From the left: Bloomy vs. Democracy

“Since entering the presidential race in November, Mike Bloomberg has spent more than $400 million of his own money on ads”— and, writes Vox’s Ezra Klein, that’s “minuscule” as “a percentage of Bloomberg’s $64 billion net worth.” For “many frightened Democrats,” that “deep war chest” is “the case for Bloomberg.” But they should watch out: His candidacy is “dangerous.” Not only is he a “canny politician who uses his money to secure, amass and retain political power for him, personally,” but nominating him would also be a step toward “true oligarchy,” in which American politics would become “a competition between billionaires of the left and billionaires of the right.” The bottom line: “Even if Bloomberg would be a good president, he’d be a terrible precedent.”

Science desk: Please Don’t Eat Bats

Coronavirus “is not the first disease bats have given us,” notes Matt ­Ridley at Spectator USA. Why are the winged creatures “responsible for so many recent” virus outbreaks in humans, including Ebola, SARS, MERS, Marburg, Hendra and Nipah? They’re mammals, “which means they are sufficiently closely related to us for some of their viruses to thrive in our bodies.” Plus, they haven’t been domesticated: We’ve “already caught the diseases” of farmed animals, such as measles, smallpox and tuberculosis. And “because we now live at such high densities and travel so much,” we’re “a tempting target.” As we await a vaccine for the latest virus, we’d be wise to learn two lessons: “Let’s stop bringing wild animals into markets alive (if at all),” and “let’s keep our distance from bats. Definitely don’t eat them.”

Foreign desk: Trump’s Smart New Spymaster

On Wednesday, “President Donald Trump announced that he will make Richard Grenell the acting Director of National Intelligence” — so of course, Christian Whiton sighs at The National Interest, intelligence-community bureaucrats “immediately criticized Trump’s choice.” In reality, the bureaucrats are afraid that Grenell will put a stop to their anti-Trump shenanigans and political abuse of the ­intel apparatus: As US ambassador to Germany, Grenell refused to “smile upon bureaucrats playing politician on the taxpayers’ time,” and he will bring the same “blunt and direct” approach to his new job. Meanwhile, some Democrats may dislike Grenell, who is gay, because his appointment highlights “the inconvenient fact” that Trump “has appointed gays to senior positions and treats them the same as anyone.” It all adds up to “a lot to like” about Grenell’s appointment.

Conservative: Nothing “Empowering” About Porn

Steven Spielberg’s adopted daughter, Mikaela, recently told her parents and the world that she wants to be an “adult entertainer,” a line of work she thinks will be “satisfying [to] my soul.” But, snaps Chad Pecknold at The Catholic Herald, “no one seems willing or able, not even her parents, to say out loud, in public, what any sane person would have said even a few years ago — this is bad for Mikaela.” Big Porn “has created a culture which habitually deceives. It has made something degrading and sold it as something liberating, empowering, even ‘soul-satisfying’ in exchange for huge profits.” Such rhetoric, Pecknold concludes, is just “a devil’s trick to dress up enslavement as liberation.”

Urbanist: Using Language To Hide Reality

Progressive leaders are increasingly using PC language-policing to ­“reshape reality,” charges City Journal’s Seth Barron. Witness a new California law that “bans the use, in official documents, of the term ‘at risk’ to describe youth identified by social workers, teachers or the courts as likely to drop out of school, join a gang, or go to jail.” The very use of the term, the bill’s sponsor alleged, forced kids into the “school-to-prison pipeline.” That’s absurd, counters Barron: The term doesn’t “assign outcomes” but rather “describes unfortunate possibilities.” Moreover, it was supposed to be “a less harsh and stigmatizing substitute for ‘juvenile ­delinquent.’  ” So what’s the alternative promoted under the new law? “At promise” — a term that “has no independent meaning in English.” It’s an “abuse of language” that is “Orwellian in the truest sense.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board