Newly leaked documents from the Hubei CDC show how the Chinese government suppressed evidence of COVID-19 and mishandled the early stages of the pandemic.
By Bailey Steen
This story originally appeared on TrigTent.com
The COVID pandemic didn’t need to happen. Since the beginning, the Chinese government has outright rejected accusations of having deliberately concealed information related to the growth of the virus, decrying their critics as being dishonest obfuscators on the international stage.
In a stunning new report from CNN, however, official documents circulated within the party prove that China critically mishandled the early stages of the outbreak, as shown through findings leaked from Hubei’s Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). …
Their arguments for doing so might be as good or better than those on the political left.
This story originally appeared on TrigTent.com
Outside of the mainstream debate surrounding the recent murder of George Floyd and the ensuing weeks of protests, a minority of conservatives have vocalized sincere support for the Black Lives Matter movement’s call to defund, deconstruct, and ultimately abolish the police. Their voices can be heard in small corners of 4chan’s /k/ forum, a forum devoted to guns and weaponry, and various Facebook groups of libertarians. Some of the people in these groups even find their cause in the emerging faction of the Boogaloo Bois association network, a recently formed right-wing civil war apocalypticism movement with a structure similar to the left’s Antifa. The group is in the midst of a debate about the role of racism within the movement. Some of the forum-goers see the Boogaloo Bois as a white supremacist movement at its core, while others see it as fundamentally a libertarian liberation revolution. …
COVID-19 should not be wielded as a political club on Americans’ rights to peaceably assemble.
By D.A. Kirk
This story originally appeared on TrigTent.com.
When states started locking down during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was mostly in favor of it. But I also believed that there were serious questions — questions about how long the lockdowns would last, how restrictive they would be, and how they would be enforced — that were worthy of discussion and debate. I’m well-versed in the psychological and financial impact of long-term isolation, so I knew very well that there would be at least some resistance to the lockdowns. I also knew that the longer the stay-at-home orders remained in effect, the more widespread and intense that resistance would become. And that’s why it had been my sincerest hope that advocates of the lockdowns would at least be willing to hear skeptics out. …
If we embrace the idea that the value of human life is permanently diminished by every mistake we make, we must necessarily concede that many of us are just as deserving.
This article originally appeared on TrigTent.com
As a smart man once told me, there is no such thing as a law-abiding citizen. There are criminals who get caught, and there are those who don’t. But the mythical law-abiding citizen is a rare creature indeed. So rare, in fact, that it’s fair to wonder whether they even exist at all.
According to The Sentencing Project, about one-third of all adults in the United States are arrested at least once by the time they turn 23. A 2017 study from the University of Georgia determined that, as of 2010, roughly 8 percent of Americans have been convicted of at least one felony offense. …
Only in our all-encompassing political moment could Billie Eilish be criticized as both a nihilistic radical and the embodiment of traditionalist whiteness.
By: Samuel Kronen
This article originally appeared on TrigTent.com
Among the many casualties of cultural and political polarization is our collective relationship to art. It is a truism that artistic expression and political analysis are not meant to be coupled together — the warm glow of one moving against the cold sterility of the other — but we would appear to have gleefully abandoned that sentiment in modern life out of either expediency or laziness.
In a recent article for The Atlantic, Lin-Manuel Miranda defends the fusion of art and politics by insisting at the jump that “All art is political. In tense, fractious times — like our current moment — all art is political. But even during those times when politics and the future of our country itself are not the source of constant worry and anxiety, art is still political. Art lives in the world, and we exist in the world, and we cannot create honest work about the world in which we live without reflecting it.” Thus, because art and politics both happen to exist in the world, we are compelled to interpret expressions of art through an explicitly partisan lens otherwise we are simply being dishonest. …
Bloomberg’s ego-driven paternalism is both indistinguishable from President Trump’s authoritarian style and antithetical to the very notion of political moderation.
By D.A. Kirk
This piece originally appeared on TrigTent.com
Democratic presidential contender and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is banking on moderates and centrists to tip the scales in his favor. He’s marketing himself as an anti-ideologue and bridge-building pragmatist who can rally disaffected Republicans and Independent voters around his middle-of-the-road platform. “One of the reasons I’m reasonably confident I could beat Trump is I would be acceptable to the moderate Republicans you have to have,” Bloomberg told Reuters in an interview last weekend. “Whether you like it or not, you can’t win the election unless you get moderate Republicans to cross the line. …
Rogan talks a big game about the need to reform the debates, but when given the opportunity to make a change, he failed to seize the moment.
This story originally appeared on TrigTent.com
Last week, while interviewing comedian Jimmy Dore on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Jimmy and Joe had the following exchange:
“My show was never about guests, my show was all about my opinion, and calling out bullsh*t,” Dore said.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Rogan replied. “I’m doing the wrong thing because they all keep asking to be on my show.”
“I’ve had requests from all of them,” he continued. “Biden, Warren, Mayor Pete.”
“How do you resist that sh*t?” Dore asked.
“Because I’m gonna have my friends. I’d rather talk to my friends,” Rogan responded, suggesting that he has no plans to speak to any other presidential candidates. …
The recent drama with Bernie Sanders is yet another example of Warren’s penchant for political misfires when going on the offense.
This story was originally published on TrigTent.com
January’s debate, the first in a long year of debating, ended on a sad and ominous note for many progressives. “I think you called me a liar on national TV,” Ms. Warren told Mr. Sanders after the presidential debate in Des Moines on Tuesday night. She said these words while rejecting Sander’s outstretched hand for a handshake. The tension between the two had been building for days ahead of the debate over Warren’s accusation that Sanders told her once that he didn’t think a woman could win the Presidency. Warren used the debate to push the drama into the forefront of the news cycle for a few days afterward. Unfortunately, the dust-up has confirmed something that should concern all of Warren’s fans: she is not good at pulling off political attacks in general. …
Neither party seems to have much respect for rules, rights, or traditions these days — except, of course, when they’re not the party in power.
By D.A. Kirk
This story originally appeared on TrigTent.com
This wasn’t the future I envisioned when I joined with liberals, progressives, and libertarians in resisting the post-9/11 authoritarianism that gave birth to warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, and the rapid militarization of law enforcement. It would take time for the nation to come to terms with the trauma it had suffered. I understood that. But I also had no doubt that cooler heads would prevail, Democrats would pull the nation back towards the center, and the neoconservative movement would be forced to either temper its ambitions or go extinct.
The first few years of the 21st century weren’t kind to constitutionalists, civil rights leaders, and other anti-authoritarian activists. The threat of radical Islamic terrorism provided lawmakers with a custom-fitted excuse to expand the power and reach of government at nearly every conceivable level. As this was all being done for ostensibly patriotic reasons, it was almost impossible to convince even moderate Republicans to push back against the threat posed by the neoconservative wing of their party. And if you dared to try, you’d be labeled “unpatriotic,” a “terrorist sympathizer,” or worse. …
Neither history nor the constitution supports popular Republican talking points on Impeachment.
This story originally appeared on TrigTent.com
“We know what a constitutionally serious impeachment process would [look] like; we saw that happen both with President Nixon and with President Clinton. This is not that. This is not a search for the truth. This is not a situation where you’ve got the majority, the Democrats, who are upholding their constitutional duty and trying to get to the truth.”
— Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), speaking to reporters, Oct. 22
The Constitution says very little about Impeachment, but the one thing it is clear about is that the House has the power to impeach. Crucially, nowhere in the Constitution, nor anywhere in the Federalist papers, are the procedures for how the House should conduct an impeachment inquiry laid out. There are of course precedents for impeachment, although the House is not obligated to recognize them. Because there are no clearly defined laws that the House must follow other than possibly these precedents from previous impeachments, which are closer to guidelines and conventions than hard and fast rules or laws, the House has wide leeway to structure the impeachment proceedings in a way they see fit. Of course, the Republicans have called the impeachment investigation unconstitutional, unfair, and out of line with past precedents. But despite what the Republicans claim, the House is exercising its prerogative perfectly in line with its powers as designated by the Constitution and the precedents surrounding impeachment, and their resolution will allow the impeachment proceedings to continue in this proper way. …
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