I'm not a fan of symbolic gestures where somebody else loses their job to make you feel good about them, especially when you’re both strangers to each other. And while neither Fauci nor Birx could have done anything to stop Trump (how would history change if Birx had walked out when Trump started talking about bleach?), is the country better off with them in place now, and with the continuity they provide?Given the rationales defenders of Birx and Fauci offered for their public statements being that they thought it was better for them to stay inside the government, it would be good for an interviewer to ask them what are concrete examples where their staying made a difference.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 24, 2021
Reinhold Niebuhr pegged this: societies and nations cannot afford the luxury of ethics, especially the ethical sacrifice. Had Fauci resigned, would that have helped us then? Or now? Haberman asks:
No, to the first two questions, but just as reasonably: who could? Jared? Ivanka? Even if they tried? But are we better off now with Fauci and Birx there, and Jared and Ivanka and Donald gone? Who has the institutional knowledge Fauci has? And are we better off with that, now? Or should Fauci have made the symbolic gesture and resigned? If he had, would we be happy now? Or would we ask him why he left?Did they prevent him from pushing chloroquines? Did they get him favor mask-wearing publicly? One real argument could be that folks like Scott Atlas didn’t then take over. But even then, there were other health officials involved.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 24, 2021
Oh, and do newspaper writers and on-air talking heads resign when their employers do atrocious things like print lies about Hillary Clinton as reporting, leading to Donald Trump winning the electoral college? I'd love to see people in journalism held to the same standards they insist that politicians have to. It's the people the media propagandize and sell lies to who are responsible for a lot of the hypocrisy and other defects of politicians. And what goes for the politicians goes for people who work in the bureaucracy,
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