Did you watch Dr. Anthony Fauci “testify” on Capitol Hill this past week about what he wrote in his diary during COVID? I put ”testify” in quotation marks because he didn’t really “testify”. After every question from the senators on the Homeland Security Committee, Fauci wrapped himself in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, the right against self-incrimination. He did it 111 times, to be exact.
I watched the entire hearing and here’s what I came away with.
Anthony Fauci, now 85, is a sad old man who sought glory at the expense of the citizens he was hired to serve.
For more than fifty years, Fauci navigated his way through the Federal bureaucracy, taking on unsexy tasks like the government’s response to AIDS, Ebola, Zika.
And then, the COVID pandemic hit and voila! He became the face of the US response to the virus. He became America’s doctor, the voice of science, the world’s leading infectious disease expert, a public health icon, a tireless public servant.
He was elevated to a God-like status, feted by celebrities, revered by the mainstream media. He was sexy, in a scientific kinda way. His picture adorned the covers of magazines. His cable news interviews were as ubiquitous as they were fawning. He whispered sweet COVID advice into the ears of the wealthy and the powerful.
But there he was this past Wednesday, sitting alone in that cold committee room, no Hollywood stars nearby, surrounded by his grim-faced attorneys, and being questioned about what he knew and when he knew it.
He knew if he answered any of the senators’ questions about what he wrote in his diaries versus what he was telling all of us back then in COVID hell, despite his Biden pardon, he would be charged with perjury.
So, over and over and over again, he exercised his constitutional right against self-incrimination.
Bad optics, as they say.
He certainly looked like a man who had something to hide. A mere shell of his former celebrity self. A big part of me felt betrayed by him. A smaller part of me felt sorry for him.
All those memories of lockdowns, of masks, of social distancing, of zoom school, of temperature checks, of vaccinations, of PCR testing, of quarantines and of work-from-home mandates, came flooding back.
You remember what happened. Families were crushed, businesses were decimated, people died. Lots of people died.
What that hearing this past Wednesday revealed to me, is that while we all were suffering under Fauci’s overreaching mandates, he was infected with self-aggrandizement. He became a publicity seeking, self-absorbed, bureaucrat who helped suck us all down a black hole.
To be fair, Fauci didn’t act alone. He had help. Lots of it. The mainstream media worshipped him. They made him into a deity. He was the oracle of how to manage the pandemic and they were his abiding disciples. Whatever Fauci preached, the media swallowed and self-righteously spit it out to us in an endless stream of warnings, threats and intimidations.
Alternate treatments were ridiculed and deliberately suppressed. States that stayed open were scorned. Communities that defied the lockdowns were vilified. If you dared challenge the COVID gospel according to Fauci, you were shamed, cancelled, fired.
Politicians in blue states were the righteous protectors of the populace. Politicians in red states were the devils.
It was indeed a sad spectacle this past Wednesday, as I watched that 85-year old taking the fifth, unable or unwilling to fess up to his screw-ups. As I watched, I wondered, did this guy forever destroy our trust in “experts”? Will the complicity of the mainstream media that promoted the bunk he was dishing out, put the final nail in their credibility coffin?
In the end, what the hearing this past week did, was not only expose the falsities of the Fauci mandates he and his cohorts foisted upon us during the pandemic, but it also reminded us never again to elevate a bureaucrat into a god.
Indeed, Anthony Fauci is a sad old man.
But If you still want him to be punished for what he said and for what he did, perhaps the words of William Shakespeare will ring true for you. As the bard wrote in Richard II, “Mine honor is my life; both grow in one; take honor from me, and my life is done.”