27 June 2021: Opinion - Cuomo's "Crimes Against Humanity"

The Audacity of False Hope

Bill Asher's opinion piece addresses both Andrew M. Cuomo's pandemic "leadership" book and Anthony Fauci's upcoming 80-page book offering the ethically-troubled researcher's pandemic lessons. Here's the introduction:

War memoirs may be written for posterity or profit, or read as retroactive prophecies of victory at sea or evacuation by sea, of a battle for the survival of Christian civilization or a crusade for the good of Christians and Jews. But no record of final victory goes to print until victory is won. No memoir goes on sale in the midst of war, during the fog of war, by a wartime politician—except a book of lies, for the good of a political party, by a politician whose tenure is a study in failure.

But only Andrew Cuomo has the gall to play Caesar without the conquests of the worst or last Caesar, or the eloquence of Julius Caesar’s commentaries on Gaul. Only a politician among doctors can succeed Cuomo’s lies with a decalogue of his own. Only Dr. Anthony Fauci’s forthcoming book, Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward, can match the audacity of Cuomo’s novel, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the Covid-19 Pandemic.

The former is 80 pages, though Fauci has time to wax libelous and add to his catalog of misdeeds before the book’s release on November 2, while the latter is a work by a promoter of the blood libel. The latter bears the name of the governor who bore false witness against a specific people, who chose to rule more like the fifth governor of a Roman province than the 56th governor of the Empire State; who continues to rule 20 million people in spite of 53,923 deaths.

Memorializing this incompetence is necessary and just, so survivors may seek justice. Advertising this incompetence is wrong, however, just as paying Cuomo over $5 million for his memoir is criminal. His crimes may go unpunished, but historians must not acquit him of crimes against humanity.

How else to describe the sudden and deliberate transfer of 9,056 COVID patients from hospitals to nursing homes? How else to describe Cuomo’s indifference about where the old died, when he said “Who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died.” How else to describe his order in the first place, when nursing homes were not his choice of last resort?

Indeed.