On the fifth anniversary of Brownstone Institute’s founding, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) released the diaries of Anthony Fauci during the Covid years until his retirement. They were written on government computers with the assistance of aides, so in no way are they private. They belong to the public, though it’s my judgment that it was intended to be notes toward an autobiography.
Reading them carefully (1,100 pages but in book form it would be twice that long) took me almost a full week. It is a look inside the state/corporatist system possibly without precedent. It doesn’t provide the entire picture of events but it is remarkably candid, especially if you read and know the context outside of the diarist’s head.
The first spin on this book is partially correct: it’s an exercise in vanity. True. Vast amounts of the text consist of hagiographic tributes without a hint of the grave damage done to people’s lives by the lockdowns, closures, and censorship.
But there is much more here. It’s the story not only of the wreckage imposed on a nation and generation of kids; it’s also the story of the descent of a soul at every stage of decline: social climbing, fame, egomania, political machinations, megalomania, duplicity, self-deception, intensifying levels of malice, exhaustion using courtiers as salve, and ending in total defeat realized only inchoately.
Reading it is a remarkable experience. It’s obviously not well written but that is a strength, a bit like how the Blair Witch Project is scarier due to its low budget. It’s raw and painful, alarming and shocking, and ultimately speaks to much more than the life of the author. It’s really a window into systemic corruption of nearly all the commanding heights of society itself, and offers a devastating indictment of the ruling class in government, media, science, and industry.
Does Fauci catch on that the media was using him as much as he was using them; that is, that he inhabited a world of fakery? Maybe but he decides early on that it is his only choice. He has to keep it up, otherwise his whole world crumbles. He just kept going for one year, two years, then three.
This Icarus just kept flapping his wings without realizing that they were melting.
Another feature that stands out: It was always political theater and never about science. Multiple times, Fauci overrides evidence in favor of messaging toward his preferred political and industrial end. As for the vaccine rollout, to say nothing of the boosters, it was pure chaos. As is well documented in this diary, the formulas could not outrun the mutations. And they knew it.
Then you have this strange and persistent obsession of Fauci of maintaining social position with daily infusions of assurance that he is great, loved, admired, admitted to all the right parties, attended all the best events, with a contacts list that included the world’s rich, famous, and powerful. This is all he had to assure himself of his grand life.
Even in the end, he does not seem to realize the role he played in upending the very system to which he so desperately wanted to belong.
Yes, nearly every page makes us angry but finishing it leaves us with something we had not expected; something like the sadness we feel in a Gothic novel when a promising life takes a terrible turn toward perdition and somehow cannot find the escape from that path.
This is the autobiography of Mr. Hyde, who in the fictional version surely knows he is bad. In this version, Mr. Hyde believes he is Dr. Jekyll.
The Picture of Dorian Gray also comes to mind. Fauci guarded his reputation as a scientist just as Dorian guarded his seeming youth. To do so required a costly exchange, the praise of the multitudes but escalating corruption. In both stories, the status of the soul (represented by the painting for Dorian) belies appearances.
Nowhere could he have anticipated during the writing of the book that six years after his apotheosis he would be trapped in a chair in a Senate chamber, ashen and defeated, surrounded by silent lawyers, his accusers on all sides, pleading the 5th Amendment 111 times.
The wings completely melted. De profundis clamavi.
I invite you and everyone to spend time with this book for the ages. It will be a long time, if ever, before we ever again have access to such a document.
Hellbound and Down 