Spectator A.M. #2103

Do You Swear to Tell the Truth?

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary reinforces why he required a pardon from President Biden: he told the public and their representatives one thing while he privately held a different belief. “Biden’s pardon doesn’t cover Dr. Fauci’s testimony this week,” Rep. James Comer warned, “and if he continues to lie, he must be held accountable.” Tripwires for perjury charges include questions on whether his federal fiefdom funded gain-of-function research in China, whether he truly believed that a wet market acted as the origin of the pandemic, and whether he publicly exaggerated the fatality rate of Covid. His diaries and emails on these and other questions indicate a disconnect between Fauci’s public pronouncements and private beliefs. Fox News offered a chart showing that six of seven networks devoted zero time to Fauci’s diaries (CBS News covered it for 24 seconds on its nightly news broadcast), so the massive portion of the public that either does not watch the news or watches some network other than Fox News or CBS remains ignorant of Fauci’s dishonesty. Maybe today’s hearings change that to some degree.

Fight on the Right

The New York Times Magazine article on directional and staffing controversies at the Heritage Foundation highlights the Star Wars bar scene of 2026 American conservatism without always doing so in a reflexively smarmy way that one might expect from The New York Times Magazine. Reporter Elizabeth Zerofsky acknowledges “the new intellectual factions vying to shape the movement: the National Conservatives, or Nat Cons, headed by Yoram Hazony, who believe[s] that decades of globalism had destroyed the identity of the nation; the post-liberal Catholics, a growing force among conservative elites, who believe[s] that free-market economics and social liberalism had undone the fabric of the nation; and the tech oligarchs, who believe[s] in the capacity of Silicon Valley to restore the dominance of the American nation.” Sure, the Times’s shocked, shocked response to hilarious anecdotes about exchanges with hackers from a Heritage staffer and a discussion about cleaning Ilhan Omar’s headscarf reveals that the writer marinates in a political correctness that does not really exist on the right. But the piece rings true in so many ways. One former Heritage staffer juxtaposed Ed Feulner’s Heritage with Kevin Roberts’s Heritage by pointing to its 2025 inauguration party: “It looked like central Pennsyltucky had invaded a country club. There was more ink on these people than the U.S. Constitution.” A culture clash exists between MAGA and a more Reaganite right (the former group, ironically, uses the same terminology—“country club Republicans” and “the Establishment—to dismiss the latter group as the latter group once used against opposition from within the party). More importantly, a clash over principles exists. Yes, Republicans of the Reagan-Bush-Bush period, like the buggy-whip salesman in the era of the automobile, bellyache over change, such issues as immigration restrictions and NATO skepticism. It seems also the case, though, that the MAGA right periodically sounds like the Bernie left. As one former staffer told the Times, “Roberts began to talk, around the office, not about individual liberty but about the ‘common good’ — not about freedom as the right to do as you want but as you ‘ought.’” My own simplistic take? The older right lacked guts; the newer right lacks brains.

Spanish Fly

I recorded six YouTube episodes for @RightWingWilderness while in Spain. I plan to table two of the episodes for some later date and return to the wilderness here in New England to record a few America-centric episodes shortly. That said, I do quite like how the Spain videos turned out. Even if you do not care for bullfighting or the World Cup or Don Quixote, the episodes that focus on those topics still double almost as travel videos providing glimpses of Toledo, Seville, Malaga, and Madrid. The discussion of the hidden history of the Spanish Civil War, methinks, ranks as one of the better videos in the series in that it tells a compelling story and provides suppressed information (literally so in Spain, where the government bans speech that praises Francisco Franco) before historic, culturally-significant backdrops in Madrid, Toledo, and Malaga. The story of Colonel Moscardo (wow!), alone, makes it worth a watch. Anyhow, it’s back to the wilderness of America within a few days. But in a month or so and then again in October I will return, at least on my YouTube channel, to Spain. In the meantime, do please subscribe (it’s free) to my YouTube channel if you have not already and continue to watch the videos when they come out. Both help me toward my goal of monetization.

Dinosaur, Well Done

A new scholarly paper argues that the extinction event 66 million years ago burned alive non-avian dinosaurs. “Here, we argue that vapor plume material is ballistically transported globally to the Earth's upper atmosphere and that spherules will decouple from uncondensed vapor,” the article in JGR Biogeosciences notes. “We also argue based on support from modeling and geologic observations that abundant fine dust will condense from this vapor. In addition to an improved understanding of the dynamics of the impact vapor plume, our work strongly supports the hypothesis that heat and fire were primary kill mechanisms for non-sheltering terrestrial life.” From a study of the K-T line, simulations, and other means, the scientists from Purdue-West Lafayette and the University of Colorado-Boulder conclude that an asteroid from space rather than an eruption from within the Earth catalyzed the mass extinction. They write that “climate effects from Deccan volcanism did not play a role in the extinction. Instead, heat and fire induced by the Chicxulub impact and the atmospheric reentry of its ejecta acted as a mortal blow to dinosaurs and other Cretaceous life.”

Letter: Shh! Some Stadiums Follow Library Rules

Hi, Dan:

Not only did the stadium noise ranking omit Brown Stadium, it somehow ignored the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field. But I nominate it for the quietest stadium. 

When I was an undergrad there my roommate who was on the football team (I won’t say a “player,” because he seldom stepped on the field) persuaded me to attend a game. The only memory I have of that game is that the Maroons didn’t have cheerleaders. Oh, no. They had mimes. I repeat: mimes.

Can’t get any quieter than that! Or any more UC?

Craig Pirrong

Houston, Texas

Letter: Covid Is Healthier Than Fascism

Dear Dan,

It appears you were reading Fauci’s diary in 2020 regarding the highly inflated death rate from Covid. But even your excellent critique didn’t go far enough. Fauci’s malfeasance was worse still because not only was the denominator (number of Covid cases) unknown and essentially unknowable, but the numerator (number of deaths) was also unknown—at least at that time. You’ll recall that many medical facilities and nursing homes were not making a distinction between death from Covid and death with Covid, meaning that the 88-year-old massive stroke victim who just happened to be discovered upon his death to have had Covid was added to the Covid death count. Fauci knowingly juiced the death rate numbers by undercounting the denominator and overcounting the numerator. He did this to get to a number that would appropriately scare the public, tank the stock market, and make him the Rockstar in Charge. I hope Rand Paul absolutely takes him apart.

James Turner

Indianapolis, Indiana