Trump’s Father’s Day greeting – The Republican Party’s decline in urban and suburban settings – The “lab leak” theory – Evening statistics
Ex-President Trump has shown, if any further proof is needed, that he is incapable of making what was meant to be a conciliatory gesture without vituperation. The following is his greeting for Father’s Day: “Happy Father’s Day to all, including the Radical Left, RINOs, and other Losers of the world. Hopefully, eventually, everyone will come together!” One can imagine the eagerness of the “losers” to rally behind him after this warm demonstration of friendship. But perhaps I am being unduly pessimistic; perhaps, after all, the great white dove of Peace will spread its wings wide over the parties of Trump’s adherents and his opponents, to the unspeakable defilement of its plumage.
Trump’s influence on the Republican Party is being felt; the GOP is struggling to elections not only in large cities but in their suburban communities. Jerry Sanders, who was a Republican mayor of San Diego for two terms in earlier decades, and a moderate who worked with the Obama administration on urban policy, says that the current party is out of touch with metropolitan areas. He himself left the party on January 7th, following the mob attack on the Capitol. The trends in Virginia seem to bear out his claims; it has become increasingly “blue” over the years, while states such as Georgia and Arizona, once firmly in the “red” category, have moved into purple battlegrounds as their largest cities and suburbs have expanded and have become more ethnically mixed. One Democrat has no difficulty in explaining the cause of the Republican decline. “It’s not the same Republican Party,” said Rep. Donald McEachin of Virginia. “Trump chased off a lot of moderate Republicans, so it’s a much smaller party.” At the turn of the 21st century, Republican mayors governed cities such as New York, Los Angeles and San Diego, and Republicans occupied many of the gubernatorial seats in mid-Atlantic and New England states. They are unable to do so now. Since that time, according to Joseph Lhota, the former Metropolitan Transportation Authority chair who was the Republican nominee for mayor of New York in 2013, the GOP has “completely disappeared” as a force in metro politics. Jim Himes of Connecticut, whose district is anchored in the wealthy suburbs of New York City, said an older version of the Republican Party, rooted in principles of limited government and support for environmentalism, could still have appeal there. “They go back to that stuff, I’m in trouble,” he said. The cheerful laugh with which he delivered that comment illustrated more clearly than words could have done how unlikely a prospect he considered it to be.
The “lab leak” hypothesis of the coronavirus emerging from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) rather than from a nearby live animal food market continues to gain momentum. It is known that the WIV was actively doing research on coronaviruses in bats in late 2019 and early 2020, including the bats that carry a strain of SARS-CoV-2 that is the closest known relative to the Covid-19 virus itself. The secrecy of the Chinese government, who at this point has not yet allowed independent, outside scientists full access to WIV to investigate, hasn’t helped matters. That does not necessarily mean, however, that the virus was deliberately engineered by the Chinese government; indeed, it seems unlikely, considering that the first country affected was China itself, and there was no indication at the time that it could spread so quickly beyond its borders. I refer to earlier entries in this journal alone, which record how long a time it took various authorities to look upon the virus as a major threat. Accidents are rare, but they do happen periodically. In addition, viruses, as the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us, can mutate of their own accord very quickly. The WIV has long embarked on the highly dangerous “gain of function” method of research, which deliberately makes viruses or bacteria more harmful than they are in their natural form (there are numerous laboratories in the U.S. that use this line of research as well, without any restrictions from the CDC). Experiments could easily have produced a strain that infected humans. A lab employee who was accidentally infected with such a strain without being aware of it and then mingling with the populace at large would have been sufficient to start the pandemic. In short, before we rush to discover deep-laid plots on the part of foreign governments, we must not disregard the sage advice of that celebrated philosopher, Lucy Van Pelt of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts:
“Have you ruled out stupidity?”
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 179,532,349; # of deaths worldwide: 3,888,306; # of cases U.S.: 34,418,935; # of deaths; U.S.: 617,443.