Is this an unfair fight or what?
In one corner of the ring we have imminent retiree Anthony Fauci, who dedicated his long career to saving lives, served seven presidents of both parties, was cited by the senior George Bush as one of his heroes (“I think of Dr. Fauci”), was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2008) and the National Medal of Science (2005) by the junior George Bush, was awarded the Presidential Citation for Exemplary Leadership by the National Academy of Medicine (2020) plus dozens of other honors to numerous to list, and guided America through its worst-ever pandemic, braving death threats to himself and his family.
In the other corner we have the MAGA minions, who are still jonesing to knock out Fauci even though they don’t have a prayer and it’s too late to even take a swing. I won’t deign to repeat the mindless abuse still circulating on social media – except to note that Elon Musk, the rich mutt who’s wrecking Twitter, is calling for Fauci to be prosecuted (for what, he has no clue); and that the anti-Fauci antagonism was predictably triggered by Donald Trump, who, as we now know, thanks to wide-ranging medical studies, was primarily responsible for hundreds of thousands of avoidable Covid deaths thanks to his serial lies.
You’d think that MAGAts would be chastened by the evidence that links their willful ignorance to their own death toll – according to a recent study by the Bureau of Scientific Research, Covid death rates in two key red states, Florida and Ohio, were 76 percent higher among Republicans than Democrats from March ’20 to December ’21 – but they’ve long been allergic to empiricism. Last week Fauci told NBC News, “It’s just extraordinary that you have under-vaccination in red states and good levels of vaccination in blue states, which gets translated into a disproportionate amount of suffering and death among Republicans compared to Democrats. That’s completely crazy.”
But you can’t reason with crazy. House Republicans, newly empowered by their impending thin majority, have vowed to keep investigating the guy – in the words of one key House MAGAt, “Retirement can’t shield Dr. Fauci from congressional oversight” – because…well, because…well, because…
That’s still the big question isn’t it? What’s the root cause of their relentlessly daft obsession with sliming government’s top infectious disease expert, whose priority since the AIDS era has been saving lives? Why are these people (in the words of the late sane conservative commentator Michael Gerson) “so far gone in rage, bitterness, and paranoia”?
it’s simple, really: Fauci, in the name of science, had the audacity to tell the truth about the pandemic, defying those who preferred to marinate in lies and magical thinking.
Even worse, guided by factual reality and scientific expertise, Fauci had the audacity to contradict the MAGAts’ sun king. This was first evident way back in July of ’20, when the worst suffering was yet to come. Trump declared: “We are winning the war…(We’re) going to have it under control very quickly.” Then Fauci spoke up: “We haven’t even begin to see the end of it yet.”
That summer, Fauci told the Financial Times, “I have a reputation, as you probably figured out, of speaking the truth at all times and not sugar-coating things.” Such an ironclad principle didn’t fly with the MAGA propagandists. It still doesn’t. They don’t forget. They can’t abide the fact that Fauci was right and they were wrong – something they’d never admit even if given a truth serum.
Their default mechanism is to constantly seek outlets and targets for their primal wrath, to gin up their 30 percent slice of the American public for perpetual grievance. That’s how they roll; governing in an affirmative fashion is beyond their comprehension. David Frum, the conservative commentator and former George W. Bush aide, says it well: “The anti-Fauci stuff comes from the same emotional place as the Hunter Biden fantasies: the desperate hunt for a scapegoat for Trump’s 2020 defeat to absolve Trump and his supporters of responsibility for their own mistakes and crimes.”
Ah, there it is: Fauci is Hunter Biden’s laptop in human form – albeit an 81-year-old human who, by his own words, is totally fine “cooperating” in ’23 with whatever faux probes the House GOPers gin up. Because, rest assured, they won’t lay a glove on him.