Introduction
To his credit, Fauci had a great bedside manner. He was gruff in a friendly way, and he spoke with authoritative mien. If someone really wanted to believe that the Men of Science had the situation well in hand, then Fauci knew how to emit just the right kind of reassuring noises. Unfortunately, the signal to noise ratio was not up to industry standard.
Well, actually, that depends on what the industry was supposed to be accomplishing. If the industry concerned was after the actual safety and well-being of the general public, then the signal to noise ratio was not up to industry standard. But if the industry were assumed to be something else, something more along the lines of mendacity in high places, evasion wherever necessary, grifting to beat the band, and economy-wrecking, small-business destroying high-handedness, then everything was just fine.
How This Form of Scapegoating Works
So Fauci was a shill, and that fact is now tumbling out in front of us all, where everybody can see it. His book, which was going to trumpet his exploits on behalf of Science, has been pulled from major outlets, and it appears that some sort of full scale disgrace may be in the offing. Biden has expressed his confidence in Fauci, which has the feel of a kiss of death.
But why now? Why in this way? It is true that Rand Paul put some significant dents in Fauci’s helmet, but why did the media let that event get any traction? They have swallowed much bigger stories than that.
It seems to me that the powers that be know that some kind of blow back is getting itself organized, and they are preparing the necessary fall guy. If the American people are the ravening wolves chasing a sled full of medical professionals across the Russian tundra in the winter, so to speak, discussions are being held in the higher echelons of the sled hierarchy about which medical professional is going to volunteer to go headlong, perhaps with some assistance, out of the back of the sled. So to speak.
This doesn’t make Fauci an innocent bystander, singled out as a scapegoat. No, he was a major player, in this scam up to his eyeballs, being singled out as a scapegoat. And like others online, I want to get out ahead of this, and let you all know that I don’t think Fauci killed himself.
But unless the coming reaction is a root and branch reaction it will not really address anything of significance. And by a root and branch solution, I mean a bill that authorizes the burning down of the CDC headquarters, and dropping all the ashes into the north Atlantic out of a helicopter. That would be an adequate start.
Change the illustration. Suppose you went down to Honest Harry’s Used Car Dealership and you bought a rig that was close to an absolute lemon. The first time you pulled into your driveway at home one of the doors fell off, and it went downhill from there. Upon investigation, it turns out that every word the salesman spoke to you was a lie, including all the conjunctions and articles. He was a blower of sunshine. He was as crooked as a barrel of fish hooks. He was the original inspiration for the ancient Roman saying cum grano salis, which means “take it with a grain of salt.” He lied, not only like a rug, but like the proverbial rug. Not only was it a bold-faced set of lies, but it was also a bald-faced set of them. In addition, it was a bare-faced set of lies, unlike Fauci’s, which came through both teeth and a couple of masks.
But back to our illustration. You naturally go down to Honest Harry’s to complain about all of this, and you have words with old Harry himself. Points of view are exchanged, at significant decibel levels, and finally Harry says, “Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.” The upshot is that he fires the salesman, right in front of you, but you have to keep the car, and you will have to make a couple of additional payments on the car later on. Then you go home and try to explain your negotiating prowess to your wife. She points out, in that off-putting way she has when she is being correct, that nothing prevents Harry from hiring that guy back the following Monday. You going to go back down there and check every week? And what’s with these extra payments?
Here is the central question. If Fauci goes down in disgrace, will all the draconian practices that were instituted on the basis of what he was saying go down with him? Don’t be silly, you cute little ninnyhammer. The car is now yours, along with the extra payments. This is the new normal. You need to believe the Science, even if it was the kind of science that theologians of another era would have called a Lie.
And even if that salesman is not hired back, do you really think that an operator whose entire business model is deceit is going to be at all troubled, so long as you have to keep the car? So long as you agree to the extra payments?
Do you really think that the people who were willing to crash the global economy in order to get rid of Trump are going to balk at the prospect of throwing someone like Fauci under the bus? Nay, as our forefathers would have said. There they go now, dragging Fauci down to the bus terminal to find a suitable bus to throw him under. A small price to pay.
The Analogy Can Be Expanded
Suppose you had a couple of neighbors who tried to warn you about Harry. They said that he has a terrible reputation. All he does is sell lemons. “That’s his wheelhouse,” they said. For the sake of convenience, we shall call these neighbors “conspiracy theorists.”
Walk with me through this. It has now been revealed that Fauci was blowing fog at us for a year. Over the course of that year, you were urbanely dismissive of your friends who were maintaining that Fauci was blowing anything, but still less, as they put it in their rustic and unlearned way, “fog.” You would pat them on the head. You would patronize them. You would make fun of the web sites where they would have their skeptical outlook reinforced.
So. With the revelation brought to us by these emails, what are the chances that you are going to want to go to any of your friends and say, “You were right about all of this. I was wrong. We were wrong. The entire public voice of refined public opinion was wrong.” You know, as in, wrongity wrong wrong. This is a difficult thing to say under ordinary circumstances. But it is really hard to admit that the right-wing rubes were actually being the urbane ones, seeing through the respectable and mainstream lies.
But the only thing worse than being taken in by Fauci for all this time is refusing to admit now that this is what happened.
The Sin of Believing Lies
Christians certainly know that it is a sin to go around telling lies, but not so many know that it is also a sin to believe lies. Our race fell into sin because they believed a lie (Gen. 3:4-6). The Roman Christians were told to be on guard against those who with flattering words deceive the naive. It is a sin to be naive like that (Rom. 16:17-18). The Colossians were warned against empty deceit (Col. 2:8). As condemnation, God sent a strong delusion on certain individuals so that they would believe a lie. This was because they refused to love the truth (2 Thess. 2:9-13). The Galatians were rebuked for believing falsehoods (Gal. 3:1).
Joshua and his men fell for the deception posed by the men of Gibeon because they did not consult the Lord (Josh 9:14).
Now if we are going to be reasonable people I think we have to allow for some instances of deception that can occur where the one lied to really is innocent—where an accomplished hypocrite manages to appear righteous before men (Matt. 23:28). But the passages cited above show that the deceived are frequently complicit in their own deception. They go along in ways they shouldn’t. This pandemic was just such a situation. Believing a lie is culpable when the levers and handles that the liar uses are themselves culpable—those levers and handles being things like fears, lusts, gullibility, ignorance, and so on.
And that brings us to the embarrassing performance of the church in all of this.
A Testing Point for Pastors
This last year was an ecclesiastical shakeup. It was not a drill. It was a year of hard discovery for many parishioners. Many of the sheep found out that their shepherds did not have a firm grasp of green pastures, still waters, rods or staves, or wolves. Seminary had never really gone into all of that. Seminary was much stronger on verbs ending in mi than it was with sins beginning with me.
And so it was that too many Christians found out that their pastors were cowards. Or that they were gullible. Or that they did not really understand the biblical relationship of the church to the civil magistrate. Or that they were looking for a crisis that would help mask their leftward drift into the swamps of woke. Or that they were good men who got into something that was over their heads. Or that they were too prickly or defensive when parishioners asked perfectly reasonable questions like “how long are we going to keep doing this?” Or that they took offense too easily, misconstruing the nature of the dilemma that many faithful Christians were experiencing. No in-person worship for a year? Seriously?
An example of such a misconstrual would be to say, for example, that in the previous paragraph I arrogantly claimed that any pastor who disagreed with me about masks in worship was “a coward.” No. Read it again. I can have good fellowship through a mask worn in good conscience. But I can’t have good fellowship with a shepherd who is doggedly clueless about what the sheep need, or who stubbornly refuses to recognize what is going on around him.
Whether we like it or not, the Lord has taken an egg whisk to all of our previous ecclesiastical alliances and arrangements. Many churches have closed, and good riddance. Others have closed, and it is a true sorrow. Many Christians have decided to move across the country rather than put up with any more nonsense. Many others will move at the first opportunity. A true shakeup really is under way.
If we want to turn a profit on all this, we will need to sit down together and view the game film. That film will have to include what has been revealed through these emails from the soon-to-fade Fauci. But including that info is going to bring with it a requirement for brutal honesty with ourselves. And it is not yet apparent that we are entirely up for that.