by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
One thing that does not give me a lot of confidence about the state of American politics is how the MAGA Right in the US is working itself up into a lather when it comes to Dr. Fauci.
This is all very surreal to me given that Trump’s dingdong incompetence directly caused about 500,000 excess COVID19 deaths. Now, it’s very clear what’s going on — Republicans know this and are using the age-old political technique of screaming at the top of their lungs about emails in an effort to deflect from their own weaknesses.
They know that every moment we’re yelling over Dr. Fauci’s emails is a moment we’re not thinking about what an utter disaster Trump’s handling of COVID19 was. They have a two fold goal. On one hand, they want to stir up the base with a 2 Minute of Fauci Hate every day so they will flood the polls to flip Congress to “hold him accountable.” Meanwhile, they want to control the media narrative so we’re all fighting over Dr. Fauci his emails and not Trump and his COVID19 mismanagement.
The thing none of us non-MAGA people are prepared for is how hysterical and ultimately bloodthirsty MAGA is going to become about Dr. Fauci. He’s a convenient lightening rod because he wasn’t cowed into submission by Trump and didn’t take any of his shit. Add to this the well-worn outrage machine that MAGA already has when it comes to emails and, well, look out.
The moment MAGA controls Congress, every moment they’re not cutting taxes for plutocrats or flooding the Federal bench with young hack MAGA judges or impeaching Biden and Harris for Not Being Trump, they’re going to be yelling at Dr. Fauci in committee meeting after committee meeting. It won’t matter what he says, it won’t matter what the facts are, they will strip mine his status as a political lightening rod until we reach Benghazi levels of stupidity.
In the end, all of this will fuse together so the usual suspects of MAGA will get involved. Ultimately, it will become MAGA orthodoxy that Dr. Fauci is a member of the Deep State and directly funded — and ordered — the release of COVID19 from the Wuhan lab because he wanted to bring down Trump. They’ll claim the emails prove this — somehow — and before you know it somehow Qanon, George Soros and Comet Pizza will be involved.
My fear is, of course, that someone is going to get hurt because of all of this. Then Republicans will be SHOCKED, SHOCKED I tell you that some “mentally unstable person” would do such a thing. They will mumble something about “thoughts and prayers” and then move on to whatever other batshit insane thing that can mentally stroke to make themselves feel better.
