A Nation Perfectly Divided Over Anthony Fauci

Half the country saw a proud, dishonest man justly humbled; the other half saw an old and vulnerable man cruelly and distastefully humiliated.

It is not that I despise men. If I did I should have no right, and no reason, to try to govern. I know them to be vain, ignorant, greedy, and timorous, capable of almost anything for the sake of success, or for raising themselves in esteem (even in their own eyes), or simply for avoidance of suffering. I know, for I am like them, at least from time to time, or could have been. . . .

I see an objection to every effort toward ameliorating man’s condition on earth, namely that mankind is perhaps not worthy of such exertion. But I meet the objection easily enough: so long as Caligula’s dream remains impossible of fulfillment, and the entire human race is not reduced to a single head destined for the axe, we shall have to bear with humanity, keeping it within bounds but utilizing it to the utmost; our interest, in the best sense of the term, will be to serve it.

—The Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar,

Out for a walk this evening with one of my oldest friends, he asked (in a gentle and sincere way):

“Why did those Republican Senators insist on humiliating Fauci in the Senate? Don’t you think it’s cruel and unbecoming to put a frail old man through a struggle session like that?”

“Well,” I said, “In addition to wanting their questions answered for the Senate record, they believe—I suppose—that a Senate hearing with public shaming is the best that can be done in their legislative branch to bring Fauci to some kind of justice”

“Justice for what?” my friend asked. “What laws did he break?”

I replied by asking my friend if he was aware of Fauci’s role in the lab creation and the fraudulent concealment of the origin of SARS-CoV-2. He confessed that he’d never heard anything about it, and wanted me to tell him about it.

I relate this story not to criticize my old friend, of whom I am extremely fond. I mention the anecdote because I believe that he (who receives most of his information from the New York Times) is representative of about half the country.

While I have been preoccupied with this story since 2020, he’s never even heard of most of it, nor had he heard of RFK, Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci. The New York Times did a thorough job of not mentioning it.

The situation reminded me of a brief romance I had on the Greek island of Paros in the summer of 1993 with a charming girl from Glasgow, Scotland. She was great fun, always laughing, and always in a good mood, but her Glaswegian accent was so thick that I couldn’t understand half of what she said.

Sometimes at dinner she would muse about something. I would nod along, smiling, pretending to understand, but would then be caught out as an imposter when she would suddenly ask, “What do you think?”

“Uh, well, I think that I, uh, totally agree with you.”

The great Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously pointed out that most arguments are between two people who think they are speaking the same language, but are actually attributing different meaning and significance to the same statements.

And so, it seems that to be human is, to a large degree, to be unable to arrive at a mutual understanding of the world with many of one’s fellow men and women. In matters that are important to us, we are often separated from others by a chasm of mutual incomprehension.

As Hadrian pointed out, we must strive not to be irritable and impatient, but to bear with humanity.

I knew the Senate hearing would be gratifying for those who believe that Fauci is a villain and infuriating for those who believe he is saint.

As I stated in a recent interview with Alex Newman, the existing documentary evidence is sufficient to prosecute Fauci in federal court. The Attorney General should challenge President Biden’s ridiculous preemptive pardon and get on with it.