News Hoax Quiz
This is a bit of internet fluff that is going around, but one which has a bit of a sting.
I am happy to report that, deeply cynical and suspicious man that I am, and who regards the news in the same light as the Book of the Apocalypse regard the city of Pergamos, namely, the throne and dwelling place of Satan, not one of these bits of fake news deceived me for a moment.
This list could be doubled in length with a few minutes thought. Please note how utterly transparent all these tales are. None of them form a convincing, likely, or well-constructed falsehood.
They do not read like the cunning falsehoods of professional propagandists, but like the lies told by silly children with crumb-streaked cheeks standing next to a broken cookie jar.
I will say that one or two were stories I never heard — for example, I was unaware of that anyone ever for a moment toyed with the idea that the Wu Han Flu was not a bioweapon from Wu Han labs.
I thought there was debate as to whether the release was deliberate or accidental, but no grounds for doubting the origin.
Anyone with even an amateur’s passing knowledge of how bioweapons are made would recognize that an animal virus altered to become communicable to humans is how they are made. It is called “gain of function.” It does not happen in nature.
So the first time I heard it reported that the Leftwing press was finally ceasing to call a lab leak theory “a conspiracy theory”, my reaction was one of head over heals disorientation, much as being thrust into the mirror-mirror universe, where good is evil and evil is good.
Hermit that I am, and not following the news closely, I honestly had never heard that anyone was foolish enough to entertain any other theory.
To this hour, I do not see how anyone could entertain any other theory: The biological weapon spread from a town where there was a biological warfare lab.
When I overheard snatches of conversations of bats in a nearby wet market, I thought the discussion concerned the idea that some slave-worker, a plumber or janitor or something, picking through the trash bins in the biowar lab basement, had eaten one of the altered bats to stave off starvation. The biowar lab, let me mention again, is one where biowar engineers make biowar weapons.
Then someone told me that Twitter and Facebook (which I do not use) had banned all discussion of the origins of the bioweapon, and only allowed discussion of the denial of the obvious.
It is shocking how many of my fellow Americans can be cowed into repeating what they know to be lies, and, at that, lies so stupid and blatant that each time he is forced to repeat it, the victim feels himself tearing away another small part of his mind and soul, manhood and honor with each syllable.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
