quartered

Looking back on White’s original 500-word essay, trying to pinpoint the source of the internet’s ire, you might think you missed a line in which she insisted that all musicians be drawn and quartered.

Carrying a teddy bear and sporting a genial smile, he nevertheless can have a man drawn and quartered and order dogs to be set upon a hapless victim being dragged to death behind a motorcycle.

As I wrote at the time, the Democrats threw Daszak and by extension science itself under the bus: “Perhaps they hoped that by allowing Daszak to be drawn and quartered, they might persuade the Republicans to climb down from their evidence-free claims about government complicity in the pandemic’s origins.”

Perhaps they hoped that by allowing Daszak to be drawn and quartered, they might persuade the Republicans to climb down from their evidence-free claims about government complicity in the pandemic’s origins.

For twenty-first century readers, to be drawn and quartered is a particularly gruesome manner of death.