As the title of the chapter makes clear, it is all about the role played by medical experts in enabling President Trump, in enabling his presidency, and in enabling his administration badly to manage/mismanage the pandemic. This chapter will be controversial, for among other reasons the widely admired Dr. Anthony Fauci is among the cast of characters. So be it. Questions must be asked, and answered, about what should be the response of a good follower who has a bad leader. Some of the physicians discussed in the chapter are the previously mentioned, Drs. Fauci and Birs – and Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams and head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Robert Redfield. In each of these cases their professional credentials should not inhibit us from asking what was, what should have been, their proper role. Their proper response to a president who was as unethical in his management/mismanagement of the pandemic as ineffective.

The last chapter lays out Arendt’s interpretation of the American Revolution and her reading of the Declaration of Independence. She argued that--in the absence of established governments--the American colonists had to govern themselves, and the practical experience of self-government led them to non-theoretical but authentic insights into the nature of power and authority. But instead of rethinking traditional theoretical concepts in light of their experiences, they misconceived their experiences by forcing them into the framework of traditional theoretical concepts. So there was a tension between the implicit insights and the explicit theories of the colonists, Arendt argued: “the old understanding of power and authority...led the new experience of power to be channeled into concepts which had just been vacated.” This tension between implicit insight and explicit theory runs through the Declaration of Independence. Arendt’s reading goes beyond Jefferson’s explicit claims in order to bring to light a non-theoretical but authentic understanding of political power and authority implicit in the text of the Declaration.