“Two Americas” may be the most exhausted phrase in American political discourse. We have had two Americas divided by race, class, geography, religion, education, television network, and presidential preference.

Now we have two Americas divided by Anthony Fauci.

Six years after the pandemic began, America still cannot agree on what happened, who failed, or what accountability would require.

In one, Fauci is a criminal who helped finance dangerous research, concealed what he knew about the origins of COVID-19, misled Congress, and used the authority of science to protect himself and the institutions he led from public scrutiny. That’s my America. I suspect it’s yours, too.

In the other, Fauci is a secular saint: a brave physician who guided the nation through catastrophe while enduring abuse from Donald Trump, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), vaccine skeptics, and assorted right-wing maniacs like us.

Fauci’s appearance before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday did nothing to bridge the divide. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times rather than answer questions about the pandemic and its origins. Paul responded by announcing plans to seek a contempt resolution.

One America heard a confession. The other witnessed a show trial.

Nobody changed his mind. I doubt anyone could.

Six years after the pandemic began, America still cannot agree on what happened, who failed, or what accountability would require. Some people would rather forget about the whole thing and move on. A proper reckoning would demand some agreement about which questions may be asked, what evidence would count, and what findings might alter anyone’s judgment.

We don’t even have that much.

Was the pandemic a natural disaster, a laboratory accident, a bioweapon test, or the product of scientific ambition compounded by bureaucratic negligence and ineptitude? Were school closures ever justified? How much did masks help? Which restrictions saved lives? Which merely demonstrated official power? When did caution become coercion? When did uncertainty become dogma?

RELATED: Saint Anthony Fauci’s index of forbidden questions

Nyia Sissac/Washington Post/Getty Images

Even asking some of those questions still sounds incriminating to one America and deranged to the other.

I know something about the private cost of that division.

An old friend from college — my first real editor, in fact — essentially ended our friendship during the first year of the pandemic. The dispute was not over anything I had written. It was over work I had published at another publication.

One of our senior contributors was among the first writers I knew to challenge the official COVID narrative in a smart, sustained way. She questioned social distancing, masking, and the categorical dismissal of treatments such as ivermectin. My friend believed I was terribly irresponsible for continuing to publish her.

I have no regrets about doing so.

Publishing an argument is not the same as certifying every claim in it, much less demanding that readers accept it. Editors are supposed to permit serious challenges to official consensus, especially during an emergency when government claims carry extraordinary consequences.

I have spent most of my adult life in the commentary business. I make an argument. The reader judges it. If it persuades, fine. If it doesn’t, so it goes. I do not lose sleep because somebody disagrees with me. A great many people do.

That arrangement collapsed during COVID. Disagreement became evidence of moral defect. Publishing skepticism was treated not as an editorial judgment but as complicity in harm.

My friend also insisted that Trump was “100% responsible” for the disease spreading to the United States because he had failed to quarantine airline passengers arriving from China in early 2020.

His certainty struck me more than the accusation itself. One hundred percent left no room for the Chinese government, international travel, public health agencies, state officials, ordinary human behavior, or plain bad luck, let alone malice aforethought.

I tried to extend an olive branch. I suggested that we discuss it over a meal, as we had talked politics, books, ideas, and life many times during a friendship spanning more than 30 years.

He said that wouldn’t be possible because of the prevailing restrictions on social gatherings.

The policy dispute had cracked the friendship. The rule supplied the reason we could not repair the rift.

Several months later, I wrote in an email:

I have been thinking a lot about the stressors of this year and of the past few years and of the past several months especially. What I wanted to tell you is how much I value our friendship of more than 30 years. My hope is that when everything settles down, whenever that may be, you and I can sit down and have a proper conversation. I hope that history matters and I hope that goodwill prevails. And I hope you know how grateful I am to you.

He never replied.

We’ve exchanged perfunctory birthday wishes since then. That’s about all. I don’t dwell on it. But I thought of him this week now that Fauci is once again a hot topic.

I miss my friend as I miss my father, who died in 2017.

The losses are not identical, obviously. Dad can’t return. My friend could. But both men belonged to the architecture of my life. My friend knew earlier versions of me that few living people remember. He helped form the writer and editor I became.

RELATED: Reactions pour in after Fauci pleads the 5th over 100 times

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COVID reportedly killed more than a million Americans (though I’m well aware that number is disputed). It also damaged and destroyed things nobody considered at the time: friendships, marriages, churches, businesses, childhoods, trust in physicians, trust in institutions, and what was left of the habit of regarding political opponents as fellow citizens capable of error rather than enemies guilty of unspeakable crimes.

No Senate committee could possibly tally those losses.

A couple of weeks ago, I had dinner with a prominent historian at the University of California. I lamented how difficult it will be for anyone to write a proper history of COVID.

“We won’t write it,” he told me. “Our kids will.”

Thirty years from now, the central figures won’t be around to defend themselves, polish their reputations, withhold documents, or dominate television. The pandemic may finally cease to function as a referendum on Trump, Biden, Fauci, vaccines, masks, and the moral worth of one’s neighbors.

The historians of 2056 may possess evidence we do not have and distance we cannot manufacture. They may uncover crimes. They may vindicate some officials now despised and condemn others now celebrated.

More likely, I suspect, they will describe institutions operating under fear and uncertainty, staffed by fallible people who confused authority with knowledge, consensus with truth, and self-protection with the public good.

A proper history will resist the comforting simplicity of saints and criminals. It will distinguish honest mistakes from deception, emergency measures from deliberate bureaucratic overreach, useful medicine from extravagant promises, and legitimate skepticism from opportunistic horse hockey.

It will also have to account for us.

Why did so many Americans become so certain? Why did we turn temporary policies into permanent judgments of character? Why did we allow disagreements over a virus to decide whom we would trust, whom we would shun, and which friendships we were willing to sacrifice?

Our children may answer those questions better than we can.

By then, maybe the two Americas will have become one country again — or at least two Americas capable of sitting down together for a meal. I’m not optimistic, but I’m hopeful.

​Anthony fauci, Congressional testimony, Two americas, Official covid narrative, Covid, Trump, Vaccines, Pandemic, Wuhan lab, Opinion & analysis 

I enjoy ironing. Before you summon men in white coats carrying large butterfly nets, let me explain.

My mother taught all of us to iron. My father was a military man who expected his children never to leave the house wrinkled or rumpled. He certainly never did.

Caregivers live among things we cannot control, repair, or explain. Ironing allows me to direct some of that tension toward something useful and within reach.

For years, ironing was simply practical. Dry-cleaning bills add up, and we now live more than 50 miles from the nearest cleaner.

Over time, however, the chore became something more.

For four decades, I have watched my wife endure extreme chronic pain, scores of operations, and more months in hospital rooms than I care to count. During those stays, I noticed something small but measurable: Gracie rested better when the bed had fresh linens.

Clean, tightly drawn sheets and a fresh pillowcase did not relieve her pain or repair her body. They settled her. They softened the edges of a brutal experience.

Hospitals necessarily focus on medications, procedures, vital signs, and lab results. Fresh linens can slide down the list.

After hospital stays dating to the Reagan administration, I learned where the clean linens were kept and helped myself. If a sheet touched the floor or a pillowcase looked tired, I replaced it and dropped the used linens into the nylon laundry bag found in every room.

The improvement was never dramatic. Fresh sheets did not erase Gracie’s pain. But her body relaxed, and her breathing settled.

In a room governed by suffering, even modest comfort deserved attention.

One day at home, I saw the sheets in a basket beside the ironing board and thought, “Why not?”

By the way, caregiving involves a great deal of laundry. Just saying.

I began ironing Gracie’s pillowcases and praying over them. Then I tackled the sheets, including the fitted ones, which should qualify as an advanced degree. I pressed her nightgowns and hung them where she could reach them from her wheelchair. I ironed her blouses so they would be smooth and ready to wear.

With a Bluetooth earpiece, I return listeners’ calls, conduct media interviews, take audio courses, and talk theology with pastors who tutor me — all while ironing.

Laundry does not steal time from my work. It helps me focus.

RELATED: The new kid in the waiting room

Tuned_In/Getty Images

None of this solves the larger problem. I cannot take away Gracie’s pain, reverse the damage to her body, or make her legs grow back.

But I can make the bed.

Caregivers live among things we cannot control, repair, or explain. Ironing allows me to direct some of that tension toward something useful and within reach.

When I cannot bring order to the crisis, I can bring order to the linen closet.

A pressed pillowcase will not cure chronic pain, but it may help someone rest while enduring it.

Scripture presses the matter further.

At the Transfiguration, Christ’s clothes became “shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them” (Mark 9:3). Paul writes that Christ will present the church to Himself as “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27).

Evidently, God likes clean laundry.

But the spotless bride will not stand before Christ because she finally scrubbed away every stain and pressed out every wrinkle herself. She will stand there because Christ loved her and gave Himself for her.

He does what no launderer on earth can do. He cleanses His people and clothes them in a righteousness they did not produce.

For those of us facing stains we cannot remove and damage we cannot undo, that is no small promise.

Every piece of laundry I press reminds me of that greater work.

Heat and pressure smooth the fabric beneath my hands. Yet even the crispest sheet will wrinkle again. The pillowcase will be soiled. The hamper will fill. By next week, I will repeat the work.

Christ’s cleansing does not fail. His atoning work does not need repeating.

RELATED: How a psychic, New Age hippie led me to Catholicism

Roger Hutchings/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis/Getty Images

One day, there will be no nylon bags filled with dirty hospital linens carrying the evidence of another person’s suffering.

There will be no hospitals.

The redeemed will stand clothed in white, in the brilliant righteousness of Christ. Nothing will stain it. Nothing will wrinkle it.

Until then, suffering remains, and so does laundry.

Each time I unfold the ironing board, I am reminded that the small relief I can offer points beyond itself to the complete redemption Christ has promised.

One day, the ironing board will be put away forever.

Until then, with a nod to the apostle Paul, I press on.

And before you ask, I iron only for Gracie.

​Chronic pain, Clean laundry, Hospital stays, Ironing, Caregiving, Caregivers, Christ, Opinion & analysis 

Florida deputies had their hands full after getting a call about a suspicious person in a grocery store parking lot Tuesday evening.

The Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded after 6:30 p.m. to a Publix in Lutz after receiving reports about a male looking into vehicles throughout the parking lot.

‘I mean, who doesn’t keep a crowbar in their buttocks?’

When deputies attempted to investigate, 22-year-old Gonzalo Cabrera refused to identify himself, resisted deputies’ attempts to detain him, and struck a deputy while attempting to flee, officials said.

The sheriff’s office said the suspect was found armed with suspected burglary tools.

Even after being taken to the ground — and while in handcuffs — officials said Cabrera continued resisting and even reached for a crowbar concealed in his waistband.

Bodycam video shows deputies grabbing the crowbar, pulling it away from the suspect’s hands, and throwing it to the parking lot surface.

Cabrera was arrested and faces multiple charges, including battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting officer with violence, loitering or prowling, possession of burglary tools, trespass on property other than structure or conveyance, and disorderly conduct, officials said.

RELATED: Video: Crooks plow car through jewelry store entrance in broad daylight smash-and-grab. But the suspects got sloppy.

More than 500 comments have hit the sheriff’s office Facebook post about the incident; the following are a few gems:

“I mean, who doesn’t keep a crowbar in their buttocks?” one commenter quipped.”Guy had tools, looking into cars? Maybe he’s a mechanic??!!” another user offered.”I was at the Publix when he was walking around,” another commenter said. “It was very odd. He was walking in between cars, looking around, very sketchy. I have no clue how long he was there — but 2 employees were watching him. One of the employees walked me to my car — the guy was right by it until we walked over …””Dems will set up a GoFundMe for his release. LOL,” another user predicted.”Just another loser lowlife drain on society,” another commenter noted.

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​Crowbar, Florida, Shopping center, Parking lot, Arrest, Bodycam video, Crime 

The idea that Donald Trump is the Antichrist warned about in the Bible continues to circulate in some fringe Christian circles. Last month, William Upham — a former Marine and Florida Republican write-in congressional candidate — was arrested and charged for threatening the president after he posted videos calling Trump the Antichrist and saying he “must be killed.”

While Upham is the only one to take his Antichrist claim to criminal levels, he’s certainly not the only professing Christian to accuse Trump of being the Antichrist.

On a recent episode of “Strange Encounters,” Rick Burgess tested this theory by holding it up to Scripture.

“Let me go ahead and just tell you right now: Donald Trump does not meet the criteria, OK?” Rick says bluntly.

The first indicator that Trump doesn’t match the description of Revelation’s beast, he says, is that his communication skills do not hold up to the Antichrist standard.

“I don’t think [Trump] is all that great a communicator, and Antichrist will be the most polished politician the world has ever seen. He will be an incredible orator. You will be drawn to the way he speaks, the way he looks. … That right there, it’s already over,” says Rick.

But the list of reasons goes far deeper than just rhetorical gifts.

Rick explains that there are three primary theories for the Antichrist’s origin: Gentile/European from a revived Roman Empire, Jewish, or Middle Eastern.

“I don’t think that our friend and President Donald Trump is going to meet that very well,” he says.

Further, according 2 Thessalonians 2:4, the Antichrist “will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”

In 1 John 2:22, an antichrist is anyone who “denies the Father and the Son.”

“I’m not the judge of Donald Trump, and under no circumstance am I given authority by God to judge anyone’s eternity, OK?” Rick caveats. “However … the way that I’ve seen Trump approach his faith … I don’t believe he is of the church, but I have seen that he’s proven he’s not an enemy of the church. Antichrist would be an enemy of the church.”

“Antichrist would be someone who tries to get in theology. See, Trump just doesn’t know good theology. He isn’t trying to change anyone’s mind on what Jesus claimed. He’s just not doing what Antichrist would be doing,” he adds.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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​Rick burgess, Donald trump, Antichrist, Christianity, Spiritual warfare, Blazetv show