I'm quite a misanthrope, so prior to Covid, I had already thought my opinion of humanity was about as low as it could get.
Covid proved me wrong.
I was astounded, not so much by the government (at all level)'s totalitarian power grab - that kind of thing is to be expected - by the enthusiastic support of the majority of the populace for shutting down all commerce and all social activity, at staggering human and economic cost, all for the sake of a virus with a lethality rate comparable to the flu - hardly the stuff of nightmares. And, I no longer remember the exact number, but I remember seeing a poll where an *astoundingly* high percentage of Democrats were in favor of putting unvaccinated people literally in concentration camps, and my disgust with humanity went even higher than it already was.
I've never really recovered from that - outside of a small group of friends and family, I can't trust anyone. Covid taught me:
- Most people are total cowards.
- Many people salivate at the chance to exercise sadistic control over their fellow citizens.
- Most people have zero capacity for skepticism or critical thought.
All dark realizations, but it's good to know the reality. Knowing the truth is what's best, even when the truth is deeply disturbing.
I doubt it went to his level to decide to plow sand onto skateboard parks and in my own somewhat conservative town in NY nail plywood down over the outdoor basketball nets, but the craziness that went on during that time spiraled all the way down to the smallest town councils.
A lot of that craziness was driven by the public health bureaucrats' own alarmist messages. Fauci kept pushing the narrative that ONLY vaccines were the acceptable ends to this pandemic, rather than exploring all existing medication options and being truthful about the implications of the data. His hysteria drove hysteria at the local levels, thus creating sand-filled skate parks.
To this day, I firmly believe that if Hillary had been elected in 2016, Covid would have been just another seasonal virus that runs its course. But the democrats and the deep state had to get rid of Trump, so we had Covid, we had Fauci, and we all watched the government do things to destroy our lives so they could get rid of Trump.
The deep state needed a front man, so they found one in a little man whose ego was about 4 times his actual size and position warranted. He gladly played along, enjoying the notoriety and the money he received. Even if he is never prosecuted in our courts, his reputation, his legacy, is now shattered. He was a weak man who followed orders. He had no integrity, only a false ego of who he really is and was.
Fauci was a unique figure. The highest paid bureaucrat - ever. But it is important to understand a few other things about bureaucrats. The time horizon of elected federal officials is 2, 4, or 6 years. Bureaucrats are careerists whose time horizon is 30-50 years. The primary instinct of bureaucrats is CYA. Everyone makes mistakes and bad decisions, but bureaucrats always try to cover up their worst decisions to make themselves look better.
I cant believe authors are still hypothecating that this man actually helped to fund and create this Frankenstein virus....like its not even remotely a "maybe".
And you bet the raquette continues on.
On all sides of the ball.
The "Green New Deal" "science" is straight laughable when objectively tested or analyzed..but the capture goes all the way from the top echelons of Government and University down to your children's kindergarten teacher.
Trump possessed something Fauci did not —the trust and loyalty of a large segment of the public. His supporters often took cues directly from him rather than from traditional experts or the media. That meant his words carried consequences independent of formal policy.
When Trump minimized the severity of COVID-19, promoted treatments before sufficient evidence existed, publicly contradicted his own public-health officials, repeatedly said he knew more than the experts, or shifted positions over time, those messages shaped behavior among millions of Americans. Presidential leadership is not merely administrative; it is persuasive. The office carries enormous agenda-setting and opinion-shaping power. Even if bureaucratic agencies influenced policy behind the scenes, Trump remained responsible for how he used his public platform.
At the same time, the opposite dynamic also existed. Fauci enjoyed extraordinary credibility with many Americans who distrusted Trump, and media organizations often amplified Fauci while portraying Trump as unreliable. The result was two competing centers of authority speaking to different audiences. This fractured public trust and contributed to the intense polarization of the pandemic response. But in the end Trump was Fauci's boss, and he the Commander In Chief making the calls his followers now want to pin on Fauci as if he had some magic power over Trump.
The deeper lesson is not that one side bears exclusive blame. Rather, the crisis exposed failures at multiple levels of governance. Bureaucratic incentives may have encouraged excessive caution, institutional self-preservation, and resistance to dissent. Trump's leadership, meanwhile, often amplified confusion through inconsistent messaging, personal attacks, and an overconfidence in his own judgment. Each magnified the other's weaknesses instead of providing a corrective.
Entrenched corporate power doesn't preclude entrenched bureaucratic power. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, they are often complementary. The revolving door between DC and Wall Street, Big Pharma, etc., is an example of this.
Many good points in this post -- but I'm not sure we need a revolution, per se, but a mechanism to bring better checks & balances on the administrative state.
Theoretically that should be congress and the senate. But they're so beholden to the money flows this post observes they are almost useless. That's the one thing I don't think the founders fully grokked. They were concerned about aristocratic power and mob rule, so their checks and balances tried to neutralize both through need for majority consensus on many things.
Now the leviathan administrative state has no check (no pun intended) or balance -- other than whatever politicians can afford or have the conscience to oppose it.
I'm not sure Jefferson or Madison or others really thought about that. Although maybe I"m wrong.
When the whole system is captured -- like the witch mania or the Aztec pyramid (or even in our time the stupid, cruel and pointless wars, or the Covid debacle -- there is no check or balance.
What do you do in a society at scale large enough to destroy most if not all opposition?
You're back to the Priest King stage of humanity. Back to the Pharoah and his priests. Back to the Spanish Inquisition. Back to a pre-Enlightenment witch mania.
If people want to live with Enlightenment values and separation of powers they should think carefully about this, because it can get worse. A lot worse than what this post discusses. At the same time people at scale seem to make group decisions that never have consensus, ever, so some of this phenomenon is inevitable no matter what a society does.
Libs are complicated. They hated Robert Moses but love Fauci. Maybe this article should be labeled what this Anthony Fauci episode teaches us about libs' agenda for big government control even when it's dysfunctional and toxic.
Moses built bridges. parks, parkways, and public swimming pools, and Fauci may have helped invent Covid.
Libs labeled Moses as racist for building his bridges over parkways too low for buses, but ignore how their hero FDR did the same thing with his Taconic State Parkway. That the Merritt and Palisades Parkways have the same low bridges and that the National Park System design guidelines back then called for low bridges over parkways.
Nothing causes more fear than infectious disease - particularly among women. They want to be led by an authority figure who seems to know what he is talking about.
A few points come to mind. First, Barney Frank, of all people, argued strongly against term limits. He said that the administrative state is so entrenched that only long term legislators can gain enough power to fight back. There is a clamor for them and many such as The Free State of Florida (tm) have adopted them. Even condo boards!
Secondly, the same party that rails against central control in DC is only too happy to take power from counties, preemptively taking the power to regulate from Tallahassee. This may seem minor, but cutting heritage oaks to make way for development
Has been preempted to the State, as with restaurant inspection. Seem minor, but isn't. It's the mentality. Mostly greed, by industry pushing it's agenda by way of speech contributions to politicians.
Additionally, you must read https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/ to get an idea how we have decided that truth is subjective, per turd Flower. If the truth is subjective, then I can believe, and repeatedly proclaim elections are rigged if I lose, fair if I win. It's irrelevant if the constant drumbest of the Unitary Executive wasn't siz lies before breakfast every day.
We can't trust "science," we can't trust made up reality especially as many of us sink into the ehshittified internet, with no truth button on the keyboard, and as other writers have commented, AI programmed to present it's creators version of truth.
The big lie is so effective. I have immediate family in front line healthcare, emergency response and dispatching. During "Covid", they were physically and emotionally overwhelmed by all the people dying or being permanently maimed by the disease. Now those same family members are furious that what they saw was really vaccine related injury. Some lost colleagues in the healthcare field and never dreamed such tragedy was all caused by the bureaucracy.
I have a neighbor who is disabled. She and her husband say she was "diagnosed as having Long Covid". Three months ago I delicately mentioned that some people say Long Covid is really vaccine injury. He became furious, probably because of the thought that they were not random victims of nature's whims, but might actually have made a decision that led to their own harm. They have been loud drum beaters for that whole authoritarian drive against individual choice in healthcare, and have used her illness as evidence that the bureaucracy is so necessary it is worthwhile to destroy other people's freedoms to allow " smart people" to make important decisions.
Just like the system did with Cuomo, they will throw Fauci under the bus, call it over, and curtail any further investigation into who is responsible for decisions that led to mass deaths.
I’m not a fan at all of President Titanic and the republicans using lawfare against their enemies. Smacks of McCarthyism. But there’s also no doubt whatsoever that Fauci owes us an answer on WTF was going on in Wuhan with “gain of function” studies in Wuhan? And what was the US involvement? He’s got a full pardon, time to ‘fess up. Because it is a giant logic leap to think a virus in Wuhan had nothing to do with the Wuhan Bio-lab.
I'm quite a misanthrope, so prior to Covid, I had already thought my opinion of humanity was about as low as it could get.
Covid proved me wrong.
I was astounded, not so much by the government (at all level)'s totalitarian power grab - that kind of thing is to be expected - by the enthusiastic support of the majority of the populace for shutting down all commerce and all social activity, at staggering human and economic cost, all for the sake of a virus with a lethality rate comparable to the flu - hardly the stuff of nightmares. And, I no longer remember the exact number, but I remember seeing a poll where an *astoundingly* high percentage of Democrats were in favor of putting unvaccinated people literally in concentration camps, and my disgust with humanity went even higher than it already was.
I've never really recovered from that - outside of a small group of friends and family, I can't trust anyone. Covid taught me:
- Most people are total cowards.
- Many people salivate at the chance to exercise sadistic control over their fellow citizens.
- Most people have zero capacity for skepticism or critical thought.
All dark realizations, but it's good to know the reality. Knowing the truth is what's best, even when the truth is deeply disturbing.
True. These same impulses you describe are also what drive communism and the Democrat party.
I doubt it went to his level to decide to plow sand onto skateboard parks and in my own somewhat conservative town in NY nail plywood down over the outdoor basketball nets, but the craziness that went on during that time spiraled all the way down to the smallest town councils.
A lot of that craziness was driven by the public health bureaucrats' own alarmist messages. Fauci kept pushing the narrative that ONLY vaccines were the acceptable ends to this pandemic, rather than exploring all existing medication options and being truthful about the implications of the data. His hysteria drove hysteria at the local levels, thus creating sand-filled skate parks.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to make excuses for the pos gnome: he definitely set the precedence, especially since he oppressed actual data.
Just read RFKjr "The Real Anthiny Fauci".
You'll get an understanding of the fascist oligarchy that runs the swamp.
To this day, I firmly believe that if Hillary had been elected in 2016, Covid would have been just another seasonal virus that runs its course. But the democrats and the deep state had to get rid of Trump, so we had Covid, we had Fauci, and we all watched the government do things to destroy our lives so they could get rid of Trump.
The deep state needed a front man, so they found one in a little man whose ego was about 4 times his actual size and position warranted. He gladly played along, enjoying the notoriety and the money he received. Even if he is never prosecuted in our courts, his reputation, his legacy, is now shattered. He was a weak man who followed orders. He had no integrity, only a false ego of who he really is and was.
All true, but Democrats still defend him and love him.
Fauci was a unique figure. The highest paid bureaucrat - ever. But it is important to understand a few other things about bureaucrats. The time horizon of elected federal officials is 2, 4, or 6 years. Bureaucrats are careerists whose time horizon is 30-50 years. The primary instinct of bureaucrats is CYA. Everyone makes mistakes and bad decisions, but bureaucrats always try to cover up their worst decisions to make themselves look better.
I cant believe authors are still hypothecating that this man actually helped to fund and create this Frankenstein virus....like its not even remotely a "maybe".
And you bet the raquette continues on.
On all sides of the ball.
The "Green New Deal" "science" is straight laughable when objectively tested or analyzed..but the capture goes all the way from the top echelons of Government and University down to your children's kindergarten teacher.
Trump possessed something Fauci did not —the trust and loyalty of a large segment of the public. His supporters often took cues directly from him rather than from traditional experts or the media. That meant his words carried consequences independent of formal policy.
When Trump minimized the severity of COVID-19, promoted treatments before sufficient evidence existed, publicly contradicted his own public-health officials, repeatedly said he knew more than the experts, or shifted positions over time, those messages shaped behavior among millions of Americans. Presidential leadership is not merely administrative; it is persuasive. The office carries enormous agenda-setting and opinion-shaping power. Even if bureaucratic agencies influenced policy behind the scenes, Trump remained responsible for how he used his public platform.
At the same time, the opposite dynamic also existed. Fauci enjoyed extraordinary credibility with many Americans who distrusted Trump, and media organizations often amplified Fauci while portraying Trump as unreliable. The result was two competing centers of authority speaking to different audiences. This fractured public trust and contributed to the intense polarization of the pandemic response. But in the end Trump was Fauci's boss, and he the Commander In Chief making the calls his followers now want to pin on Fauci as if he had some magic power over Trump.
The deeper lesson is not that one side bears exclusive blame. Rather, the crisis exposed failures at multiple levels of governance. Bureaucratic incentives may have encouraged excessive caution, institutional self-preservation, and resistance to dissent. Trump's leadership, meanwhile, often amplified confusion through inconsistent messaging, personal attacks, and an overconfidence in his own judgment. Each magnified the other's weaknesses instead of providing a corrective.
I disagree strenuously with every word of this. What is really entrenched is corporate power.
Entrenched corporate power doesn't preclude entrenched bureaucratic power. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, they are often complementary. The revolving door between DC and Wall Street, Big Pharma, etc., is an example of this.
Well said
Yes big corps in cahoots with big govt deep state liberals
Many good points in this post -- but I'm not sure we need a revolution, per se, but a mechanism to bring better checks & balances on the administrative state.
Theoretically that should be congress and the senate. But they're so beholden to the money flows this post observes they are almost useless. That's the one thing I don't think the founders fully grokked. They were concerned about aristocratic power and mob rule, so their checks and balances tried to neutralize both through need for majority consensus on many things.
Now the leviathan administrative state has no check (no pun intended) or balance -- other than whatever politicians can afford or have the conscience to oppose it.
I'm not sure Jefferson or Madison or others really thought about that. Although maybe I"m wrong.
When the whole system is captured -- like the witch mania or the Aztec pyramid (or even in our time the stupid, cruel and pointless wars, or the Covid debacle -- there is no check or balance.
What do you do in a society at scale large enough to destroy most if not all opposition?
You're back to the Priest King stage of humanity. Back to the Pharoah and his priests. Back to the Spanish Inquisition. Back to a pre-Enlightenment witch mania.
If people want to live with Enlightenment values and separation of powers they should think carefully about this, because it can get worse. A lot worse than what this post discusses. At the same time people at scale seem to make group decisions that never have consensus, ever, so some of this phenomenon is inevitable no matter what a society does.
Libs are complicated. They hated Robert Moses but love Fauci. Maybe this article should be labeled what this Anthony Fauci episode teaches us about libs' agenda for big government control even when it's dysfunctional and toxic.
Moses built bridges. parks, parkways, and public swimming pools, and Fauci may have helped invent Covid.
Libs labeled Moses as racist for building his bridges over parkways too low for buses, but ignore how their hero FDR did the same thing with his Taconic State Parkway. That the Merritt and Palisades Parkways have the same low bridges and that the National Park System design guidelines back then called for low bridges over parkways.
Nothing causes more fear than infectious disease - particularly among women. They want to be led by an authority figure who seems to know what he is talking about.
A few points come to mind. First, Barney Frank, of all people, argued strongly against term limits. He said that the administrative state is so entrenched that only long term legislators can gain enough power to fight back. There is a clamor for them and many such as The Free State of Florida (tm) have adopted them. Even condo boards!
Secondly, the same party that rails against central control in DC is only too happy to take power from counties, preemptively taking the power to regulate from Tallahassee. This may seem minor, but cutting heritage oaks to make way for development
Has been preempted to the State, as with restaurant inspection. Seem minor, but isn't. It's the mentality. Mostly greed, by industry pushing it's agenda by way of speech contributions to politicians.
Additionally, you must read https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/ to get an idea how we have decided that truth is subjective, per turd Flower. If the truth is subjective, then I can believe, and repeatedly proclaim elections are rigged if I lose, fair if I win. It's irrelevant if the constant drumbest of the Unitary Executive wasn't siz lies before breakfast every day.
We can't trust "science," we can't trust made up reality especially as many of us sink into the ehshittified internet, with no truth button on the keyboard, and as other writers have commented, AI programmed to present it's creators version of truth.
Where then is truth to be found?
Government is a dark zone. Shining a light upon it would render it gone.
Conservative and liberal can now be differentiated as being able to reason, on the one hand, and blind obedience, on the other hand.
How Progressive.
The big lie is so effective. I have immediate family in front line healthcare, emergency response and dispatching. During "Covid", they were physically and emotionally overwhelmed by all the people dying or being permanently maimed by the disease. Now those same family members are furious that what they saw was really vaccine related injury. Some lost colleagues in the healthcare field and never dreamed such tragedy was all caused by the bureaucracy.
I have a neighbor who is disabled. She and her husband say she was "diagnosed as having Long Covid". Three months ago I delicately mentioned that some people say Long Covid is really vaccine injury. He became furious, probably because of the thought that they were not random victims of nature's whims, but might actually have made a decision that led to their own harm. They have been loud drum beaters for that whole authoritarian drive against individual choice in healthcare, and have used her illness as evidence that the bureaucracy is so necessary it is worthwhile to destroy other people's freedoms to allow " smart people" to make important decisions.
Just like the system did with Cuomo, they will throw Fauci under the bus, call it over, and curtail any further investigation into who is responsible for decisions that led to mass deaths.
I’m not a fan at all of President Titanic and the republicans using lawfare against their enemies. Smacks of McCarthyism. But there’s also no doubt whatsoever that Fauci owes us an answer on WTF was going on in Wuhan with “gain of function” studies in Wuhan? And what was the US involvement? He’s got a full pardon, time to ‘fess up. Because it is a giant logic leap to think a virus in Wuhan had nothing to do with the Wuhan Bio-lab.