JOEL KOTKIN & WENDELL COX: Here’s Why California Is Losing Population for the First Time.

Hence the Fresh Start States Welcome Wagon project.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: We must make public-health authorities accountable for their COVID lies.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Conformity Crackup of 2021: From Covid lockdowns to crime and cops, the political-media consensus was wrong.

Only when it is exposed over time as false does the conformity break, and typically only if there are negative political consequences for Democrats. The saving grace is that sometimes reality is impossible to ignore, and 2021 was the year this happened on some of the biggest events of our time. It’s worth recounting a few examples to see how the dominant consensus was wrong about so much for so long.

• The Wuhan Virology Lab origin theory of Covid-19. In the early days of the pandemic, even raising this as a possibility was taboo. Sen. Cotton was vilified for doing so. The Lancet, a supposedly open-minded scientific journal, published a letter in February 2020 “to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

This year we learned that the Lancet letter was part of a coordinated effort to quash the lab theory. We learned about the conflicts of interest of Anthony Fauci and others who provided funding for the Wuhan lab. Eventually even the press noticed that China had blocked an honest inquiry, and that no evidence for a natural origin has emerged.

• Lockdowns stop Covid-19. There was no fiercer consensus in the early days of the virus than the belief that locking down the economy to stop the virus was an unadulterated social good. We felt the consensus wrath when we raised doubts, in an editorial on March 20, 2020, about the harm that lockdowns would do to the economy and public health.

Two years later we now know that lockdowns at most delay the virus spread. The damage in lost education for children, lost livelihoods for workers and employers, and damage to mental health is obvious for all to see. Even Randi Weingarten, the teachers union chief who did so much to keep schools closed, now claims she wanted to keep them open all along.

• The supply side of the economy doesn’t matter. The Keynesian consensus, which dominates the U.S. and European media, has long held that the demand for goods and services drives the economy. The ability or incentive to supply those goods is largely ignored or dismissed. Spurring demand was the theory behind the trillions of dollars in spending by Congress and easy money from the Federal Reserve.

All that money did spur demand. But the Keynesians ignored the disincentives to increase supply from paying people not to work and restricting work with lockdowns and mandates. The result was the surging inflation that caught nearly all of them by surprise. Their demand-side models never saw it coming.

• The Steele dossier and Russia collusion narrative. In 2019 the Mueller report exposed the lack of evidence for the claims that Donald Trump and the Kremlin were in cahoots. This year the indictments by special counsel John Durham have revealed how Democrats and the press worked together to promote the dossier that was based on disinformation.

Yet for four years nearly everyone in the dominant media bought the collusion narrative. One or two of the gullible have apologized, but most want everyone to forget what they wrote or said at the time.

• Vilifying police won’t affect crime. The fast-congealing consensus after George Floyd’s murder was that most police were racist, as was most of American society, and violent protests against this were justified—even admirable. Woe to anyone who pointed out that the victims of these riots and crime were mostly poor and minority communities.

Police funding was cut and bail laws eased in many cities. Eighteen months later we see the result in rising crime rates and a soaring murder count. A political backlash now has even many Democrats claiming they really do want more funding for police.

To be fair, these people are idiots.

WEIRD HOW SHE WAS CONVICTED OF SEX TRAFFICKING, BUT NOTHING ABOUT TO WHOM:

Well, except for one conveniently dead guy who didn’t commit suicide.

MICHAEL BARONE: A (statistical) journal of the plague year.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Biden Will Blow the Chance for Indonesia To Join the Abraham Accords — and Other Predictions for 2022.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Biden’s call with Putin produced predictably underwhelming results.

STILL POPULAR: GOOLOO Jump Starter 1200A Peak Car Starter. #CommissionEarned

IN ANCIENT ROME, THEY DISCARDED THE IDEA OF A UNIFORM FOR SLAVES BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T WANT THEM TO REALIZE HOW BADLY THEY OUTNUMBERED THEIR MASTERS. SOMETHING SIMILAR IS GOING ON HERE: British Newspaper Cancels ‘Person Of The Year’ Poll After J.K. Rowling Runs Away With Top Spot.

WHEN YOU SEE STORIES ABOUT HOSPITALS BEING CLOGGED, THIS IS WHY: COVID-positive Vermonters with no symptoms clog up ERs. “Hildebrant says the flood of asymptomatic people is preventing others in need of immediate care from getting it.”

FLASHBACK: Officials like Fauci have undermined trust in government institutions.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: We must make public-health authorities accountable for their COVID lies.

EDWARD SLINGERLAND: The Pandemic Changed How We Drink. It’s Time to Go Back to the Joy of Social Drinking.

I quite liked his book, Drunk, and wrote about it a while back.

OPEN THREAD: Right here, right now.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Ocasio-Cortez staffer calls Israel a ‘racist European ethnostate’ that was built on ‘stolen land.’

A staffer for “Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., referred to Israel as a “racist European ethnostate” on social media.

Hussain Altamimi joined Ocasio-Cortez’s office in November as a legislative assistant, posting shortly after a picture of him and the congresswoman on Instagram with the caption “New beginnings.”

Then, last week, Altamimi targeted Israel in an Instagram story calling the U.S.’s key Middle Eastern ally a “racist European ethnostate.”

“Israel is a racist European ethnostate built on stolen land from its indigenous population!” Altamimi wrote on Christmas Eve, according to a screenshot obtained by Fox News Digital.

Funny how this keeps happening to AOC: AOC chief of staff criticized for wearing shirt touting Nazi collaborator:

WELL, THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK: Why 2022 won’t be anything like the 2022 of Soylent Green. “So why isn’t 2022 for us going to be anything like the 2022 of Soylent Green? Well, the pessimists back then got a lot wrong.”

Finally, as always, the ingenuity that democratic capitalism allows and enables meant we learned to do more with less. When the price of resources rises, we search harder for more of that resource and for substitutes. Tomorrow is rarely like today thanks to invention and innovation. For example: The notion of Peak Oil became a punchline thanks to the Shale Revolution. Another example: the Julian Simon-Paul Ehrlich wager of 1980 over resource scarcity, won by the former when the prices of copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten all declined over the subsequent decade. And in the excellent More from Less, Andrew McAfee cites research finding a “dematerialization” of the American economy since the early 1970s with a decline in the absolute consumption of key commodities such as steel, copper, fertilizer, timber, and paper. “Total annual US consumption of all of these had been increasing rapidly in the years prior to Earth Day.” As McAfee explains:

We invented the computer, the Internet, and a suite of other digital technologies that let us dematerialize our consumption: over time they allowed us to consume more and more while taking less and less from the planet. This happened because digital technologies offered the cost savings that come from substituting bits for atoms, and the intense cost pressures of capitalism caused companies to accept this offer over and over. Think, for example, how many devices have been replaced by your smartphone.

Of course, we have more to do. Still too many poor people and hungry people. Still too many of us unable to more fully realize our human potential. But looking at why 2022 isn’t 2022 should give us some hints at how to better create a better future.

Read the whole thing.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China has moon’s south pole in its sights with 3 missions launching this decade.

WHOLE LOTTA GASLIGHTING GOING ON THIS WEEK:

● Wait a minute … now Mayor de Blasio claims he doesn’t ‘believe in shutdowns?’

● Chris Hayes: We shouldn’t reorient our lives around something that looks like the flu.

● CDC Director Drops Bombshell Calling COVID Testing Protocol Into Question.

And:

I’d like to think this is triage on a very bad wound — too many people will remember the past two years come November. (But as always, don’t get cocky.)