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You and I are not remembering the same sequence of events. It was Democrats who made it political first, and they did it by whining about anti-asian racism.
This is not coming from the right.
Liberal publications were attacking Trump, and his supporters, as racist for trying to shut down the Kung Flu, right up until the point they completely switched into authoritarian lockdown mode.
Yeah...
I am old enough to remember, even though it's now been about 4 years, Nancy Pelosi telling people to go out and Celebrate Lunar New Year (as in telling people to go out in public around large groups) when fear of Coronavirus was right-coded. Its right there in an official communication.
This position was, later, switched towards banning any sort of large gatherings altogether.
Which THEN switched to allow people to gather as long as it was a BLM protest.
I saw this with my own eyes in real time, while all the while I'm becoming increasingly afraid of the implications of the virus itself and the politicization crippling our ability to respond to it.
I could pull my old posts from the motte subreddit at the time to back this up.
The left initiated almost every major action that drove the politicization of Covid.
Some days it seems like having memory better than a goldfish is a superpower.
While I agree that there was a very interesting dynamic with left-coded cries of "racism" being used by public health and "pro-science" professionals to pooh-pooh the need to close ports or intitute quarantines on points of entry in January 2020 (1), these particular statements by Pelosi were boilerplate well before the pandemic from 2006 to 2021, and only stopped when China went full Wolf-Warrior diplomacy in late 2021 and early 2022.
As evidence, I give you some other official announcments. The omission of years prior to 2017 just means I didn't bother looking for them, and the URL wasn't obvious.
Please check your arguments to verify that they are solid before presenting a weakman argument for your point.
(1) IMO, the Trump admin could have used the national emergency to close all border flows, left the US epidemiologically secure like Taiwan, and used the inevitable leak as further justification for border security. But Trump is incompetent, Trump's staff was incompetent, and the CDC isn't competent enough to quarantine tourists anyway.
Okay, I feel a little bad about this, but I was actually presenting a weakman to see if anybody would actually try to argue the counterpoint.
If you want to hear Pelosi's thoughts on the Coronavirus at the time, listen to her exact words, spoken from her own mouth:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2SKy8XAn5MQ?si=ycMLrkzra7wkEEJD
"PELOSI EASING OUTBREAK FEARS" is the Chyron. This was the official Democrat/lefty position, that racism was the bigger danger, and the virus was of moderate concern because they 'took precautions.' This was aired on January 24, BEFORE she issued her boilerplate press release.
Once again, I saw this with my own eyes. Heard it with my ears. People trying to convince me I was misinterpreting can politely sod off.
Not the most sporting of me, but I also don't appreciate people gaslighting me, and I suspect you're not interpreting my objections in good faith.
Damit. Why didn't you link to the YT video the first time? Would have saved me a lot of time drudging through Pelosi's official statements. This is the kind of link I can save for use in future online arguments.
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cynically, the superpower is having either a goldfish memory or absolutely no conscience about telling the most convenient lie in any given post. In a lot of modern discussion environments, having the nagging memory that we weren't always at war with Eastasian-flu is an active hinderance to keeping friends and staying unbanned.
Yeah, I think the latter (having zero conscience) is the actual 'superpower' insofar as it grants one strong advantages when navigating a given social environment.
But I think it at least in part depends on others not having a decent memory.
If you have a good memory and can recognize the scam that has been pulled, because you remember the sequence of events that led to it, at least you can protect yourself from a repeat performance.
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