The Intellectual Wet Market

The internet lets bad ideas germinate and spread like contagious diseases.

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Dear Reader (including those of you quarantined at a California air base),

Welcome to the Age of the Wet Market.

By now you’ve heard that the coronavirus everyone is talking about is believed to have originated in a Chinese wet market in the city of Wuhan. Wet markets sell live and dead animals, and not just chickens and the like. You can get bat and badger meat—fresh bat and badger meat, since who among us likes bat haunch with freezer burn? 

The intermingling of humans and wild animals, blood, excrement etc. is a great way to spread viruses. As with interns, the stress of being caged can weaken the immune systems of animals, making it possible for disease to hop from one species to another. Also, many of the vendors actually live with, or in close proximity, to, their “livestock”—I use quotes because I’m unsure if I can call bats, snakes, and badgers livestock. (I’m much more confident I will never call them “lunch.”) 

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Comments (57)
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  1. Avatar photo
    RandyMc

    Jonah, just catching up on some reading tonight. Be assured, like Elijah, you guys are not alone. Many of us ran at the first opportunity to be sure you and Steve knew that. Also, while most of us don't make a living of providing commentary on public policy & politics, we have friends that changed ropes in the middle of the pull, also.

    I HATE to see the conflict between friends and colleagues that have pulled the rope together in public for so long.

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    David M

    Thanks Jonah, keep up the great work.

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    shannon robertson

    Jonah, keep doing what you are doing. It is so refreshing to hear someone who is prepared to wear his messy, intellectually honest process on his sleeve. I recently had a conversation with someone who, to my great disappointment and even dismay, suggested that the process of intellectual honesty and curiosity has no place in the public forum because of the risk that someone from the other tribe will find something in it to may hay with. I utterly reject this. We are all best served when the public forum sees the issues of the day get a thorough going over, following which people will align themselves in good conscience with the perspectives they feel will best serve the public good. When party affiliation puts a crimp anybody's style such that public intellectual honesty is not in vogue, party affiliation has lost its way.

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    1. Photo of Jonah Goldbergcircle-angle-nib
      Jonah Goldberg vertical-nib Author

      Hey Shannon, thanks very much for this. I've always written the G-File as if I were "thinking outloud." It's the only way I can churn it out regularly so sometimes it's hit or miss. It seems to me if I can live with that you'd think more readers could too. Regardless, thanks for the support it means a lot.

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    Kenton A. Hoover

    I think Mark Hemingway can be ignored when he says there is no market for what The Dispatch is doing. Whether there is a market is something or not can’t be proven by disputation or even simulation — it has to be tested in real life, against real consumers, and sometimes markets emerge from the strangest places. An example of this would be Donald Trump as President, something that was never going to happen, until it did, and then lots of things shifted.

    On your first point, I keep seeing Kent Brockman welcoming our new insect overlords — it isn’t that people had deep principles that they gave up as much as the principles weren’t that deep in the first place. Also, I am curious (I have neither the contacts to know nor the data) if in fact there are lots of people with their principles entirely intact, as the Trump Administration has had so much trouble filling slots in the government. I am told that all the “Nevers” were disqualified from the start, but given this administration’s Truth Distortion Field, how would I know? I do have a contact within the Trump org who said that Trump fires and re-hires as much and as often as Hollywood producers and I can’t imagine that most successful people working in the think tank or academic world who would be willing to put up with that sort of treatment.

    This might explain how Congress, or at least the Republican part of it, is acting. If memory serves, politicians rarely fail upwards (except in California), and they certainly don’t when they lose a primary challenge. Trump’s appeal must been supernatural to a politician – he can openly lie, self-deal, etc. and yet his approval waivers only slightly. Maybe it is magic. Or maybe he won the lottery and now finds himself on the back of a tiger, hanging on by the ears? I find it unlikely his current supporters will not turn on him once he is no longer in office, now that even think tanks need not maintain moral consistency.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Jeanie

    Love you guys at The Dispatch and any sane voice willing to counteract Molly Trumpingway on Special Report. You guys ARE the last men standing!

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  6. Avatar photo
    Peter A

    Trump is the baby
    Okay, this is going to be a strained metaphor, but Trump is like the Republican's baby. That is how they ignore his bad behavior and praise him. There's no respect in how he is defended. It is very paternalistic and condescending from my view.
    The urge to protect Trump seems natural to me. He has no history of governing. There's no expectation of competence. So, like a small child, you expect occasional bad behavior and praise the simplest accomplishments.

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    Leslie Loftis

    Oh and by the way, it is nice to see a commentator willing to engage in their comments. I cannot stand the advice, common among writers, “never read the comments.” Read with caution? Or occasionally take a break from? Those limits I get. But never? That attitude is one of the reasons we are in our current mess. Those idea influencers neither understood the worries and desires of their readers nor did they see how much their own arguments resonated or failed to even reach their audience. Plus, the audience could feel the dismissive attitude and it did not feel good.
    I am pleased to see a new place where comments are welcome beyond a popularity stat.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Leslie Loftis

    “In other words, conservatives who don’t bend to the momentary infatuation with a single politician—admittedly a powerful one—need to either get with the program or get off the stage.”
    The gatekeepers did not use such direct language, but that was the message less established commentators received in the early Trump era. It worked. We scattered or gave up public commentary.

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  9. Wallace Lyle

    Sorry Jonah, but when reading your articles recently it feels oddly similar to listening to the House Managers spending days making the same points in different ways. Too many words to get to the point which I already assume you are going to make because you make it often. There are only so many hours in the day to seek out and consume the thoughts of favored columnists. I would prefer ideas and concepts with practical applications that help mediate differences between historical conservative principles and the current positions of the republican party. Making arguments for who is most "right" will not move the ball forward. In short, how do we make things better?

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    1. Photo of Jonah Goldbergcircle-angle-nib
      Jonah Goldberg vertical-nib Author

      Fair enough Wallace. A couple points in my defense. The G-File has pretty much always been written the day it's due motivated by what it's in my head or has my blood up. That's a feature not a bug. It's not everyone's cup of tea and I know that better than anybody. It's also not going to change, at least not on Fridays. Second, I don't think the first half was all that repetitive of anything I've written lately. The second half, about Mark's argument was, I thought worth saying. Anyway, all the best.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Ray Salemi

        That sounds like a dream job. Good for you!

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  10. Mary

    I will admit my own naivete.....but I am shocked by the number of "conservatives" that have found a way to pretzel logic themselves into supporting Trump. I truly thought the whole ballgame of Conservatism was being principled and intellectually honest.
    I don't always agree with you Mr. Goldberg but you seem to be intellectually honest in your principled beliefs.........same for Mr. French.
    I always go back to the Sinclair quote about a man's salary depending on him not understanding......that seems to define a multitude of Trump's educated supporters.

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