OPINION:
Rep. Jim Jordan, at a House hearing on the White House’s coronavirus response, asked National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci a dozen different ways and a dozen different times to explain why angry protesters could safely gather but peaceful church-goers could not — and a dozen different ways, a dozen different times, the good doctor ducked and dodged.
And that is why the American people do not trust the government’s crackdowns due to COVID concerns: They’re unequally applied. And the unequal appliers refuse to explain why.
They refuse to even acknowledge their part in furthering the unequal application of crackdowns.
Among Jordan’s questions to Fauci: “Should we limit protests?” “You think that’s OK,” to arrest gym owners for going to work but allowing protesters to gather in the streets? “Do you see the inconsistencies?” “Do the protests increase the spread of the virus?” “But you do understand Americans’ concerns — protesting, according to Democrats, is fine, but going to school, work, church [not fine]?”
And among Fauci’s responses to Jordan: “I’m not favoring anybody over anybody, I’m just making a broad statement about the need to avoid crowds.” “I’m not going to opine on limiting anything.” “I’m not going to opine on limiting anything; I’m going to tell you about the danger.” “I’m not going to opine on who gets arrested.”
And then this astonishing shoulder-shrug: “There’s no inconsistency, Congressman.”
No inconsistency?
No inconsistency?
The entire Black Lives Matter movement in the street that Democrats have allowed, nay, encouraged while simultaneously clamping businesses, shuttering schools, closing churches and ordering citizens off the streets, into their homes, away from the public square — the whole months upon months of this unequal application of coronavirus mandate has been nothing but inconsistent.
That Fauci couldn’t even admit that much, once again, is astonishing.
But then again: Maybe not. Fauci, as well as all the other “I am zee law” medical bureaucrats running America’s government and policy and economy and culture and education system in recent months have done nothing but issue one inconsistent, ever-changing advisement after another.
And America is living in confusion. Confusion and chaos.
The Jordan-Fauci face-off was just a glimpse at the depth of favoritism that has become modern science; at the darkness of politics that has shadowed coronavirus response. What’s the saddest of all is that even knowing it, even seeing the ugly inconsistencies for what they are, America’s churches, America’s businesses, America’s schools are still closed.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.
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