Look past Fauci. None of the harm he caused, and none of the ignorance he inflicted on the country, could have prospered without a cultural army of mindless slogan-repeaters and narrative enforcement commissars. Every habit in media, academia, politics, and deep blue social engagement that gave us Saint Anthony Fauci, the all-knowing savior figure who couldn’t be questioned or doubted, is alive and well. The “In Fauci We Trust” lawn sign and the deeply sick Saint Fauci devotional candle come from somewhere, and we haven’t defeated any of it. We’ve changed nothing at all.
At Politico in May of 2020, the conservative pundit Rich Lowry wrote under the dismissive headline, “Fauci is not the villain.” His argument was categorical: Fauci, he wrote, didn’t merit personal attacks, because he was “simply an epidemiologist, one who brings considerable expertise and experience to the table.” We see now what Fauci was thinking about during the pandemic, and none of it had to do with science, evidence, and expertise. He was thinking about his fame and his power. He was thinking about Anthony Fauci, with a remarkable lack of intellectual curiosity and a total absence of honesty. But it was improper to question him, because he’s an epidemiologist, and you can’t question those.
First, yes you can.
Second, he wasn’t. A doctor who didn’t treat patients after his internal medicine residency, and an administrator who controlled funding for scientists in laboratories but after a few years didn’t run one himself, Fauci wore epidemiology as a skinsuit. The claim that his professional expertise couldn’t be questioned was never based upon his professional expertise, which he didn’t have. He wasn’t a scientist. In 2020, he wasn’t a lab guy. He was an office guy. He decided who got checks from the government.
In short, the credentialist argument wasn’t an argument. It didn’t pursue and analyze emerging forms of evidence. Instead, the claim for Fauci’s title and presumptive expertise was intended as a barrier and a deflection. It was a conversation-ender. It was a “you can’t.” Could the virus be less fatal than the World Health Organization says? You can’t ask that. You don’t have the credentials. The conversation wasn’t about the thing itself; the conversation was about status and titles, so the conversation was an impediment. The “Trust Me I’m an Epidemiologist” t-shirt wasn’t a sly joke; they meant it that way. Silence, peasant.
The big tell: The Great Barrington Declaration was written and signed by eminent epidemiologists from major research universities, but it instantly became a bizarre fringe document in the media. You can’t question Dr. Anthony Fauci, because he’s an expert, but Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, and Dr. Martin Kulldorff have no contribution to make and should be dismissed as marginal figures. Credentialism is infinitely flexible, functioning on the “No True Scotsman” fallacy: All true experts agree with me, so anyone who doesn’t agree with me isn’t an expert.
Fauci was relentlessly wrong, uniformly harmful, and not at all guided by science, but he was the unquestionable personal embodiment of science, so he couldn’t be wrong.
Nothing about that is even a little bit healthy.
Also, none of it has stopped. Why are Elon Musk’s views wrong? Because “some people do loathe you.” No evidence is necessary beyond the social commissar’s declaration that a set of views is unacceptable. No argument is attempted.
Queen of Midwits Anne Applebaum, whose existence centers entirely around the enforcement duties of the political commissar, warns that disagreeing with professional museum curators is precisely like burning a church:
All of the herding behaviors persist. Not that argument is factually incorrect, but rather you may not make that argument, in all of its credentialist and status-obsessed forms. We still have an entire complex of cultural institutions that exist to tell us what we may not think or say, and we still have a pathetic social army of hypercompliant nitwits who live to tell us all the latest versions of “believe in science.”
No AWFLs, no Fauci. No Jake Tapper, no Saint Fauci. No lawn signs, no social enforcement, no cancelling and eyerolling: All of the sickness starts before and below the Faucis, with their army of idiot enforcers who get their feelings of social power from their acts of negation and repudiation. It’s long past time to lose patience with this behavior. “You can’t say that” has to be met with yes I can, in a culture of open debate. How long ago did we lose that? Did we notice when it happened? How long will we put up with being harmed by these endlessly self-confident fools?
