Imperialism
Russia
Ukraine
Fig. 1. “Destroyed Russian military vehicles located on the main street Khreshchatyk are seen as part of the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine in Kyiv, August 24.” Photograph by Gleb Garanich for Reuters, August 24, 2022,[1] fair use.
Spanish intelligence services have no doubt that the long hand of the Kremlin is behind an unprecedented crime: the assassination in Alicante of Maxim Kuzminov, the Russian captain who defected last August and crossed over to Ukraine with his Mi8 combat helicopter. Publicly, the Spanish government has been very cautious regarding who was possibly responsible for the murder. “We have to let the Civil Guard [a national law enforcement force] do its job and for the investigation to progress,” said government spokesperson Pilar Alegría on Tuesday. However, diplomatic sources recognize that, although they are still waiting to gather enough information, it is a “very serious” matter. If the involvement of the Russian authorities is confirmed, they add, Spain will give a “forceful response.”[2]
There’s no word on what this “forceful response” might be and I kinda suspect that such words would be on Vladimir Putin’s vodka bingo card if he drank.
Miguel González and Carlos E. Cué, “Gunmen sent by Moscow killed defector sheltering in Alicante, Spanish intelligence services say,” El País, February 22, 2024, https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-02-22/gunmen-sent-by-moscow-killed-defector-sheltering-in-alicante-spanish-intelligence-services-say.html
COVID-19 Pandemic
Fig. 2. Cartoon by Peter Brookes, October 3, 2020, via the Times, fair use.
I had not attributed the present state of extreme polarization to the COVID-19 pandemic. I had seen it as an intensification of the polarization I first observed, I think, with Jimmy Carter, certainly with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, in which a president could be considered illegitimate by virtue of his political party affiliation.
But Starbucks Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz attributed it to the pandemic:[3]
Some of the problems seemed bigger than Starbucks, rooted in a country that had taken a dark turn during the pandemic, [Howard] Schultz said. He visited Nashville, Phoenix and Long Beach, Calif. Workers routinely told him that their customers had grown angrier, more aggressive and demanding. He traveled to New York, Chicago, St. Louis and Denver. He heard more and more from baristas about frightening encounters with homeless people and drug addicts in their store’s bathrooms.[4]
To be completely honest, this hadn’t even occurred to me. Even now, I’m not completely persuaded, but as I reflected on that article, I began to see that Schultz had a point with intense resentment against the lockdown, social distancing rules, masking rules, and even vaccine requirements. From all this, I took the message that we value capitalism even more than human life,[5] and certainly nothing I’ve seen since contradicts this.
What did it all mean? There are lots of takes on what happened, many of them plausible even as they contradict one another. A non-crazy case gets made that the period was just as epoch-changing as it seemed: a million people died of the plague in America; schoolkids were deprived of instruction and left behind in ways that may be impossible to remedy. The paranoia that was already rampant in the social-media age intensified, advancing the corrosion of institutional trust. Another non-crazy case gets made that much of the damage was self-inflicted: the schools should never have been closed; the elaborate pantomime of masking may have saved some lives but may not have; and, amid high-handed edicts, the price we paid in the erosion of social trust was higher than it needed to be.
At the same time, a non-crazy case can be made that the restrictions and restraints did not go far enough and were abandoned too soon, so that now, with the pandemic still rampant—very few families have not been through at least two or three cases—we have simply decided to ignore the bug, even as it refuses to ignore us. The cases are less lethal, but significant numbers of people suffer from long covid—with ongoing uncertainty about whether this is a thing, or several things, or a combination of things and non-things. Many immune-suppressed people argue that we are indulging, in the name of exhaustion, a collective callousness to the welfare of others, particularly the most vulnerable.[6]
This is 20/20 hindsight. Even outdoor workers were told to stay home because we did not know that COVID-19 is less dangerous when everyone is socially distanced outdoors. We did not know as much as we do now about how COVID-19 spreads. We did not know how susceptible children were. We did not know how likely children were to spread the disease. And we didn’t initially have vaccines that lessen the danger for most people.
There is a lot we did not know. And this is the nature of science. What scientific knowledge we possess is always tentative, subject to revision. But the scientific reversals led many people to conclude the experts did not know what they were talking about and therefore were to be ignored.
Adam Gopnik argues that the real problem with pandemics is that they defy human agency.[7] This is the sense most of us have of autonomy, of being able to make our own decisions, and ethicists view that agency as crucial. And it was challenged not only by the disease itself, but by well-intentioned rules which were meant to protect us, but were perhaps dubious in hindsight.[8]
I haven’t reached a final conclusion about all this. I think we can safely say that my initial theory was inadequate because COVID-19 did happen and was more significant than I had understood. But I’m certainly never going to attribute all of the polarization to COVID-19, because it was there before, and because Gopnik does not actually explain why, nearly uniformly, Democrats behaved and reacted one way and Republicans another.
Adam Gopnik, “Did the Year 2020 Change Us Forever?” New Yorker, February 19, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/26/did-the-year-2020-change-us-forever
Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh
Infrastructure
Fig. 3. Post-collapse scene at the Fern Hollow Bridge, photograph by National Transportation Safety Board, January 29, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Paula Reed Ward and Julia Felton, “NTSB blames Fern Hollow Bridge collapse on lack of maintenance, repair, oversight,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, February 21, 2024, https://triblive.com/local/ntsb-meets-to-reveal-probable-cause-of-fern-hollow-bridge-collapse/
Jacob Geanous, “Latest phase of the Mon-Fayette Expressway unveiled,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 22, 2024, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2024/02/21/mon-fayette-expressway-plans-west-mifflin-turnpike-commission/stories/202402210110
- [1]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q↩
- [2]Miguel González and Carlos E. Cué, “Gunmen sent by Moscow killed defector sheltering in Alicante, Spanish intelligence services say,” El País, February 22, 2024, https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-02-22/gunmen-sent-by-moscow-killed-defector-sheltering-in-alicante-spanish-intelligence-services-say.html↩
- [3]Greg Jaffe, “Howard Schultz’s fight to stop a Starbucks barista uprising,” Washington Post, October 8, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/08/starbucks-union-ceo-howard-schultz/↩
- [4]Greg Jaffe, “Howard Schultz’s fight to stop a Starbucks barista uprising,” Washington Post, October 8, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/08/starbucks-union-ceo-howard-schultz/↩
- [5]David Benfell, “The capitalist death cult,” Not Housebroken, March 27, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/03/27/the-capitalist-death-cult/; David Benfell, “An impatient capitalist god demands human sacrifice. Now,” Not Housebroken, April 17, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/04/15/an-impatient-capitalist-god-demands-human-sacrifice-now/; David Benfell, “Surprise! Surprise! The capitalist god is greedy!” Not Housebroken, May 25, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/05/23/surprise-surprise-the-capitalist-god-is-greedy/↩
- [6]Adam Gopnik, “Did the Year 2020 Change Us Forever?” New Yorker, February 19, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/26/did-the-year-2020-change-us-forever↩
- [7]Adam Gopnik, “Did the Year 2020 Change Us Forever?” New Yorker, February 19, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/26/did-the-year-2020-change-us-forever↩
- [8]Adam Gopnik, “Did the Year 2020 Change Us Forever?” New Yorker, February 19, 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/26/did-the-year-2020-change-us-forever↩