#Oh, the joy— de Blasio is leaving and other commentary

Libertarian: Oh, the Joy! — Blas Is Leaving!

It’s truly the most wonderful time of the year, cheers Reason’s C.J. Ciaramella, because Mayor de Blasio, “a bumbling punchline of a politician, is finally leaving office.” And though “it’s tempting to . . . focus on the clownish moments,” we’d be missing out on “the spectacular failures and hypocrisies of his policy initiatives.” Indeed, “his only real flashes of political acumen were when he was rubbing disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a thin-skinned blowhard and fellow authoritarian who couldn’t help but take the bait.” Hizzoner’s “ ‘progressive’ tendencies only manifested themselves in authoritarian diktats against New Yorkers who weren’t powerful enough to fight back.” Yet the mayor “never had a real interest in taking on the injustices perpetrated by the government he ostensibly controlled.”

Pandemic journal: Dems’ ‘Big-Government Lie’

When Joe Biden vowed in 2020 he’d “shut down the virus,” he lied, charges Ben Shapiro at Creators — because “nobody can shut down the virus,” as even Dr. Anthony Fauci essentially admits. That means government needs to balance “countervailing concerns,” such as economic freedom and the effects of social isolation. Yet Democrats are instead pursuing more government control, like vaccination mandates, masks and testing. Why? To maintain the “big-government lie.” It’s “an article of faith”: “To pursue rational policy would evidence no fealty to the notion of government-as-protective-god. To pursue irrational policy and then demand obeisance — this is the mark of the faithful. And if you are not faithful, you are a heretic.”

From the left: Silencing Parents? It’s a Loser

At TK News, Matt Taibbi scratches his head over Nikole Hannah-Jones’ defense of Terry McAuliffe’s statement that parents shouldn’t tell schools what they to teach. The New York Times scribe argued that we send kids to school “to be taught by people with expertise.” Sure, some things shouldn’t be “left to amateurs,” Taibbi concedes, but “parenting? For good reason, there’s no parent anywhere who believes that any ‘expert’ knows what’s better for their kids than they do.” Suggesting the opposite is an enormous “political error.” It makes people “want to sprint in a rage to the nearest ballot center to vote” against those who push such ideas, as they surely will in 2024, “even if Donald Trump is on the ticket.”

From the right: Moment of Truth for Kid Masks

After Dr. Leana Wen advised against wearing a cloth mask on CNN this month, Bethany Mandel at Spectator World wonders, “How long have those in public health known that most of the masks they’ve forced us to put on our kids are useless?” Parents “settled on cloth masks they can buy and reuse for comfort and cost reasons” for their kids. Yet now they’re “hearing one of the most prominent experts on the virus joke on national television that the mitigation effort . . . is merely decoration.” Considering the availability of vaccines for kids ages 5 to 11 and that children under 5 are at low risk of serious illness and death, “this is a moment of truth for mask mandates in schools.”

Russiagate watch: Why the Left’s Peddling Lies

Call it “the scandalmongering that will not die,” snarks the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, referring to new assertions that Donald Trump and his campaign “did, in fact, collude with Russia to fix the 2016 election,” despite Robert Mueller’s years-long investigation finding no such thing. What’s motivating these “true believers”? For one, the Democratic-financed Christopher Steele dossier, much of it “the work of a Clinton-connected politico who fed gossip to Steele’s hired dirt-gatherer,” looks increasingly “like an elaborate and sadly effective political dirty trick.” And in “the stop-the-steal movement and the Capitol riot, they see election-denial efforts that uncomfortably echo their own, but turned up to 11.” So they’ve found “a new way to claim that it is the other guy who is making up false charges.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board