Anthony Fauci’s newly released diary contains a perfect little monument to bureaucratic vanity.On April 24, 2021, Fauci noted that BlazeTV host Steve Deace and Todd Erzen had published “Faucian Bargain,” which dubbed him “the most powerful and dangerous bureaucrat in American history.”This is how institutions manufacture ignorance. They don’t always bury the evidence. More often than not, they simply declare the people seeking it disreputable.Fauci had a devastating rebuttal. He did not read it.“It is a cheap paperback of 179 pages which I will not even read,” Fauci wrote, before announcing that it contained “the same sort of nonsense that the other conspiracy theorists have been saying about me.”Splendid! “Science” had spoken!No evidence needed review. No argument required an answer. Fauci glanced at the title, identified the authors, and reached a conclusion with the serene confidence of a man accustomed to having cable news anchors treat his opinions as tablets from Sinai.Two months later, Fauci explained the theology to NBC’s Chuck Todd.“Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science,” he said.The arrogance of this guy!Louis XIV supposedly declared, “I am the state.” Fauci updated the formula for the administrative age: I am science. Question my judgment and you have attacked knowledge itself. Ask about my agency’s grants and you have declared war on reason itself. Publish a critical paperback and the scientific method goes into cardiac arrest.My friend Lloyd Billingsley has a term for this: “white-coat supremacy.”It describes the belief that credentials confer not merely expertise but authority — political, moral, and sometimes almost priestly authority. The white coat becomes a vestment. The bureaucrat wearing it may issue commands, avoid scrutiny, and treat dissent as heresy. Citizens are not expected to weigh his arguments. They are expected to comply.Sadly, millions did.Fauci’s diary reads like the private scripture of white-coat supremacy.Presidents praise him. Governors seek his counsel. Famous people call at all hours. Diners applaud when he picks up hamburgers. Fauci records each ovation with the dutiful embarrassment of a man cursed to remember every compliment.Critics receive less delicate treatment. They are “crazy,” “far-right,” “preposterous,” “dishonest,” or simply beneath his notice. Deace and Erzen wrote a book criticizing the scope and consequences of Fauci’s power. Fauci refused to read it and then waved it off as irrational. Their standing settled the argument before the argument began.RELATED: ‘Conspiracy theory’ is just media code for ‘we hope this never comes out’ Matt Cardy/Getty ImagesThe same method governed Fauci’s use of “conspiracy theory.” Some claims aimed at him were a bit out there: that he was Hillary Clinton’s “mole,” that he and Bill Gates put microchips in vaccines, or that he personally created the coronavirus and carried it into the United States.But Fauci placed fantasies alongside legitimate questions about a Wuhan lab leak, NIH money reaching the Wuhan Institute of Virology, gain-of-function research, deficient oversight, his testimony before Congress, and government pressure on social media companies.Those claims do not belong in the same category.A microchip in a syringe might be a fantasy, but NIH funding reaching Wuhan is a fact. A deliberate bioweapon release remains unsupported. A laboratory accident remains unresolved but perfectly plausible. Even the FBI favored a laboratory origin. Federal investigators found serious lapses in monitoring the EcoHealth Alliance grant.Fauci knew — or should have known — the distinctions.His diary records that on January 31, 2020, serious scientists discussed unusual features of SARS-CoV-2, possible deliberate insertion, and accidental laboratory release. He distinguished that conversation from a flimsy paper claiming HIV sequences had been inserted into the virus.At first, the categories remained intact. One claim was crazy but the other warranted investigation.But once the political stakes became obvious, the categories fell to pieces.Soon, congressional oversight became evidence-free conspiracy theorizing. FOIA requests came from cranks and conspiracy theorists. Scientists who challenged the approved account became ideologues, attention-seekers, or villains subject to censorship. The FBI, which favored the lab-leak hypothesis, supposedly had “no idea” what it was talking about.RELATED: Fauci diaries reveal shocking behind-the-scenes relationship with Jake Tapper Skip Bolen/Getty ImagesAnd Steve Deace wrote a book Fauci refused to read.That little detail gives away the game. “Conspiracy theory” did not describe the evidence. It determined whose evidence could be considered.