pieces genuinely wrestle with the Left's policy mistakes during COVID. The idea that a widespread reconsideration of pandemic-era policy is underway is a myth.

Not one Senate Democrat voted for former Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya to be director of the National Institutes of Health despite his history of being correct on COVID policy. So, how much reflection has there really been?

Then again, New York Times readers, Chait contends, had been "following this debate for years." The problem is that conservatives are under the mistaken impression that "mainstream" media are as "ideologically rigid" as their own outlets.

To corroborate this claim, Chait leans hard into an anecdotal fallacy, ignoring the preponderance of coverage to focus on a smattering of skeptical columns. Anyone who was alive in 2020-2022 can tell you that the lab leak "debate" consisted of one side theorizing that the virus may have been manmade and the other accusing them of being slack-jawed conspiratorial bigots.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, The New York Times noted in October 2021, "has been the target of conspiracy theorists who promote the idea that the novel coronavirus was made in a lab." When Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) brought up the lab leak hypothesis, The New York Times accused him of repeating an "unsubstantiated," "fringe" "conspiracy theory."

So, rather than conceding reality, Chait tries to both-side the pandemic response by pointing to bad predictions by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Hey, there's no doubt Republicans said plenty of crazy things. But conceiving cures or being unduly optimistic about the end of the pandemic isn't nearly as pernicious, immoral or authoritarian as shuttering churches, cordoning off playgrounds, destroying businesses, censoring dissent, forcing thousands of Americans to miss the funerals of loved ones, or undermining the future millions of schoolchildren.

It's admirable to admit mistakes, but not if you confess to a lesser transgression to obscure the real one.

The other day, for example, NPR CEO Katherine Maher was testifying before Congress and conceded that her network, which, for unknown reasons, is still funded by taxpayers, was "mistaken" and "should have covered the Hunter Biden (laptop) story more aggressively."

The problem wasn't that NPR covered the Hunter Biden story or the Wuhan Institute with insufficient vigor. It was that it joined every other censorious journalist in the "mainstream" media, and most tech companies, to suppress it.

This is like admitting to pickpocketing when you've just committed armed robbery.

The same goes for COVID lockdowns.

Chait ends his revisionist tale with perhaps his most gob-smacking assertion. Liberal America, he says, has an "allergy to dogma and an openness to reason," which "are the very core of the creed. (Read John Stuart Mill.)" I've read Mill, and I don't detect much "liberalism" within most of the contemporary Left.

The fearmongering, statism and enthusiasm for quack social science adopted by progressives have little to do with classical liberalism. Indeed, the doctrinairism and hysteria that are applied to virtually every issue these days are big reasons Democrats are now in a weaker position than they've been in for many decades.

And the COVID regime was a tragic manifestation of that illiberal mindset, a series of devastating mistakes for which the Left has yet to take responsibility.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 03/21/25: Sorry, Conspiracy Theorists -- Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone
• 03/03/25: Mitch McConnell: A GOP Hall of Famer?
• 02/21/25: RFK's Dangerous Autism Lie
• 02/14/25: It's Time to End the EV Racket
• 02/07/25: If You Really Support Immigration, Stop Excusing Chaos
• 02/03/25: Trump's Gaza Proposal Makes Complete Sense
• 01/24/25: How Biden's Pardons Normalize Abuse of Power
• 01/17/25: Israel Makes a Deal With the Actual Devil
• 01/13/25: Why Javier Milei Matters
• 12/20/24: The Obama Doctrine Is Dead
• 12/13/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
• 12/09/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
• 11/08/24: Don't Trash the Constitution to Dunk on the Libs
• 11/08/24: This 'liberation' will NOT be reported
• 11/01/24: HARRIS Is the Bigger Threat to the Constitutional Order
• 09/20/24: Fact checked! Harris Is the Extremist
• 07/13/24: Explain Yourself, Kamala Harris!
• 07/05/24: How Biden's Mental Decline Went From 'Misinformation' to Fact in a Week
• 04/12/24: Biden Is Now Chasing the 'Death to America' Voter
• 03/15/24: Turns Out Biden Lied About Hur, Beau, And Why He Pilfered Classified Docs
• 02/09/24: Why Biden Is Threatening to Veto Aid to Israel
• 02/09/23: Electric Cars Are a Scam
• 06/30/23: Americans Have Never Been Less Threatened by 'Extreme Weather'
• 03/03/23: Questioning Biden's Ukraine Policy Doesn't Make You an 'Isolationist'
• 01/20/23: No ribbons? Don't hide behind religion!
• 01/13/23: On Classified Documents, Joe Biden Is Out of Excuses
• 04/29/22: Biden's Ministry of Truth
• 04/08/22: The Most Radical Abortion Law in the Nation
• 04/01/22: Recuse Yourself, Joe Biden
• 03/25/22: No, School Boards Are Not 'Banning Books'
• 03/11/22: Let Them Drive Teslas
• 01/28/22: It's Not Government's Job to 'Root Out' Misinformation
• 01/14/22: Biden's Big Elections Lie
• 01/07/22: Schumer's Ugly 'Voting Rights' Gamble
• 12/24/21:AOC's Grasp on American Governance Is a 'Farce'
• 12/17/21: Dems Pivot from Build Back Better to Useless Extremism
• 11/19/21: Reckoning' Over Steele Dossier?
• 10/15/21: The Biden White House Will Pay for Playing Inflation Games
• 09/24/21: The most demonstrable political scandal still ignored
• 09/17/21: Sorry, AOC, The Rich Already Pay Their Fair Share
• 09/02/21: Why Isn't Biden to Blame for COVID-19 Deaths?
• 08/06/21: Biden's Unprecedented Attack on the Constitution
• 07/30/21: Jan. 6 Was Deplorable. It Was NOT a Coup
• 06/21/21: The Myth of Republican Obstructionism
• 05/21/21: What Does Putin Have on Biden?
• 04/16/21: Kristen Clarke Is Unfit to Be in Government
• 03/26/21: No to DC Statehood is far from GOP being reflexive
• 03/22/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights The Hypocrisy of the Filibuster Busters
• 03/12/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights
• 03/05/21: AOC's Terrible Minimum Wage Argument
• 02/12/21: The Dem Party Is Radicalizing against the Constitution
• 02/05/21: What NOT to Do with Marjorie Taylor Greene
• 01/15/21: Free Speech Is a Value Not Just a Right
• 12/31/20: It Can't Get Any Worse Than 2020. Here's a 2021 Political Wish List
• 10/26/20: Wanted: An Honest Debate about the Death Penalty
• 10/26/20: These are the questions 'Big Guy' Biden must be forced to answer about Hunter's emails
• 09/11/20: The Dems' Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election
• 08/28/20: Biden Is Underperforming Hillary in Battleground States
• 08/14/20: Kamala Harris, Imaginary Centrist
• 07/24/20: Who you calling a fascist?
• 07/17/20: Speech Police have finally gone too far
• 07/03/20: 'But Gorsuch' Is Still Trump's Best Argument
• 06/22/20: Welcome to America's Cultural Revolution
• 06/12/20: The color of my skin is not an indictment of my morality, nor does it strip me of my agency
• 06/05/20: What this son of immigrants knows about bulding bussinesses --- and the dismay of destruction
• 05/28/20: The Folly of Twitter's Fact-Check
• 05/22/20: Dems Warning Trump Will Reject Election Results Should Look in the Mirror
• 05/15/20: Obamagate Is NOT a Conspiracy Theory
• 05/08/20: Really, Joe --- due process is the opposite of justice?