The effort to smear critics of Iraqi WMDs in 2003 is not unlike the 2020 campaign to smear purveyors of the lab-leak hypothesis.

And just as the press largely failed to acknowledge its role then, it’ll claim no responsibility for vilifying honest inquiries into COVID’s origins.

Most of us suppose that our society’s sense-making organs are dedicated to transmitting facts. This is incomplete, however. While facts are useful, these institutions are more committed to conveying truth (an important distinction)...

And because might makes right in this brave new world of ours, ‘truth’ is that which sustains power.

To promote a narrative that deviates from this ‘truth’ is risky, for it contravenes power. Conversely, affirmation is rewarded. It’s essentially fealty.

It should come as no surprise that as power in the United States becomes more oligarchic, our cherished sense-making institutions increasingly reflect the best interests of the political, economic, and cultural elite.

At the outset of this pandemic, many honest and intelligent individuals knew that the prevailing narrative was at best incomplete, and at worst, propaganda. But to challenge this narrative was to deny truth, and in turn, defy power.

And for most, that was untenable.

Thankfully (depending on how you look at it), the origins of this virus are finally being discussed more openly in the mainstream.

It will be interesting to see where things go from here.

Great thread along these lines: https://twitter.com/heathereheying/status/1355997697874907139