Colbert, Fauci, and the Externalization of Mental Illness

Many Americans suffer from anxiety disorders or have mind-bending insecurities. It’s sad. And broadly consequential. 

I heard that Steven Colbert had Tony Fauci on his show last week. Though I seldom watch TV, I wondered how either of these two individuals might now explain their prior promotion of injections that have not only failed but have been temporally linked to tens of thousands of serious injuries, deaths and declining fertility. So I viewed these cheesy twelve TV minutes on YouTube; at 2x speed, so as not to waste any more time than I had to.

Mental illness was on full display.

To begin, the plainly anxiety-ridden Colbert introduced Fauci as the government official “whose level-headed guidance took us through the Pandemic.”

That’s funny. I didn’t need or want a government official to guide/attempt to coerce me through the past thirty months. The virus never scared me. Nor should it have scared any reasonably healthy person under 70-80 who had even a rough sense of the Covid risk data. Accordingly, I wanted the government to leave me, and others, alone; to allow us to assess our own risks and to take care of our own bodies. 

Colbert was projecting his anxiety on everyone else. Liberals, such as Colbert and his acolytes, are very likely to be anxious. They’re the vast majority of psychotherapy clients and psych med swallowers. It bothers “liberals” that others aren’t equally anxious. This perception amplifies anxiety. Anxiety squared.

If I had been hosting, I would have described Fauci more accurately as “the career bureaucrat who grossly exaggerated the threat posed by a virus and repeatedly lied to a gullible public, thus causing deep, wide and lasting damage to America.” 

But of course, Fauci wouldn’t have agreed to appear on my show. Despite his “I am the Science” nonsense, he’s too insecure to face questions from anyone who’s done even a little research and thinking about the virus, its effects and the reaction to it. Someone secure in his beliefs, armed with solid data and devoted to the scientific method would welcome, not shrink from, dialogue and debate. Fauci is the consummate shrinker. 

Disturbingly but unsurprisingly, Fauci got an enthusiastic ovation from the Colbert claque, every member of which, when shown on camera, appeared to be masked. This audience was clearly a politically skewed, non-representative sample. In October 2022, a random sample of Americans would contain many who would not only reject masks and boosters but also boo and heckle Fauci for his repeated failures and lies over the past two and a half years. 

At this stage, given all the vaccine failure and Fauci’s firm, but quickly disproven guarantee that those who jabbed wouldn’t get sick or spread the virus, those who still support the shots and wear masks after injecting reveal deficits of knowledge, poor judgment, and/or mental illness. Colbert’s, and others’, enduring love of Fauci and of the jabs isn’t remotely rational. Thus, neither the pathologically anxious, non-old vaxxer/maskers nor their Dear Leaders have any residual credibility. 

Colbert followed his fawning intro with a few slowball questions, to which Fauci gave silly or inaccurate answers. 

Colbert didn’t ask Fauci to show how any of his Covid interventions did any good. Nor did Colbert ask Fauci to either admit or deny that those measures caused vast, lasting harm. Colbert also declined to give Fauci a chance to concede that he was wrong when he assured Americans that the shots would stop viral infection and spread; more specifically, Colbert never asked Fauci why both of them—and millions of others—have gotten sick after injecting. Colbert did ask if the shots injured people. Fauci summarily and disingenuously dismissed this very real concern. 

Colbert didn’t apologize for his extremely dorky “Vaccine Dance” video, which proselytized for an ineffective product that will likely be the subject of massive lawsuits. Why shouldn’t Colbert and his network be canceled and held liable for the injuries that followed their benighted evangelization? In addition to this week’s disclosure of a document revealing CDC/HHS efforts to conscript or pay entertainers to promote the covid vaccine and to mock jab decliners, TV networks have profited from selling ad time to enable the government and Pharma to hype these unprotective, injurious shots. The courts should disincentivize such reckless messaging and instead, shift resources to those damaged by their reliance on such false content. These are fundamental tort law tenets.

These few minutes of Colbert’s obsequious treatment of a bumbling, yet somehow cocky, bureaucrat left his delusional studio audience and at-home devotees feeling well-informed. Thusly misled, the Team Colbert likely felt empowered to post more Tweets haughtily disparaging those who were smart enough not to waste time standing in line for tickets or stay up late to watch such propaganda. More importantly, Colbert detractors were smart enough to not inject in the first place. 

Fauci shilled for the latest booster, glibly lying about the prior shots’ effectiveness in preventing hospitalization and death and cluelessly saying that yet another shot would enable a “return to normality.” Except for those with anxiety disorders, most of the rest of us returned to normality months, or years, ago. At this point, it’s laughable for Fauci to suggest that he can implicitly threaten those who refuse the shot with house arrest or bar their access to public places for refusing to do more of what has already, repeatedly failed. He’s an oblivious demagogue. 

Unfortunately, Fauci and Colbert’s initial hype ran smack into legions of real-life examples of illness and death in vaccinated people that everyone knew, or themselves became. Of the people I know, the vaccinated were multi-fold more likely to get sick than were the uninjected. As the shots failed to provide the immunity they were guaranteed to provide, and as many people know people who’ve been injured by the shots, rational people will decline to boost up. Passive old people and those who lack the courage to defy college, workplace or other vaxx mandates will comprise the vast majority of those who take the next—fifth?—round of shots. Most others will forgo the free beer or doughnuts. Or will the prizes be upgraded this time? How about beer and doughnuts? Plus a lotto scratch-off. Yeah, that’s the ticket. 

After breaking for commercials—which YT didn’t show but were statistically likely to include Pharma and/or vaccination promotion—the blithely ignorant talk show host and his chirpy guest joked as they strolled down the midtown Manhattan sidewalk to a pharmacy to get reinjected. Steve and Tony: we’re laughing at you, not with you. 

Unsurprisingly, there was no one in queue for the shots. Remember the heady days of early, 2021, when some people wanted to jump the jab priority line? Remember “Two shots and this is all over?” Remember one-way supermarket aisles? Much space would be required to list all the lies you should remember.

In the YT comments to the above-described video, I noted the foregoing lies. Unsurprisingly, YT’s “liberals” censored my message. The truth hurts. 

So I’ll say it again here: Fauci has built a record replete with failure. None of the measures he prescribed and supported: lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates or mass scale 40 cycle PCR testing or shots has worked. Each has caused deep human and economic damage. Given such profound and pervasive failure, it’s ludicrous that Fauci thinks most people still value his opinion. 

Despite all of the money he’s made in the public sector, Fauci’s life must have been hard. Based on my reading of RFK Jr’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci, and Fauci’s conduct during the past thirty months, it’s my opinion that, just as Colbert’s anxiety caused him to support the failed Covid interventions, Fauci’s insecurity caused him to bureaucratically bully many throughout his career. By foolishly giving Fauci an audience, Trump enabled him to pull the same compensatory power trip on the American public that he had previously pulled on work colleagues and NIAID grant applicants. And/or Fauci’s corrupt. Because “The Science” has never supported his pronouncements or policies. 

Life is hard. Everyone I know bears some burden or other. Most do so with equanimity and dignity, and without victimizing others. It’s been deeply wrong—and extremely selfish—for Colbert, Fauci, and their groupies to have externalized their mental unwellness on hundreds of millions of others by insisting on society-wide, lastingly destructive Coronavirus interventions.

Republished from the author’s Substack