Life in the bubble

Photo by Eloi Motte on Unsplash

Dr. Anthony Fauci is probably rethinking his previous views on fame. He’s still famous, but he’s finding that fame can be a double-edged sword. Sure, everyone knows who he is, but it also means that when he falls, everyone is watching.

Luckily for Fauci, though, most of the people who loved and adored him before still do, but not because he was shown to have done everything right, or even right by the information he had at the time.

Oh no, the man lied to us, shut down the entire country, destroyed millions of lives, created lasting trauma that many will never get over, and we all know it’s true thanks to his own diaries.

The reason he has nothing to worry about is just how into the bubble the left actually is.

Keep in mind that the man invoked the Fifth Amendment during Senate hearings, even though he had immunity for his past actions thanks to a preemptive pardon from the Biden administration. Still, he invoked it 111 times.

He had every right to do so, mind you, but the only reason to invoke it is that you have something you do not want becoming public. You invoke it so you won’t incriminate yourself.

While I hate the term, this is a case where “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” comes into play. This should have been a game-changer.

As Matt Taibbi notes, though, it wasn’t.

This ought to have marked a dramatic and final end to years of hagiographic worship of the man, and commenced a long overdue decision to investigate science’s role in causing the pandemic.

No luck. The reaction to Wednesday’s hearing makes clear that there is no amount of evidence that will move half of the American population off its religious devotion to this invidious huckster-narcissist whose reckless behavior endangered the world. Nothing gets through. Documentary evidence doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that the FBI and the Department of Energy point in that direction. Not even a desire for self-preservation — the investigation of Fauci and other scientists is a necessary precursor to learning how an engineered virus killed millions — will shake this segment of the population.

However, we need to understand something about the left. The documentary evidence doesn’t matter to most of them because while they may intellectually know that the diaries exist, they don’t actually know what’s in them.

Most of the mainstream media hasn’t talked about the diaries. I saw one graph that, as of when it was created, had an ABC affiliate spending more time talking about them than ABC News itself did, which was also more than NPR, PBS, and most of the media.

In other words, it’s easy to keep your head in the sand when there’s nothing to force you to remove it.

Glenn Reynolds notes that a one-time friend formally cut ties with him over a meme poking fun at Fauci. Journalist Jeff Jarvis tried to argue that Fauci saved lives, and when it was pointed out that he likely did a lot more damage, Jarvis severed the friendship, at least in the Facebook sense of the term.

Then Reynolds notes:

Well, I will survive the shock of that blow, but it struck me — after all those years of disagreeing on politics, this was the straw that broke Jarvis’s back? Anthony Fauci? Especially now, when he’s the butt of self-incrimination jokes? In front of Congress, Fauci wouldn’t even say what color his tie was. (I’m trying to talk one of my distiller friends into putting out a limited run of Fauci whiskey, with the slogan “Take the Fifth!”)

Why Fauci, and why now?

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.

In his Thursday Final Word at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey added his thoughts to this section:

Ed: For some reason, journalists seem particularly invested in the Expert Class. Is that because they emerge from the same progressive-indoctrination milieu in Academia? Is it because their access to the Expert Class makes them feel more validated and an auxiliary member of the clique? Or just flat-out snobbery? Perhaps the answer is ... yes.

My own take is that Jarvis didn’t like the bubble being burst. He believes Fauci saved lives. I keep seeing pages on Facebook in my feed for some ungodly reason saying the same. They’re pretending Fauci is the noble knight who saved the universe, and they don’t want to be reminded that he screwed up and lied, then recorded how he lied.

And, in the process, he destroyed any real trust between regular people and what Ed calls the “Expert Class” above.

They don’t see it, nor do they care, because they cocoon the Expert Class as much as they can, then they blast us for not accepting what “The Science”—which Ed called a cult earlier in that round-up, which is a fair assessment—tells us.

We’re supposed to blindly accept climate change as not just existing, but being the direct result of our own actions, and damn any of us for pointing out how their models don’t pan out. We’re supposed to accept a jab that many of us had concerns about, but don’t worry. Once you get the set of shots, you’re good…until we decide you need another. And another. And another.

Over and over again, the Expert Class, which has snookered the left but good, tells us to do things because they’re the experts, and because the left lives in bubbles where the rules are completely different anyway, they can’t understand why we’re uninterested in listening.

Never mind that while the experts tell us we need to use public transportation to travel to and from work, the elites can board private jets to go to some talk in Europe. They’re more important than us, and the fact that they’re in the bubble is taken as proof of that, rather than the lack of any basis in reality for anything they “think.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci violated the spirit, if not the letter of the law, on gain-of-function research. He lied to Congress about it. He tried to hide behind his status as an expert, only to run into Sen. Rand Paul, a fellow physician who could smell the BS. He lied to the public. He lied first about how masks were useless, then he lied when they were declared mandatory, but we’d be safe without an N-95 mask. He lied about telling officials to shut down their communities.

He lied over and over again, and these morons are celebrating him.

They’re celebrating because they weren’t us. It’s like the celebrities who made a big thing about how they were locked down, too. “We’re all in this together,” they said. Well, let’s be real, a lockdown in a 12,000 square foot mansion with tennis courts, swimming pool, and luxury home gym is a little different than a family of four stuck in a 1,400 square foot home on a small lot.

They thought they were just like us without having to live like us. It was the bubble, and life in the bubble has warped their views of everything. What’s more, their refusal to see the evidence and judge for themselves just how much of a piece of shit Anthony Fauci actually is just shows that, when it comes to the bubble, they like it there.

(Edit: I accidentally gave Fauci too much credit and said he invoked the Fifth 11 times. It was actually 111 times. Typo or not, I don’t want anyone to think Fauci might have been forthcoming in some area or another.)

---

Tilting at Windmills is 100% reader-supported. If you enjoyed this article, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription for 15% off the first year or making a one-time donation here. Either would be greatly appreciated at a time when I know good and well I’m about to have some serious medical expenses coming.