American politics has been in the sewer before, but it has been a while since the stench has been quite this stomach-churning. I’m two years from octogenarian-hood, and I don’t remember things being this bad. The Fauci show trial is a paradigm example of how far we have fallen. I don’t know Dr. Fauci of course; I doubt anyone has written his biography yet, but if so, I haven’t read it. Maybe he robbed banks in his twenties or conned little old ladies out of their pensions in his thirties. Surely he was unwise by using a government-issued computer for his personal diary.
But my impression is that he was a conscientious scientist trying to do an extremely difficult job in a hyper-volatile health and political environment. Now that the covid crisis is in the rearview mirror, Republican Senators Rand Paul and Josh Hawley have brandished their knives—GOP Senator James Lankford seemed almost Lincolnian by shunning their extreme partisan histrionics—and for reasons that are not quite clear to me, Paul and Hawley among other Republicans need a scapegoat. And that scapegoat is Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Senator Rand Paul has had a personal vendetta against Fauci for some time. He called for the show trial and served as its chairman. He has said that Joe Biden’s pre-emptive pardon of Fauci deprives Fauci of the right to the Fifth Amendment, apparently thus making up constitutional law on the spot. At least that’s not in the Constitution that I checked. And since when does pleading the Fifth constitute contempt of congress—which is the vote Paul will have his committee decide next Wednesday? Before gaveling the “hearing” to a close, Paul asked, “Did his actions lead to the largest man-made plague in history?” In normal times that would have been a vile and shocking question, reminiscent of something applicable to the Nazis at Nuremberg in 1945-46. It was vile and shocking enough, even now. Senator Paul was sure of his own answer, and that answer was that the villainous Dr. Fauci, twirling his metaphorical mustache, conspired in the deaths of over a million Americans, and profited by doing so.
Meanwhile GOP Senator Josh Hawley—grandstander extraordinaire, goading Fauci by asking him what color his tie was so as to ridicule him for pleading the Fifth—called Fauci “a megalomaniac and a liar….You’ve lied to the American people, and you’ve lied to this body, and you disgraced your profession by doing it.” Hawley, the senator videoed scampering at high speed down a congressional hallway in fear of the January 6 rioters, seemed oblivious to the fact that the fellow who sits in the Oval Office is an actual megalomaniac and an actual liar (pathologically so, according to an earlier Ted Cruz) who has lied to the American people beyond counting and has disgraced the office he holds so many times that there is legitimate concern as to whether the country can recover.
In a way, it would be satisfying to just say they are all, Democrats and Republicans, a bunch of crooks, that there is equal blame on both sides. As Mercutio says, a plague o’ both your houses! Such a view might suggest objectivity and equally distributed disgust. But it would not be true—instead, an easy dodge. The country is unravelling, and the fault for that is mostly on one side. The sneering vitriol of the Fauci show trial is a crucible for where we are in the country, and it is not a good place.
American Show Trial
August 2, 2026 at 4:46 pm (Political Commentary)
American politics has been in the sewer before, but it has been a while since the stench has been quite this stomach-churning. I’m two years from octogenarian-hood, and I don’t remember things being this bad. The Fauci show trial is a paradigm example of how far we have fallen. I don’t know Dr. Fauci of course; I doubt anyone has written his biography yet, but if so, I haven’t read it. Maybe he robbed banks in his twenties or conned little old ladies out of their pensions in his thirties. Surely he was unwise by using a government-issued computer for his personal diary.
But my impression is that he was a conscientious scientist trying to do an extremely difficult job in a hyper-volatile health and political environment. Now that the covid crisis is in the rearview mirror, Republican Senators Rand Paul and Josh Hawley have brandished their knives—GOP Senator James Lankford seemed almost Lincolnian by shunning their extreme partisan histrionics—and for reasons that are not quite clear to me, Paul and Hawley among other Republicans need a scapegoat. And that scapegoat is Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Senator Rand Paul has had a personal vendetta against Fauci for some time. He called for the show trial and served as its chairman. He has said that Joe Biden’s pre-emptive pardon of Fauci deprives Fauci of the right to the Fifth Amendment, apparently thus making up constitutional law on the spot. At least that’s not in the Constitution that I checked. And since when does pleading the Fifth constitute contempt of congress—which is the vote Paul will have his committee decide next Wednesday? Before gaveling the “hearing” to a close, Paul asked, “Did his actions lead to the largest man-made plague in history?” In normal times that would have been a vile and shocking question, reminiscent of something applicable to the Nazis at Nuremberg in 1945-46. It was vile and shocking enough, even now. Senator Paul was sure of his own answer, and that answer was that the villainous Dr. Fauci, twirling his metaphorical mustache, conspired in the deaths of over a million Americans, and profited by doing so.
Meanwhile GOP Senator Josh Hawley—grandstander extraordinaire, goading Fauci by asking him what color his tie was so as to ridicule him for pleading the Fifth—called Fauci “a megalomaniac and a liar….You’ve lied to the American people, and you’ve lied to this body, and you disgraced your profession by doing it.” Hawley, the senator videoed scampering at high speed down a congressional hallway in fear of the January 6 rioters, seemed oblivious to the fact that the fellow who sits in the Oval Office is an actual megalomaniac and an actual liar (pathologically so, according to an earlier Ted Cruz) who has lied to the American people beyond counting and has disgraced the office he holds so many times that there is legitimate concern as to whether the country can recover.
In a way, it would be satisfying to just say they are all, Democrats and Republicans, a bunch of crooks, that there is equal blame on both sides. As Mercutio says, a plague o’ both your houses! Such a view might suggest objectivity and equally distributed disgust. But it would not be true—instead, an easy dodge. The country is unravelling, and the fault for that is mostly on one side. The sneering vitriol of the Fauci show trial is a crucible for where we are in the country, and it is not a good place.
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