Stinking Drunk With Power 2.0

Monty Python fans are apt to recall the Crunchy Frog sketch, wherein Inspector Praline of the Hygiene Squad visits the Whizzo Chocolate Company to discuss several of the confectioner's odder offerings. The skit was offered both on Monty Python's Flying Circus television show and as a live performance-turned-film Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Hilarious in its own right, it is also a sendup of the UK's heavy-handed Trade Descriptions Act 1968, and included the inspector coughing up the retort:

I don't give a damn about your sales, we have to protect the public.

That nugget arose, unbidden, from the depths of my brainpan in the aftermath of a federal judge striking down the public transportation mask mandate, and the CDC's subsequent request to Justice that the decision be repealed. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the self-styled lord-on-high of all things COVID, voiced his concern:

This is a public health matter, this is not a judicial matter. The CDC has the obligation to protect the American public and they make their recommendations based on science and solid public health information. So obviously the CDC will abide by the order of the court because it's a legal obligation, but one of the problems that we have there is that the principle of a court overruling public health judgment by a qualified organization like the CDC is disturbing in the precedent that it might send.

Two words to note therein:

First, "recommendations."

If all the government did was recommend masks, vaccines, distancing, etc, rather than mandate them (ditto re lockdowns), things would be very different. The judge's order, however, had nothing to do with recommendations - it struck down mandates. Fauci used the wrong word - he should have said "requirements" to reflect what they were actually doing. Whether that linguistic gaslighting was deliberate or not we can never know, but even if subconscious, it serves as a reminder that such as he deem themselves public managers rather than public servants.

Second, "precedent."

That's what's really chapping his ass. If this ruling stands, then the CDC will be less free to coerce behavior in the future. That the mandates have done more harm than good (post hoc analyses tell the tale) is of no consequence - the power to mandate again is what matters most to such as Fauci.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, in the linked clip, covers the legal matter - that the Florida judge looked at the law and found that the CDC had no authority to mandate as it had.

He also points out that of course the courts have the right to overrule any public entity. That's their job.

Fauci is, to quote a Metallica song, stinking drunk with power.

Dr. Fauci's 15 minutes of fame have run their course, but he apparently refuses to let them go. As Lord Acton warned us back in 1870, power corrupts. Fauci, apparently drunk on the adulation showered upon him by the mandate lovers and other leftist authoritarians (but I repeat myself), may be worried of being returned to the relative obscurity of his pre-COVID days, and lose the power to coerce that he has defended endlessly and against both law and science.

Inspector Praline ultimately won the day over Mr. Hilton, because "spring surprise" inadequately warned consumers that steel bolts would pierce their cheeks upon consumption of the sweetmeat. A libertarian would likely prefer that such a matter be handled civilly than by government agency, but more to the point such a booby trapped candy would warrant criminal charges against the proprietor. Fauci, on the other hand, not only lost (finally) in court, he and the CDC deserved to.

No one is debarred from wearing a mask. Or two, or three. On airplanes, on trains, in their cars (with passengers or alone), walking down a suburban boulevard, alone on the porch, or while free-climbing El Capitan. Nothing is stopping the CDC from recommending any or all of these, no matter how absurd. The line is coercion, and the federal judge got it right, apparently on the law, and most definitely on principle.

Justice is reportedly looking to appeal, after choosing not to request a stay upon issuance of the original order. This is about power, present and future, and not about public health. Power to do unto us during this pandemic, and power to again do unto us in the future.

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Peter.