Don’t Look At Fauci…Look At Yourself

Thursday, July 30, 2026

Fauci had a point in his opening statement yesterday – it is a witch hunt.  It is a justifiable one, but it is a witch hunt nonetheless.  Fauci is guilty of all sorts of lying, prevaricating, misleading and megalomaniacal behavior.  Hence the witch hunt is justifiable.  But he was not alone – he was far from alone.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of state and local agencies joined him in this behavior.  Thousands upon thousands of people joined the chorus and grossly anti-social behavior became the norm.  Sure the media spotlight focused on the good doctor and he grabbed it with all the gusto he could muster, but there is enough mess here to get everyone filthy.  To my mind, the hyper focus on Fauci misses the point.

Consider this incident from the hearings, as reported by Eli Lake:

Then Moreno told the story of a family in Ohio who attended a high school football game in the middle of the lockdowns. “They went to the stadium. They sat alone, far from anyone else. They didn’t feel they needed to wear masks because it was stupid and they were outside. Dr. Fauci, do you know what happened to . . . that family?” Fauci responded with the line he must have repeated more than a hundred times in the hearing. “On the advice of counsel I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution,” he said.

Moreno went in for the kill. “They were dragged out of that stadium and arrested,” he said. “Those policies were put in place because you had moronic politicians that listened to the words of a megalomaniac who was more interested in having met a Kardashian than the suffering of the American people.” Fauci just sat there, stone faced, without emotion.

“Moronic politicians?”  I don’t think so.  Rather I think politicians interested in getting their own piece of the power pie – who saw an opening and took it.  Said Glenn Reynolds:

I think the answer is that Fauci, and Faucism, represented the apotheosis of what the managerial/academic/journo class desires: An excuse for sweeping power, based on (alleged) expertise, in which they could ride roughshod over those stupid proles and flyover people while preening about the allegedly superior moral and intellectual qualities that justify their rule.

That I think comes far closer to the mark.  But I don’t think it ends there.  Even those of us that Reynolds would classify as “stupid proles and flyover people” bear some blame .  I lost some marginal friends over covid because they were marginal and not worth the effort to stay in touch when staying in touch became so difficult. But my impending retirement and move would have done that anyway.  The biggest personal price I had to pay was the several incidents wherein people publicly yelled at me or otherwise tried to shame me when my behavior did not comport with their sense of self-protection.    Why did I not yell back?  Why did I just walk away?  Why did I wear that d&^% mask?

The biggest price over all was; however, trying to end church.  While not true in most parts of the nation, in California where I resided at the time, church was literally banned.  To attend church was to be subject to arrest.  At one point I discussed with several other like-minded people in our church the holding of clandestine services.  Unfortunately we had to reject the idea because we could not concoct a way to get the word out that would not end up in some fool reporting us, resulting in a raid of the service, as happened in several churches in California.  Perhaps we should have proceeded and then removed our masks in the holding cell at the jail, just to drive the point home?

We behaved like sheep and in so doing we made Fauci the shepherd.  Sure, the media made his presence overwhelming and impossible to ignore.  Sure, he enjoyed that omnipresence way, way too much.  But we still did not have to listen to him.  And yet we did.  Fauci is the object of a witch hunt so that we do not have to face squarely our own complicities with the power-grabbing scam that he, and so many other lesser bureaucrats and officials, ran on us.

The American Revolution began ostensibly because of “taxation without representation.”  The idea was simple enough – we rule ourselves, not some distant bureaucratic entity.  And yet that is exactly what we permitted to happen during covid.  Was it wise to simply let the effort run out of steam, which is what happened, or should we have revolted?  We may never know the answer to that question.

What I do know is this – While we burn Fauci at the stake, everything under him – from the regulators in California that banned church to the idiot that screamed at me at Starbucks for standing too close to them – is still there.  Have they repented?  Have they learned from their mistakes in this mess?  Have I learned from my own?

Until that happens we are at risk of a similar episode happening again – Fauci’s fate notwithstanding.