There was another way this all could have gone that I think about quite a bit. I think about the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when virtually everyone was scared to death of a new form of a virus that we knew almost nothing about and the medical community and governments were trying anything to keep us safe, like masking, like social distancing, like wiping our groceries, things that worked and things that didn't. I think about the agonizing images of overwhelmed nurses and doctors, losing more people than they could save in ICUs that were overflowing with patients whose loved ones were forced to watch them suffer from a distance. I think about that period of time when we celebrated the essential workers, from hospital workers to mail carriers, when we beat pans to let them know we knew how desperately they were all trying to keep people alive or keep the world functioning.
And I know, I know, I fucking know that so much of that unity was an illusion, blown apart quickly by the murder of George Floyd and the explosion of protest that followed. I know that even the kindest, most generous version of this Covid fantasy would have been justifiably broken by the upheaval that occurred.
But I think about how we could have kept that unity going, how we could have rallied and willingly sacrificed like during World War 2, how we could have celebrated the fact that we had an election during a pandemic, a safe, smooth election, an incredible accomplishment by any measure. Look at how awesome we are as a country, we could have said. Look at what we did in the worst of circumstances. Donald Trump could have taken a victory lap on that very fact had he not sought to undermine the entire electoral system. He could have said that he was the reason it all went so well, and it would have been hard to argue with him. He could have done the same with the quick development of the Covid vaccine, advocating for everyone to get it, touting its safety, and claiming responsibility for the record time in getting us the thing that would save us from the virus. It would have become an article of faith among his followers that they had to get vaccinated, and likely tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of lives would have been saved.
Those two things, the 2020 election and the vaccine, would have allowed him to exit his first term with something like grace, even amidst the chaos he caused. But grace is to Donald Trump as ice cream is to the lactose intolerant: even a little would make him more uncomfortably flatulent than usual.
Instead, we know what happened. We know that skeevy politicians, clout-seeking media whores, and exploitative hucksters all took advantage of the chaos, of the confusion, of the evolving medical advice and evolving understanding of the illness (which is what happens when, again, you have a new virus), of people's natural despair about having their lives shut down. We know that they decided to turn into villains the very people who had dedicated their lives to saving our lives. We know that, despite Trump's praise of him throughout the frightening first part of the pandemic (even using a clip of him in a campaign ad), Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was director of the National Institutes for Allergies and Infectious Diseases for presidents from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, has been and is and will be the focus of a nutzoid right-wing ragegasm due to lies about Covid and short-term memory loss on how the country dealt with it.
So it was one of the most enraging, embarrassing, and dangerous hearings in a while when Senator Rand Paul, who belongs in a rubber room scrawling manifestos on the walls in his own shit, subpoenaed Fauci to appear before the Senate Homeland Security Committee and have him sit there for hours while Paul and other GOP fucknuts berated him for shit he didn't do.
Imagine spending your entire life saving millions of lives and now Rand fucking Paul and assorted chodes, Chads, and chuds are trying to get you to fall into a perjury trap so they can jail you for the rest of whatever life you have left at 85. Imagine sitting there and listening to Sen. Rick "What it would look like if Skeletor fucked a python" Scott, who led a hospital company that committed massive Medicare fraud and who himself took the Fifth Amendment 75 times during a civil suit, call you a "villain." Imagine listening to a fucking ignorant goon like Ron Johnson still assert that the Covid vaccine kills more people than the disease and that ivermectin and other quack cures that you helped debunk are effective treatments.
Honestly, I wish Fauci had followed up every assertion of his Fifth Amendment rights with "And based upon my rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution, I'd like to tell you to go fuck yourself." He could have even done variations, like "Based upon my rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution, I believe you should suck my balls" and "According to the First Amendment, I'm inviting you to eat my whole ass, dickstain." I wish he had done that all 111 times. It's not like the crazies are giving him a break for staying restrained during the hearing. They're losing they're tiny fucking minds.
The whole hearing was a disgrace, including the fact that Democrats were such wimps in defending Fauci. They should have been going right at Paul and the rest, accusing them of being grandstanding pieces of shit. They at least should have put the truth on the record, with hard numbers, like the fact that unvaccinated people died at hugely higher rate than the vaccinated.
But the dangerous part of this is that the hearing was there to degrade Fauci, undermine faith in real scientific research, and make the dumbest motherfuckers on the conspiratorial right happy. And it wasn't enough. They are looking to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress. State attorneys general are going to try to charge Fauci with some crime. I mean, one member of Congress called him "Mengele Fauci," to which you can only say, "Oh, shut the fuck up." Truly, Fauci should get the hell out of the United States because these assholes won't stop until they can have a public execution and put his head on a pike outside HHS (although RFK, Jr. would probably take the head and put it in his car to bring home).
What the fuck is wrong with us that we are so broken. Instead of that unity, instead of admitting that we suffered a mass trauma that needs to be dealt with on a mental health level, we just have been expected to move on from the death and despair of that period. Fuck any sense of a society. Fuck science. Fuck us because a future Dr. Fauci is going to look at this and think, "Maybe government service isn't for me."
(Note: Of course, there's also a version of the pandemic fantasy where Trump dies of Covid and everyone learns a valuable lesson, but, alas.)
