Trump calls Fauci’s remarks “not acceptable”
So reads the first headline greeting me on the front page of this morning’s edition of The People’s Daily Panic.
Of course they are not acceptable. They are not acceptable to Trump because they undermine his optics of being in command of this “crisis” like the great wartime president he is (in his dreams).
They are not acceptable to people who give two ticks about liberty, because Fauci’s position, as usual, is that America should be a full-on totalitarian police state under his administrative control, until and unless he determines that some modicum or trace of liberty may be restored — which you know, if you’ve been a fan of the Progressive Ratchet Show for years, as I have, means never.
In sum, Fauci’s “remarks” — i.e., his testimony to the U.S. Congress — are not acceptable to anyone who is: (a) a worshipper of Donald Trump’s image, (b) not a sucker for media-fostered mass hysteria, or (c) a fan of freedom.
The problem with Trump acting as spokesman for the Fauci skeptics is that Trump has essentially allowed this same Fauci to control his own administration’s policy in response to the Pandemic that Ate a Planet, since Day One. (Well, Day Two to be precise.) Therefore, Trump’s criticism of Fauci is merely more of the Orange McConnell’s typical Peddler Man routine, distancing himself from his own establishmentarian actions in order to keep both his idol-worshipping cult and his establishment puppet-masters in his corner at the same time.
The media reports Trump’s criticism of Fauci as evidence that Trump wants Americans to die. Supporters of the Trump Party (formerly GOP) hear those reports as evidence that Trump is draining the swamp, sticking it to the elite, fighting for ordinary Americans, or whatever delusional phraseology they favor today. Meanwhile, almost nobody minds that this whole phony debate has shifted the public discussion several fatal clicks toward the final normalization of paternalistic government-by-fiat, clicks which will never be undone.
Every fallacious and hypocritical bit of cynical power-mongering by Anthony Fauci is unacceptable. Every bit of two-faced, self-protective posturing by Fauci’s “boss” and effective policy arm, Donald J. Trump, is unacceptable. Americans talking casually, in congress and in living rooms, about the pros and cons of “lockdowns” and “stay-at-home orders,” is unacceptable. Tyranny is unacceptable. A citizenry willingly transforming itself, in a fit of irrational panic, into the critical mass of national and civilizational suicide is unacceptable.
Man, if I had a nickel for every unacceptable thing going on these days….