American Thinker

by Clarice Feldman

    In the same week that Elon Musk demonstrates his latest innovation -– a flying car -- Jeffrey Tucker examines Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary entries.

    These entries cover the period December 2021 to May 2023, which Tucker calls “the darkest months of the Covid era.” In the case of Musk, we see science in action, opening new and exciting possibilities. As for Fauci, we see a disturbing pattern of misusing his position to hide his role in the lab creation of COVID-19. Tucker compares the Fauci efforts to Lady Macbeth’s attempts to erase evidence of her role in murder.

    Fauci first hoped COVID-19 would get lost in a bad flu season, but a Chinese businessman blew the whistle on that attempted cover-up. Then he denied the lab leak and undertook to begin a “nationwide inoculation to make it go away.” Although he knew this virus would mutate so rapidly that inoculations would be futile, he supported lockdowns while the inoculations were made ready for distribution. “His hope was to take the energy out of the pace of mutation by reducing the infection rate as low as possible.” Just as the shots were available for distribution, however, a new mutation “disabled their protection” and “mutations appeared faster than repeated boosters could catch.”

    His next step was to demonize the opposition. (In this, as we know, social media biggies like Twitter and Facebook joined the perfidious effort to limit real information about the virus and its treatment.)

    Two weeks before this tranche begins, Biden had gone on TV to declare the following: “We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated -- for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm. But there’s good news: If you’re vaccinated and you have your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death.”

    It was an intense claim even as the weakest of all variants had just appeared, even as evidence poured in that these injections provided no protection whatsoever. Regardless, the Biden administration was dedicated to ruining a second holiday season with terrifying warnings all in the hope of maximum shot coverage.

    Fauci begins his diary close to Christmas in a dispute with the CDC, which was starting to open up a bit and lighten up on its diktats. It wanted to permit people to choose whether to get tested yet again after recovering from COVID. Fauci smelled a rat – that dread thing called freedom -- and tried to strangle the baby in the crib.

    Opposition kept growing. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book attacking Fauci was widely read. Fauci was “mostly dismissive.” He continued to support the lockdowns, though later claiming he had not at all.

    Instead of admitting error, he went about collecting endorsements from overseas and celebrities Privately, however, his diary entries reveal he was doubting the efficacy of the shots. He took solace in his manufactured stardom, and he grew increasingly paranoid.

    “By the spring [of 2022] even Fauci started admitting that both he and the CDC were completely making things up. There was no science to anything they were saying, and he knew it. Even he had lost faith in the system he created, playing a scientist only on TV.”

    Every characterization of Tucker’s is supported by actual Fauci diary entries. This analysis is not something pulled out of the air. If you thought the masks and six-foot rules were bunkum, the lockdown rules were bizarre, you might take solace in knowing that the man behind them knew they were useless.

    Thursday delivered a story that is not getting anywhere near the attention it deserves. Axios’s headline came closest to justice, reporting, “Elon Musk’s flying Tesla is gloriously absurd.” Gloriously absurd is a backhanded compliment, like calling the Wright Brothers’ air-cycle-contraption wonderfully harebrained. Presumably from anti-Musk pique and sneering elitism, not one corporate media platform connected the obvious dot.

First of all: Huzzah! They did it! The car actually flies! True, only for short stints. Yes, only up to about four or five stories high, from what we could see, and even then when launched off a track. Still: it drove straight up! It flew upside-down! It did aerial flips! And it drove itself -- with an enthusiastic-looking man-sized robot strapped in the driver’s seat. (Presumably a volunteer.) [snip]

    Still, there’s something deliciously absurd about watching a publication devoted to explaining what comes next confront an attempt to build it -- and demand to know why anyone would bother.

Why build it  Why not build it

    How deranged must a person be to take no joy from this at all  How wrapped up in tedious 2026 politics must you be to contemptuously ignore an achievement so vast that all of mankind may claim partial credit just for being here when it happened  We’ve literally been waiting for flying cars since I was a teenager.

    It’s hardly unusual for great innovators and inventions to be derided (unlike Fauci for whom the media lap dogs swooned.)

    Translated from German:

"The horse will always be there, but the automobile is just a fashion trend -- a toy for the rich." Michigan Savings Bank, 1903

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, 1943

"No chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share." Steve Ballmer, 2007

"The Internet has hardly more important effects on the economy than the fax machine." Paul Krugman, 1998

"Flying machines heavier than air are physically impossible." Lord Kelvin, 1895

"The spam problem with emails will be solved in at most two years." Bill Gates, 2004

"The television won't hold up in the market. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every evening." Darryl F. Zanuck, 1946

"There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home." Ken Olson, 1977

"When the Paris World Exhibition closes, the electric light will go out and we'll never hear about it again." Erasmus Wilson, 1878

"The Americans may need the telephone, but we don't. We have enough messenger boys." William Preece, 1876

"No matter how science progresses in the future, man will never reach the moon." Lee De Forest, 1957

"Traveling at high speed is not possible, because the passengers would run out of air and die of suffocation." Dionysius Lardner, 1830

"Playing around with alternating current is a complete waste of time. No one will ever use it." Thomas Edison, 1889

"Mobile phones will absolutely not replace wired telephones." Marty Cooper, 1981

    Musk says (maybe tongue in cheek, maybe not): Future fun roadster demos will include flying over Snake River or maybe Grand Canyon and landing on its wheels and exceeding half the speed of sound.”

    Axios, when not calling the Roadster demo “gloriously absurd,” worries that Fauci’s being charged with contempt of Congress by the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee for refusing to answer questions about the origins of COVID-19 could “chill science” and deter scientists from government service. It should discourage those playing at science.