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Let's get into it:
Maybe you were like me and had the Senate hearing on Fauci marked on your calendar for weeks, eager to perhaps hear the rationale from the power-hungry, fame-obsessed public doctor who has been at the head of federal medical institutions going back into the AIDS crisis. If so, you would have been as disappointed as I was to find that he refused to answer a single question. Not one. He wouldn't say what day of the week it was. He wouldn't tell Senator Rand Paul what color his tie was.
Instead, no matter what question was asked or by whom, Fauci said: "on the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution." Senators came to him with real questions, wanting to know why his public words were so different in some areas from his private thoughts. They wanted to know why, publicly, he said he wasn't responsible for school closures, for example, while in his diaries, released by Paul ahead of the hearing, he bragged about getting NYC and California to send kids home.
Josh Hawley wanted to know how and why he got so rich during COVID. John Fetterman said he'd initially trusted Fauci and felt like his trust had been misplaced, saying he regretted that. Paul asked detailed questions about gain-of-function research and the Wuhan Virology Lab from whence the virus likely leaked. But nothing. Absolutely no answers.
As I gave it some thought, which there was plenty of time for as Fauci just sat there like an entitled lump believing the hearing was beneath him and that he was not beholden to explain himself to the people's representatives, I realized one of the key things Covid took from us, and why it still leaves me so angry. There were the basics: an education for our children, closed churches, a deprivation of bodily autonomy with the forced mRNA vaccines, the incredible hypocrisy when doctors declared that racism was a bigger public health threat than Covid and urged everyone to go march around in the streets for black trans lives.
But there was one thing more, and this is from the press perspective: the regulators, fact-checkers, nosy neighbors, and social media monitors made us self-censor our words and thoughts. For many, it became necessary to think truth and speak lies. News outlets were routinely fact-checked and told the truth that what they were writing was not permissible. They had to be careful about how they talked about the lab leak, vaccine mandates, efficacy, and lockdowns. The entire legacy media enterprise backed the government officials, refusing to question them at all, even when nothing made sense.
And that practice of saying what they were told to say while outlets that refused to do so were suppressed and demonetized, of shaming people who were telling the truth, that is perhaps the biggest betrayal. A free press that says what it's told to say is bad enough, but a press that then uses its power to silence others is even worse.
Libby