On Authoritative Truth

Who knows?– When popular perceptions of reason and truth reach the point at which the categories of “legitimate opinion” and “dangerous misinformation” have become coextensive with the concepts “from the authorities” and “opposed to the authorities,” the last traces of independent thought and freedom of speech will have vanished from public discourse.


The Washington Post reports the sad story of Benjamin Franklin, who lamented not having had his young son inoculated against smallpox in 1736, after the boy died of the illness, as well as the all-American history of George Washington (in vogue when he can be used to “get” righties, otherwise dismissible as an icon of America’s racist founding), who ordered his troops inoculated against smallpox during the Revolutionary War. These stories supposedly establish a long and cherished history of advocacy of vaccine mandates by the Founding Fathers themselves.

But advocating inoculation, or even requiring it of people in an organization under your direct authority, is quite a different thing from a universal government mandate. More importantly, smallpox was a disease with a very high mortality rate (up to thirty percent), and in particular one which killed a terrible proportion of young, healthy people, including babies and children, as well as causing serious lifelong damage in many survivors. We know, by contrast, that Covid-19 does not even cause significant symptoms in most who contract it, and that the mortality rate among otherwise healthy children and young adults is very small, not merely by comparison with smallpox or the “Spanish flu” outbreak of 1918, but even by comparison with ordinary influenza. (The U.S. CDC estimated that approximately 480 Americans under 18 died from the flu during the 2018-19 flu season, which the CDC registered as a comparatively weak flu outbreak; as of August 18th, 2021, eighteen months into Covid-19, the same organization had counted only 361 Covid deaths in the under-18 category.) In short, during a smallpox epidemic, ordinary social life literally cannot go on for so many normal families. During this coronavirus outbreak, by contrast, life might have gone on relatively well for most people, had we not all been locked down and socially distanced into economic destruction, mutual hatred, and mass panic.

But if we throw around names like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, we can manufacture nonsensical “parallels” wherever we like, apparently.


Dr. Fauci is sticking to his obvious and obviously self-interested word games and denials about his approval of funding for gain of function virus research in China, as well as about his personal associations with the Wuhan lab, and of course about his manifest conflict of interest in serving as a virtual spokesman for the Wuhan lab in its public relations campaign against the “lab leak theory” of the pandemic’s origin. Meanwhile, the many qualified people in the medical and scientific communities calling out Fauci’s obvious lies and conflicts of interest are running up against a brick wall, as Fauci simply continues to double and triple down on his obfuscations.

Does Fauci really believe he can keep up this thin charade forever? Yes, he does. In fact, he knows he can keep it up. For he has an ace in the hole that his critics, such as Senator Rand Paul, seem not to have fully grasped yet: the Chinese Communist Party. 

For Fauci’s lies to be fully exposed, in the way that would lead to clear-cut culpability, the Chinese Communist Party would have to allow a full independent investigation of the Wuhan lab and its records, and then admit to the likelihood or certainty of its scientists having engaged in the kind of research — and carelessness — that could have initiated the pandemic. There is no chance of the Chinese Communist Party allowing such investigations or making such an admission. Therefore, Fauci can spout his increasingly exposed nonsense with perfect assurance that the political entity holding the truth — and his possible damnation — in its hands will never release it. 

Given this fact, and Fauci’s likely calculation of its usefulness to his personal cause, we may reasonably conclude that when he speaks publicly against the lab leak theory, or flat-out denies the paper trail linking him to the funding of gain of function research, or talks about “experts” having proved that the Covid-19 virus could never have originated in a lab, or directly accuses a United States senator interested in the Wuhan lab’s research of “not knowing what he is talking about,” Dr. Anthony Fauci is acting and speaking as a de facto representative and defender of the position of the Chinese Communist Party. His interests in this issue are their interests. His need for cover and obfuscating “alternative hypotheses” is their need. His crusade to personally discredit anyone in or out of government who dares to follow the evidence on the “lab leak theory” is their crusade. His denials and deflections are theirs. He is paid by the United States Federal Government, but in his current role as official expert on all things pandemic, Fauci is effectively working for China.

And as long as China remains China, Fauci is safe — or at least safer than he would be without the Communist Party’s shared interest in obscuring the facts. As an extraordinarily successful lifelong government apparatchik, you can bet he understands such calculations very well.


To the Batcave, Robin!

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