Took me almost a full week, but I’ve finally finished the Fauci Diaries. 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. The first spin on this book is partially correct: it’s an exercise in vanity. True. But there is much more here. It’s the story of the descent of a soul at every stage of decline: social climbing, egomania, 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 is using him as much as he is using them, that is, that he inhabited a world of fakery? Maybe but he decides early on that it is only choice. He has to keep it up else his whole world crumbles. 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. 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 me angry but finishing it leaves me with something I had not expected; something like the sadness you feel in a Gothic novel when a promising life takes a terrible turn toward perdition and somehow cannot find the escape from that path. The Picture of Dorian Grey 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. 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 that 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. paul.senate.gov/wp-content/u…