There are some stories that come across what we old folks still call “the wire” that would not have received more than a glance in the days before last January and the coming of the president*. The sheer ignorance, incompetence, and recklessness that are this administration*’s primary characteristics have created a new context in which practically everything the government does contains within it an implicit danger because of the people who now are running the government. Any day now, I expect the figure of Lincoln to climb out if its chair, walk down the steps of the Memorial, and mug somebody on the National Mall. Because that’s where we’re at here at the end of 2017.

For example, the other day, a story came along that explained that the government was lifting a three-year old moratorium on a certain kind of research into viruses. From Stat:

The federal government announced on Tuesday that it is lifting a three-year moratorium on funding controversial research that involves genetically altering viruses in ways that could make them more contagious, more deadly, or both — and that critics say risks triggering a catastrophic pandemic. Called gain-of-function experiments, the studies aim to understand genetic changes that can make viruses such as bird flu, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) more transmissible from person to person. But if they escaped from the lab, perhaps through human error, the modified viruses could in theory spread quickly or be extremely virulent, increasing the toll of an outbreak.

As the piece goes on to explain, this kind of research long has been the topic of serious debate among deeply serious people. There is something to be said for it, and there is something to be wary of in it, as well. In normal times, under a normal administration, you’d feel confident that a serious debate would result in a serious decision and that the decision to drop the moratorium was seriously arrived at.

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But these are not normal times and, god knows, this is not a normal administration*, so this becomes another one of those things which you hope the administration* isn’t trying to solve with a tackhammer.

But the decision to lift the moratorium did not sit well with scientists who have long warned of the risks of such research — and questioned its benefits. “A human is better at spreading viruses than an aerosol” that might breach a lab’s physical containment, said epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who has calculated that the risk of a lab-acquired infection sparking a pandemic is greater than recognized. “The engineering is not what I’m worried about. Accident after accident has been the result of human mistakes.” He nevertheless called the new policy “a small step forward” because it sets up a formal process for evaluating whether the controversial experiments should receive federal funding. But because geneticallymodified viruses “risk creating an accidental pandemic” and “have done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemic,” he said, “my view is that a review of the sort proposed should disallow such experiments.”

I think, if anything could stand as an illustration of what this administration* is all about, deregulating plague would be one of the best.

I mean, honestly, how could anyone watch that cult gathering at the White House to celebrate the passage of the godawful tax bill on Wednesday and feel secure handing any of these people a water pistol, let alone deadly pathogens? It was one of the most truly bizarre spectacles in the history of democratic government, which I use in only the loosest sense of the term. The president* blithers and blathers and congratulates himself, all the while lying and being really ignorant. (He still doesn’t understand the Affordable Care Act even as he and his crowd are shredding it.) After he finishes, he calls on the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for a prayer.

We thank you for the president and for Cabinet members who are courageous, who are willing to face the winds of controversy in order to provide a better future for those who come behind us. We're thankful for the unity in Congress, that presented an opportunity for our economy to expand, so we can fight the corrosive debt that has been destroying our future.

(This is an invitation to the Almighty to share in the supply-side fantasies that cutting taxes will increase revenues. God is not mocked. Neither is She that stupid.)

The prayer is followed by a short speech from the person next in line to be the most powerful man in the world.

And I just — I’m deeply humbled, as your Vice President, to be able to be here. Because of your leadership, Mr. President, and because of the strong support of the leadership in the Congress of the United States, you’re delivering on that middle-class miracle…But mostly, Mr. President, I’ll end where I began and just tell you, I want to thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank you for speaking on behalf of and fighting every day for the forgotten men and women of America. Because of your determination, because of your leadership, the forgotten men and women of America are forgotten no more. And we are making America great again.

This is where we are at the end of 2017: a terrible, generational disaster of a tax bill being celebrated by a terrible president*, followed by a prayer”—to God or to the president*, it’s hard to say—from a crackpot neurosurgeon profoundly unqualified for the job he currently holds, and that followed by a vice president who gives soulless ass-kissers a bad name. One kind of plague clearly already is out of the lab.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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