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That in itself is strongly anti-democratic behavior that I would be extremely hesitant to support even if there was a strong factual foundation to the accusations (which I can't see so far).
Which aspect of this report makes you confident that MTG is "right"? What exactly should Fauci be imprisoned for?
Not sure what this has to do with democracy? Seems more like a rule of law issue?
But derailing a discussion from factual criticism into emotional populism appears extremely harmful to the concept of democracy itself to me:
In an ideal democracy, candidates would be elected based on how their political alignment and intended actions match up with voters. But if politicians denigrate their competition instead, and paint everyone outside their camp as enemy/traitor/unvotable, then this essentially frees them from having to compete on policy (which leads to incompetent politicians in power that are super hard to get rid of).
I'm gonna blame that politician first and the voters that are on the take second, same in this situation.
In most systems voting is secret and anonymous. So even if I wanted to sell my vote, the buyer can never be sure that I actually voted as promised.
Or do you mean 'buying' in the sense of politicians making promises to enact certain policies that specific voters like, if elected? If yes, that seems less like 'buying' and more like straight up democracy working as intended to me. (Even if you or me want to disagree with the outcomes.)
What? How does the conclusion follow from the premise? That a politician resorts to ad hominem fallacies does not by itself mean that whoever listens to them will act purely on those fallacies over everything else. Moreover, the voters are just as likely to vote based on similar fallacies that they come up with themselves. "Oh, I don't like that guy, he has a bent nose." Ultimately it's each voter's responsibility to judge the candidates based on appropriate metric and not be swayed by bullshit, whether of their own creation or not.
This is in fact exactly what happens, just consider the ANC in South Africa, US politics or like literally every conservative party in Europe ever.
Which is why any politician is harmful to democracy that primarily competes with non-policy arguments, appeals to tradition/emotion/faith or similar, and any such appeal or argument is a bit of a red flag for the politician in question (to me, but trying to be objective about things).
Alas, no. By and large, people don't vote for policies that are good for them.
People vote for policies that sound good. By and large, they don't really care too much about whether the policy sounds good specifically for them---they are happy to think of eg their country or community. But they are really bad at judging what policies actually work.
So to use your phrasing:
Every vote you get with non-policy arguments means you can make fractionally fewer policies constrained by having to keep promises for bad policies.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter for more background on the argument. (I don't expect my very brief sketch to convince anyone.)
No. To establish that "Fauci killed lots of people" you would have to show that cumulative deaths would have been lower without actions that Fauci was responsible for (=> difficult because you lack a good baseline). This report most definitely does NOT show that.
Then, to have an actual case, you would also have to show that those decisions were made in a manner criminally neglecting facts known at the time (=> not 4 years later!).
Ethically, it is enough to show that his policies killed people. I cannot go into a tobacco factory, kill the night guard, burn the factory to the ground and expect recognition for saving lives. So starting from the position that unjust things were done during COVID, it is now the time to investigate what specific laws were breached, so that justice can be sought. Hence the slogan 'arrest Fauci'.
The report mentions excess death from non-COVID causes. Is it disputable that these were due to non-pharmaceutical interventions? There is also a large number of contemporary warnings regarding the effect of lockdowns on diagnosis and treatment of other diseases.
From what I can see the article makes no effort to separate Covid related excess mortality from direct or indirectly covid related, which would be crucial to support your argument.
Consider e.g.: - Death by delayed/cancelled medical procedures/diagnostics (because healthcare was busy with people dying from covid at the time) - Weaker immune system because of lack of exposure during/after covid
If your hypothesis is "by ignoring covid and skipping lockdowns we could have avoided this excess mortality" then that hypothesis is quite contrarian in first place AND not supported by the facts presented in the article.