Dr. Fauci In The Hyenas' Den

        Anthony Fauci, born in 1940, grew up in Brooklyn, New York in an apartment over his parent's drug store where he and his sister helped out. He was the captain of his high school basketball team.
       In college he studied Greek and worked summers on a construction gang. He graduated first in his class from Cornell Medical College where he focused on infectious diseases and the immune system.
      After finishing his medical residency in 1968 Fauci joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of which he was Director from 1984 to 2022. In 2023 he joined the teaching staff of Georgetown School of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, where he still teaches.
        According to Wikipedia, among his vast body of work and contributions to the fields of science and medicine:
        "Fauci has been at the forefront of U.S. efforts to contend with viral diseases like HIV/AIDS, SARS, the Swine flu, MERS, Ebola, and COVID-19. He played a significant role in the early 2000s in creating the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)[24] and in driving development of biodefense drugs and vaccines following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.[25] Fauci has been a visiting professor at many medical centers and has received numerous honorary doctorates from universities in the U.S. and abroad.[26]
        He developed therapies for formerly fatal diseases such as polyarteritis nodosa, granulomatosis with polyangiitis, and lymphomatoid granulomatosis.
         Fauci discovered how to re-dose cancer drugs in a way that turned a 98 percent mortality rate of the disorder vasculitis into a 93 percent remission rate.[14]"
         And it was Dr. Fauci who  who led our country's response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

           And  though Anthony Fauci is among the world's most respected, prolific and cited scientists, last ​Wednesday, July 29,  the United States Senate Chamber was transformed into a Roman Circus Maximus where the day's scheduled blood sport spectacle was the tearing apart by Senate Republicans of  85-year-old Dr. Fauci. 
          The crowds who cried out for Dr. Fauci's blood were still enraged six years later that at the height of the 2020 pandemic and before a COVID vaccine had been developed, Fauci advised wearing masks, social distancing, and temporarily shutting down non-essential public gatherings in order to fight the wildfire spread of the disease.
      But what truly ignited their rage was his crime of inciting the ire of Donald Trump and, by extension, the ire of the whole of Trump's MAGA world base.
        Fauci  dared to speak  out during the pandemic against Trump's promotion of scientifically unproven and dangerous snake oil cures for COVID, such as ingesting a  livestock  de-wormer, taking an anti-malarial drug, injecting or drinking household disinfectants like Clorox, and exposing the body's internal organs to high doses of ultraviolet rays. 

      And for that offense Trump and his minions and sycophants spent years attacking, harassing, deriding, and threatening Anthony Fauci to the point that, for his safety and the safety of his family, Fauci had to hire private security. And Joe Biden, before he left office, issued Fauci a preemptive Presidential pardon, also for his protection against any political retribution.
​         But the day of political retribution arrived anyway, and last week there he was, alone in the center of the arena while Republican Senators on a  special committee, small men immeasurably far beneath Anthony Fauci in stature and intelligence, attacked him like a pack of unloosed hyenas miraculously granted the twin gifts of speech and melodrama,

​...​mocking him, deriding him, belittling him, accusing him of being responsible for the COVID pandemic, of being in league with a Chinese laboratory they claimed leaked the virus, calling him a narcissist, a megalomaniac, a liar, a disgrace, a criminal, a self-dealer who used his office to enrich himself during the pandemic while millions were dying; they asked him if he was sorry for what he'd done, demanded he apologize, laughed at him, spit personal insults and even obscenities at him, grinding out so much red meat to entertain and excite the MAGA voting base while thrusting themselves into the spotlight.
       Anthony Fauci sat through the ordeal in silence except to invoke his right to remain silent while these shameless human hyenas performed on and on for the pleasure of their MAGA base and their MAGA master.

        I read that Anthony Fauci was raised a Catholic but also considers himself a humanist who has faith in the goodness of mankind. 
          I pray that last Wednesday's crucible was not enough to make him lose that faith.

References:
https://www.c-span.org/program/senate-committee/dr-anthony-fauci-testifies-on-origins-of-covid-19-pandemic/683492
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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/us/politics/fauci-testifies-rand-paul.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci