We Don't Know

 

A major source of social discord has been our inability to  ascertain facts around big events without any degree of certitude.   In some cases, facts were intentionally distorted or muddied.   In others, fact gatherers were intentionally impeded.  Some of the most important events of the last year have been so politicized that our perception of reality is being altered and controlled.   And when we raise legitimate questions, we are vulnerable to being labeled a conspiracy theorist.   

The Capitol “Riot”
Donald Trump was acquitted in the 2^nd impeachment hearings despite those hearings being devoid of any Constitutional basis  or purpose,  or any semblance of due process whatsoever.  There is unanimous agreement that the incursion of the Capitol building by the rioters was abhorrent.   The optics were terrible for the rest of the world.  Yet, we still do not have many of the salient facts as to exactly how it happened and who was involved.  Why did the police seem to escort people into the building?  Who were all these people, exactly?   How large was the Antifa element mixed in (we have evidence of some).   If it was an insurrection or coup, why were the perpetrators completely unarmed?   What did Trump do to “incite” these people to enter the premises?   There is no “smoking gun” of any indication to incite as Trump urged people to protest peacefully.  He even called up 10,000 National Guard troops to be at the ready that D.C. mayor Bowers that went unrequested.   Th media immediately labeled it an “insurrection” and “attempted coup.’   AOC’s claim that she feared for her life was discredited (she was in her office nearby).  The media assertions that 5 people died has since been tempered.  We know that the press flat out lied about  officer Brian Sicknick that was reported to have been killed by a thrown fire extinguisher--- a falsehood that was repeated by the White House statement.  The only shot fired in this “insurrection” was by the capitol police on an unarmed woman and her shooter is yet unnamed.   

Christmas Bombing
In the early morning hours while nearly everyone was asleep and sugar plumbs dancing in their heads, a massive bomb went off in Nashville after giving off warnings by loudspeaker of the imminent explosion for 15 minutes.  There were no deaths other than the bomber himself.   His target may have been  the AT&T building, although questions remain.   Unlike Islamic terror acts or the Oklahoma City bombing, this bombing was clearly meant to destroy buildings and not harm people.   But again, questions remain.  The F.B.I. announced 48 hours later that the bomber was a lone wolf.  So the F.B.I. was able to go through his emails, phone records, interview his co-workers, friends, relatives, neighbors and other contacts in 48 hours.   Case closed.  In about a week, the story completely disappeared from the news cycle and the press has not shown a smidgen of curiosity about it since.

COVID19 Origins
In the early weeks of the outbreak of COVID19, we were told by the press that COVID19 originated in the Chinese wet markets.   Other reports blamed the rare pangolin.  Still others talked about bat soup.  The latest hypothesis being reported is that it originated from frozen food imported into China.  Of course, journalists all reported these things as true.  How do they know this?  Well, the Chinese Communist Party or W.H.O. told us.  Oh, ok. These were being reported even as they knew that a Level 4 bioresearch lab existed in Wuhan. 

Meanwhile, the CCP jailed the first doctors that discovered the virus,  barred our own CDC from inspecting,  destroyed samples (even the reliable NYT was dismayed over the Chinese response).  Days later, the Chinese ambassador was on the Sunday talk show circuit implausibly accusing the U.S. military of causing the outbreak.  Responsible scientists like Bret Weinstein that raised the possibility that the virus resulted from a lab leak were written off as conspiracy theorists. 

Now, we are learning that the Wuhan lab obtained a patent for bat cages even though WHO claimed that it had not harbored live animals at the lab.  Last week, W.H.O. announced that it would no longer consider a lab leak as a possibility, then was contradicted by Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director of WHO.  Dr. Tedros early in the crisis heaped effusive praise on China as a model for how the outbreak should be handled (coincidentally, our own Dr. Fauci did the same with New York and now we are learning that Governor Cuomo fudged numbers with respect to infected patients introduced into nursing homes)>

A year later and we still don’t have good answers.   Or good numbers.  

Death of George Floyd.
The death of George Floyd triggered riots all summer long, hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the coffers of Black Lives Matter (with no accountability), and acts of contrition and “unconscious bias” training and diversity efforts by almost every institution of any size. 

And on its face, the optics of the event looked terrible.  Officer Derek Chauvin pinned Mr. Floyd to the ground with his knee on his neck for 9 minutes.   Underlying all this was the assumption that police treat blacks differently than whites.

But the case has yet to come to trial.  And as we learned with the Covington kids, a single image or film isn’t dispositive.   There are depositions to be had.  Witnesses to be examined and cross examined.  Autopsies and toxicology reports to review.  

Until all this happens in an adversarial proceeding, we simply don’t know how George Floyd died.

And there are many unanswered questions.  Why didn’t the EMT’s check his breathing or pulse?  Why didn’t the responders do rudimentary CPR on the spot?  With a potential neck injury, why did they flop him on a gurney like a sack of potatoes?   Why were the EMT’s armed and wearing Kevlar? 

Until this case is tried, all we have is narrative.

2020 Election
The reality is that we really don’t know who won the 2020 election.   Was it free and fair?  It certainly wasn’t fair.   The MSM and social media blacked out relevant stories about Joe Biden’s son late in the campaign.  State election boards, governors and judges arguably violated the Constitution with election rule changes that are granted to the state legislatures.   Among other problems, counting ballots without signatures and mail-in ballots without chain of custody documentation invites fraud. 

Then we had conduct on election night itself.  Six states simultaneously stopped counting   There were anomalies in the data, with spikes for Biden with ballots trucked in during the dead of night.  There were districts with more ballots than registered voters.  Then there were suspicious incidents like suitcases full of ballots dragged out from under tables and people blocking the views of observers.  And this does not even address questions about the Dominion voting machines.

Like the George Floyd incident, almost none of this was adjudicated.  Most of the complaints were dismissed on grounds of standing.  The bleating from the left was that there was no evidence of fraud.  There was plenty of evidence AND suspicious behavior. 

In all these cases, we have yet to obtain a verifiable conclusion because the facts have either not been ascertained or have been told to us by highly unreliable sources.   The MSM has been incredibly uncurious about some things (the Nashville bombing, and Hunter Biden’s laptop, for instance).  In the case of COVID19, the CCP and WHO both engaged in highly suspicious behavior, as did many people around election night, with many events that were left unexplained.   When loose ends and anomalies go unexplained, all we have is competing narratives.   

And with a stranglehold on almost every media outlet, the Radical Left (and China) believes it can control this narrative.  From the beginnings of the COVID19 outbreak,  China appeared more interested in controlling the narrative than in controlling the virus.  Likewise, the statistical anomalies and behavior have yet to be satisfactorily explained, leaving a significant segment of the electorate to believe that the election may have been stolen.

You can’t brush off millions of people as conspiracy theorists.