I know columnist David French has come to annoy many conservatives who see him as selling out the cause and becoming one of the new "Conservatives who will badmouth other conservatives for career advancement" class of grifters. They see a guy who once wrote courageously on behalf of social conservative causes now penning think pieces about the legal merits of drag queen story hour and conclude he's a lost cause. His recent conclusion that Dr. Fauci operated in "good faith" lends itself well to the legitimacy of such a conclusion.
But for those who still follow him, French posted another one of his provocative anti-Trumpist tweets last weekend regarding the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, and the right's reaction to it.
What struck me about this observation was how several of the kneejerk reactions to his accusation seemed to provide French evidence for his point. Perhaps it was bait, a clever ploy to elicit nasty reactions for the sake of validating his sweeping accusation. Or maybe not. Maybe, as much as we may not like hearing it, there is something there that all of us could benefit from considering.
One of the symptoms of our perilously radicalized political environment is an inability to appreciate moderation, compromise, and introspection. Admitting fault is seen as a sign of weakness; acknowledging a mistake made by your "side" is regarded as evidence you've betrayed the cause; confessing doubt in the wisdom or aptitude of your party's leadership is tantamount to conversion.
Not only is such rigid, stubborn, tribal loyalty a death blow to national unity, it also guarantees otherwise rational adults will bend and contort themselves in comical ways simply in an effort to deny the obvious.
Forget French and Mar-a-Lago, and look at this on the opposite side of the political spectrum:
Dr. Anthony Fauci has spent his career serving in various government offices of science and medicine. Whether as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases or as the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, Fauci has accumulated all number of government accolades for his work. It's unsurprising to see someone who has been entrenched in bureaucratic government to exhibit this level of pride. But the magnitude of hubris on display here is truly jaw-dropping.
While Fauci deserves some grace in the early days of the COVID pandemic, we now know that he intentionally misrepresented reality for the sake of desired political ends. He was the architect of policies that ruined the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, including children, and wrecked a global economy all for no measurable benefit. Everyone makes mistakes, but that's a staggering failure.
Yet, remarkably, it wasn't anything new for Fauci. He had perfected the very same panic-driven policymaking routine during the AIDS/HIV crisis of the 1980s. Just like he failed to properly identify the elderly, infirmed, and obese as the groups primarily at risk from COVID, settling instead to treat elementary school children as dangerous contagions despite all evidence to the contrary, he did the same thing in the 80s in an effort not to stigmatize homosexuals.
For such a man to feign humility while bragging about the "Fauci effect" of young people being interested in science because of him – because he symbolizes consistency, integrity, and truth – is nothing short of embarrassing for even his most ardent defenders.
But it's not just the Fauci fanatics. Molly Jong-Fast, a left-wing writer who has shared some truly wild perspectives from her days at the Daily Beast to those at the Bulwark and Vogue, actually published a piece at The Atlantic that said…well, this:
President Biden is many things. But it takes a level of obliviousness and an application of 6-inch-thick partisan blinders to pretend that this is a phoenix rising.
To be sure, this kind of partisan delusion is consequential. It matters. It leads to the enactment or the continuation of policy that is demonstrably destructive simply for the sake of not appearing weak or wrong, since doing so might be politically beneficial to the "other side." If our civilization is to survive, we all have to choose better than that.
