RIGHT-WINGERS ARE ANGRY AT CHINA FOR THE ALLEGED LAB LEAK, BUT CHINA IS NOT THE ULTIMATE TARGET

At The Spectator, Stephen L. Miller (no, not that Stephen Miller, though he's nearly as bad) focuses on what's really important to right-wingers about the COVID-19 lab-leak theory:

Don’t let the media get away with U-turning on the lab leak theory

Or Dr Fauci

The theory that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory has completed its year-long trudge — from fringe nutjob idea to mainstream and expert-approved opinion.

... respectable media voices have switched from writing off the lab leak theory to believing that is somewhere closer to probable than possible. How does that happen?

... While there is still only an amount of circumstantial evidence pointing to the lab theory, there is more and more smoke around the fire. Our corporate media is going to stuff this down the memory hole and make their previous statements and stances disappear. Experts, cable news hosts and opinion writers are going to move on as though they hadn’t spent the last year labeling anyone who attempted to even explore this theory as a lunatic. Dr Anthony Fauci was one of those people. He should not be allowed to get away with it.

Remember, we still don't know whether the theory is correct. But let's assume for the sake of argument that it is. How does it help determine what we do in the future?

Miller has given us an answer to that question: It helps determine what we do in the future because it provides an opportunity, in the future, to bash the mainstream media and Dr. Fauci, who are proxies, in the mind of every Republican voter, for the Democratic Party. That's the important work that needs to be done in the wake of a once-in-a-century pandemic that's killed nearly one of every 500 Americans.

I'm not sure what we were supposed to have done if the lab leak actually happened and we knew it last year. The right has been obsessed from the start with identifying a culprit; this was clearly more important to right-wingers than actually containing the virus. The right's approach to the pandemic has been like finding your house on fire and deciding that you won't allow firefighters to put out the blaze until the arsonist has been identified (even though you don't know for sure that the fire was deliberately set).

And now it appears that even finding the arsonist isn't as important as tracking down the people who said the fire couldn't have been arson. But demonizing domestic enemies is always Job #1 on the right.