Nobody Noticed

Poor Dr Fauci. He's overstayed his 15 minutes of fame by a considerable margin, but now, even if he's booed, nobody notices. Not only that, but on Thursday,

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the nation should move away from restrictive measures such as quarantines and social distancing and focus on reducing severe disease from Covid-19.

In new guidelines released Thursday, the agency no longer recommends staying at least 6 feet away from other people to reduce the risk of exposure -- a shift from guidance that had been in place since the early days of the pandemic.

These developments come on the heels of the LA County health department deciding that, on second thought, we should just never mind about a renewed indoor masking mandate, even though the link to the CDC announcement says this actually isn't the CDC's position: "It also continues to recommend that people wear masks indoors in about half the country." That would actually include LA, as a matter of fact. The problem is that nobody cares any more. Indeed, a couple of weeks ago, the LA County health department disabled comments on its social media sites:

The statement from LA Public Health claims their decision to block the department’s over 350,000 social media followers was made because of “threats, bullying, or harassment on public platforms.” Note that older comments from the LACDH are still up on social media, and the overwhelming number of comments may mock or deride, or question, but mostly they’re not threatening.

Well, the public, even in deep-blue LA, is done with COVID. After two and a half years, the scary expanding red circles based on the Imperial College London hoax have lost their effect. The moral panic is over.

But all of a sudden, something has replaced it, and I think this is especially interesting, because this looks like an actual replacement, not just one additional item on a list worthy of public attention. I mentioned Watergate yesterday, but I missed the fact that the media has been trying to gin up a new Watergate since the 2016 election with the Russian pee tapes, the Ukraine phone call, Stormy Daniels, Impeachments 1.0 and 2.0, and the January 6 committee, and not one of those has caught on: Biden's standing in the polls is no better than Trump's at his worst, and two years after his defeat, Trump continues to be the favorite for 2024 notwithstanding everything, the Mar-a-Lago raid included.

So silly me, I asked yesterday why nobody's brought up Watergate without realizing that Watergate has been the subtext of everything for six years, except Trump was supposed to be the Nixon but nobody was buying it. And not buying it through two impeachments, congressional investigations, and rinky-dinky scandal piled on rinky-dinky scandal. At this point, the get-Trump agenda has the public yawning about as much as they yawned at Dr Ferrer threatening the return of indoor masks. That stuff is over. Liz Cheney is a bore; her landslide loss in next Tuesday's primary is a foregone conclusion.

Indeed, let's face it, all the never-Trumpers at this point are bores, has-beens, and never-wases. David French? Bill Kristol? George Conway? Why, on the other hand, is Trump still fascinating?

There are no coincidences, though. The Mar-a-Lago raid is delicious in a way that Stormy Daniels and Ukraine phone calls never were. I think that's because all the get-Trump pseudo-issues were phony from the start, and the public knew it. They couldn't catch on in the way Watergate itself did. Even if you grant that Watergate was a story that was primed and managed by anti-Nixon national media, there was enough genuine mystery there that the public bought papers, listened to the broadcasts, watched the hearings, bought book after book, and saw the movie.

Mar-a-Lago looks from the start like it's going to do this in a way that the January 6, Ukraine phone call, or Stormy Daniels blah-blah never did. I can tell this, because the interest in Watergate started the morning the burglary hit the news. I remember that. It started then, and it never stopped. I have the same sense of things now. As one commentator put it,

One thing is certain. This has become way too big a story for anyone to just drop it now. There are going to be more leaks from both sides until it does make sense.

But let's also keep in mind that the COVID moral panic was about Trump, not a virus, just as the 1980s satanic day care panic was about the family, not satanism. The public has at least dropped the virus and is now working its way through Trump. I wonder, in fact, if the Depp-Heard trial was just a warmup for the real show.