theatlantic--2020-03-02--Epidemics Reveal the Truth About the Societies They Hit

But not everyone will behave badly .
Camus ’ story also has heroes , though these aren ’ t the sort of heroes found in most other novels .
Instead , the heroes are the doctors , the volunteers who help them , and even a civil servant , Monsieur Grand , who seeks to deal with the plague by recording it , measuring it , and keeping track of what has happened : “ This insignificant and self-effacing hero who had nothing to recommend him but a little goodness in his heart and apparently a ridiculous ideal .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ due , to give the sum of two and two as four.
” Grand , Dr. Rieux , and a few others try to use science , transparency , and accuracy to contain and control the disease and to save as many people as possible , without giving in to hysteria or despair : “ It may seem a ridiculous idea , but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.
” These are the kinds of people who will be the heroes in our era , too .
The scientists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information about numbers and cases ; the research teams that immediately began to work on vaccines ; the nurses and doctors who immediately decide to remain inside quarantined regions , as many did in Italy , as well as in Wuhan , China .
Not all of their judgments will be correct , and they will not always agree with one another : There is no precise way to determine which quarantines and cancellations are prudent and which are unreasonable , given the potential economic effects on the one hand , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the epidemic on the other .
In Italy , there have already been a few public squabbles among virologists who have different estimates of how bad the disease will be .
Read : You ’ re likely to get the coronavirus But at least they have the public ’ s interest at heart .
Here is a rule of thumb to use in the coming weeks : Judge politicians by how much and how clearly they defer to the people who give the sum of two and two as four .
What you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information .
And the more the better .
After four years of hearing , in the words of a British politician , that “ we ’ ve had enough of experts , ” this is the moment when the value of expertise has suddenly become crystal clear .
Suddenly , facts matter .
Epidemics , like disasters , have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact .
The Chinese have already paid a high price for the secretiveness of their system , and for the top-down bureaucratic culture that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the disease .
By contrast , one of the reasons Italians aren ’ t panicking more is that they have confidence in the public-health system , and indeed the system in the broader sense of the word , despite Salvini and his disinformation campaigns .
Italy has already tested many thousands of people for the virus—testing is free , of course—which is one of the reasons the numbers are so much higher there than elsewhere .
People know this , and repeat it to one another , sometimes joking about it ( “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but it is a source of pride .
Few others in Europe , so far , are testing that widely .
And , of course , the U.S. is not doing anything of the sort .

BOLOGNA, Italy—I am sitting in the middle of this northern Italian city, two hours’ drive from the Lombardian towns that have been quarantined. At this precise moment in time, Bologna has not produced a single instance of the new coronavirus. One or two people with the disease, known as COVID-19, have been moved into the hospital here from other regions, but nobody around me, or anywhere near me, is ill. Yet at the American university where I am a guest lecturer, we speak of little else.
Perhaps this is because we don’t know what to think: Most of us have never grappled with a swift-moving, incurable disease, even one that is not very lethal. We aren’t old enough to remember the Spanish flu. We have become used to the idea that there are always vaccines, or medicines that have been tested. Now we are told—on train announcements, on signs, in emails—to wash our hands, a precaution that feels neither sufficient nor reassuring. Meanwhile, the University of Bologna, the oldest academic institution in Europe, has been shut. Museums are closed. Soccer matches and conferences are canceled. The medieval streets, witness to plenty of past epidemics—Black Death killed half the city in 1348—are strangely empty, as people heed warnings and stay home. About half of my colleagues think these measures are a gross overreaction. The other half fear that they don’t go far enough.
Graeme Wood: Iran can’t handle the coronavirus
Part of the problem is that the danger cannot be seen: “A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream that will end,” Albert Camus wrote in The Plague. This, of course, very much describes the current situation: Many people cannot bear the idea that something invisible can change their plans. Published in 1947, The Plague has often been read as an allegory, a book that is really about the occupation of France, say, or the human condition. But it’s also a very good book about plagues, and about how people react to them—a whole category of human behavior that we have forgotten.
In the novel, a part of the quarantined town “continued with business, with making arrangements for travel and holding opinions. Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debates?” Their modern equivalents in the city of Milan have already launched a #Milanononsiferma—“Milan doesn’t stop”—hashtag campaign. Other cities have followed. Social media is full of Italian business owners and hotel managers denouncing the government for its unnecessary precautions.
But invisibility also creates uncertainty, and uncertainty can be manipulated so that it serves other ends. One of Camus’ characters is a priest, for example, who uses the plague to increase his flock: He tells his congregation that the epidemic is God’s way of punishing unbelievers. In modern Italy, the first person to seek to manipulate the anxiety created by the coronavirus was Matteo Salvini, the Italian far-right leader who immediately called for the government to shut the country’s borders, stop all public meetings, and keep people home.
Salvini would no doubt have pressed this point further had it not begun, almost immediately, to backfire. The virus first appeared in Lombardy and Veneto, the two Italian provinces where his party, the Northern League, is strongest. When Salvini realized that a shutdown would inflict the worst economic damage there, he switched to a different argument: a call on the government to “defend Italy and Italians” from African refugees. There is no evidence that African refugees are carrying the virus, but the bigoted link between foreigners, impurity, and disease is a very old one. Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, has also called on France to shut the border with Italy, even though that, too, is nonsensical, as the first French cases seem mostly to have come from elsewhere.
I am due to fly to London in a few days, and have been carefully watching the British right-wing tabloids, to gauge their level of hysteria. So far, it has been relatively low—they are distracted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s engagement to his pregnant girlfriend—which means that the planes will continue flying. Once they focus on the virus, I am certain that there will be calls to block all contact with Italy, and I am certain that this tabloid-dependent British government will heed them.
But not everyone will behave badly. Camus’ story also has heroes, though these aren’t the sort of heroes found in most other novels. Instead, the heroes are the doctors, the volunteers who help them, and even a civil servant, Monsieur Grand, who seeks to deal with the plague by recording it, measuring it, and keeping track of what has happened: “This insignificant and self-effacing hero who had nothing to recommend him but a little goodness in his heart and apparently a ridiculous ideal. This would be to give the truth its due, to give the sum of two and two as four.” Grand, Dr. Rieux, and a few others try to use science, transparency, and accuracy to contain and control the disease and to save as many people as possible, without giving in to hysteria or despair: “It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.”
These are the kinds of people who will be the heroes in our era, too. The scientists and public-health scholars who immediately put out information about numbers and cases; the research teams that immediately began to work on vaccines; the nurses and doctors who immediately decide to remain inside quarantined regions, as many did in Italy, as well as in Wuhan, China. Not all of their judgments will be correct, and they will not always agree with one another: There is no precise way to determine which quarantines and cancellations are prudent and which are unreasonable, given the potential economic effects on the one hand, and the real desire to slow the spread of the epidemic on the other. In Italy, there have already been a few public squabbles among virologists who have different estimates of how bad the disease will be.
Read: You’re likely to get the coronavirus
But at least they have the public’s interest at heart. Here is a rule of thumb to use in the coming weeks: Judge politicians by how much and how clearly they defer to the people who give the sum of two and two as four. What you want is accurate information, not politicized information. And the more the better. After four years of hearing, in the words of a British politician, that “we’ve had enough of experts,” this is the moment when the value of expertise has suddenly become crystal clear. Suddenly, facts matter.
Epidemics, like disasters, have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact. The Chinese have already paid a high price for the secretiveness of their system, and for the top-down bureaucratic culture that led many, initially, to conceal the disease. By contrast, one of the reasons Italians aren’t panicking more is that they have confidence in the public-health system, and indeed the system in the broader sense of the word, despite Salvini and his disinformation campaigns. Italy has already tested many thousands of people for the virus—testing is free, of course—which is one of the reasons the numbers are so much higher there than elsewhere. People know this, and repeat it to one another, sometimes joking about it (“We Italians are too honest”) but it is a source of pride. Few others in Europe, so far, are testing that widely. And, of course, the U.S. is not doing anything of the sort.
In the U.S., I am afraid we might learn that neither our public-health system nor our “system” more broadly understood how to build feelings of trust. Even though we have the highest-tech health-care system in the world, even though we have the best surgeons and the best equipment, we have not created a public-health culture that induces confidence. The hospital system has been pared down to the bone; there is no extra capacity, and everyone knows it. If people have to pay to be tested, then many may refuse. If people have to be quarantined, they may escape.
Worse, instead of seeking to halt conspiracy theories, it is possible that our government will create them. The president has already called the coronavirus a “hoax” and indulged in different kinds of magical thinking. In one single speech about the coronavirus, Trump stated that “it’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear”; that “you know, it could get worse before it gets better”; that “we’ll see what happens, nobody knows.” If people heed him, we will be able to count the cost of that dishonesty and that magical thinking and measure it, in the numbers of deaths, in the spread of disease, in the numbers of people who ignore quarantines or precautions.
Though this is not the worst kind of epidemic imaginable, it’s good that we are learning these things now, because the novel coronavirus may turn out to be just a dry run. Wildfires seem more lethal now because more people live in areas that are close to forests that frequently burn; many new diseases are also the result of human expansion all over the planet. Like SARS or Ebola, COVID-19 seems to be another disease that has jumped from the animal kingdom to the human and then traveled quickly because of trains, cars, airplanes, and people clustering in public places.
As David Quammen wrote in Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, these diseases remind us of “the old Darwinian truth (the darkest of his truths, well known and persistently forgotten) that humanity is a kind of animal, inextricably connected with other animals: in origin and in descent, in sickness and in health.” Even when these kinds of viruses recede or disappear, they do not necessarily go away. They can mutate, they can harbor in other animals, and they can reemerge.
That, too, was predicted by Camus’ Dr. Rieux. He knew that “the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good, that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.” We might get lucky this time, but we should use the opportunity to prepare ourselves, mentally as well as medically, for the epidemic that comes next—and for the one after that.


theatlantic--2020-03-04--You Already Live in Quarantine

You Already Live in Quarantine

Against the backdrop of coronavirus uncertainty , the banal normalcy of this reality finally hit me over the weekend : I live this way by default now .
I ordered wallpaper online , so I can redecorate my home without even leaving it .
A week earlier , Best Buy had already delivered my new television , an irresponsibly huge apparatus I mounted on the wall .
I fired it up and loaded in all my accounts : Netflix , Hulu , Disney+ , Amazon Prime—enough content for a lifetime of excellent , let alone compromised , respiratory health .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ but not coronavirus on a cruise ship From the next room , I ’ ve uploaded this story to Google Docs , where my editor and I have revised it by wire , across whole states .
I didn ’ t meet , or even talk on the phone , with any of my colleagues at The Atlantic who were involved in the process .
Like the employees of many media companies , we communicate with one another on Slack , one of O ’ Hara ’ s stay-at-home stocks .
Together , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at stories , which you can then read on a screen in any setting you wish—from atop a Peloton saddle , perhaps , or while Netflix streams on the television .
Not everyone gets to make that choice .
As my colleague Alexis Madrigal noted last week , the gig workers who handle DoorDash or Amazon deliveries actually have to risk entry into the material world , putting them at far greater risk of contagion .
Service-sector workers in retail , health-care , transit , teaching , and housekeeping have even less ability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their jobs .
From the beginning , the safety and security of service and flex workers has taken a back seat to that of the knowledge-economy elites who are their customers .
A massive power imbalance is at work here .
There ’ s peril for white-collar workers , too .
Homeboundedness risks becoming an excuse for further belt-tightening , a version of disaster capitalism inspired by contagion rather than economic crisis .
If remote learning , work , and leisure prove more profitable or more easily controlled than their in-person equivalents , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shifts permanent might attempt to do so .
Eventually , an unseen worker might be seen as an unnecessary one .
Even so , the benefits of a life online have begun to outweigh the costs for some Americans .
The flip side of quarantine ’ s threat is technology ’ s promise—we have been preparing for the end of in-person work for some time .
As this week began , one of my Georgia Tech school chairs encouraged faculty to consider how we might conduct our classes remotely should the need arise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ practice .
Canvas , an online courseware platform , powers our classes .
We hold institutional licenses to videoconferencing services similar to Zoom .
And we are invested in large-scale online education , including online degrees that enroll thousands of students all around the world .
Never before in human history has it been so easy to do so much without going anywhere .
Cinema box-office receipts fell sharply in 2019 , as streaming entertainment became more plentiful and high quality .
Apps and games and podcasts and digitally delivered matter of all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ absolutely drowning in it , the last thing anyone might worry about is getting bored at home .

Last Wednesday, I sat down in my office in midtown Atlanta to conduct a lunchtime writing seminar in Durham, North Carolina. I had considered flying in for the event, but my schedule was in flux, and the hassle of transit for a short meeting seemed excessive. At the suggestion of my hosts, I logged in to the videoconferencing program Zoom instead and led the event from my desk chair.
Read: You’re likely to get the coronavirus
I hadn’t avoided the trip out of concern about the coronavirus; my plans had been set before cases really began to crop up in the U.S. But over the next day, Zoom’s stock rose more than 10 percent, shored up on the perverse hope that global disruption might increase demand for remote meetings. In Italy, whole towns had been locked down, tens of thousands of people immobilized at home. Zoom was a diamond in the rough; lockdowns such as Italy’s and general global tumult caused by the uncertainty of pandemic drove most stocks down precipitously as cases of the disease known as COVID-19 ticked up in the United States and proliferated internationally.
Ever in search of the upside of a downturn, financial analysts started looking for companies such as Zoom, whose business might remain stable or even thrive under mass-quarantine conditions. Netflix shares, for example, inched up last week while other tech issues reliant on disrupted Chinese supply chains, such as Apple, fell. The equity-research analyst J. C. O’Hara dubbed these “stay-at-home stocks,” adding Facebook, Amazon, the streaming-workout provider Peloton, and the workplace-chat platform Slack to the list. “What would people do if stuck inside all day?” O’Hara asked, consecrating quarantine as a market trend.
Read: What you can do right now about the coronavirus
The answer is far more familiar than the fearful conjecture forebodes. Many Americans would do the same thing they do now, mostly. Netflix has already fused us to our couches. For years, contemporary society has been bracing, and even longing, for quarantine.
More than 100 cases of COVID-19 have been identified across 13 states, and the numbers have been quickly rising. Older people and health-care workers are at greater risk of danger from the virus, which also might have been spreading for weeks undetected in Washington State. Certain containment measures are already in place: Americans traveling from Italy and South Korea are being screened before boarding U.S.-bound flights. Public-health officials have started urging citizens to ponder self-quarantine in the event of illness, even though many workers don’t have the luxury of staying home sick anyway. Today, Los Angeles declared a health emergency.
A number of organizations have also started preventative action. Twitter has banned noncritical business travel for its workers and “strongly encouraged” all its employees to work from home if they could. Amazon introduced restrictions on company visitors after two employees in Europe contracted the virus. Large trade shows and conferences have started pulling the plug, among them Facebook’s annual event for its platform developers.
If conditions get truly bad, a serious public-health lockdown would indeed upend ordinary life. Barring that extreme, efforts such as the ones just mentioned extend a process that was under way long before a novel virus threatened to go pandemic. In a way, “quarantine” is just a raw, surprising name for the condition that computer technologies have brought about over the last two decades: making almost everything possible from the quiet isolation of a desk or a chair illuminated by an internet-connected laptop or tablet.
Read: A coronavirus quarantine in America could be a giant legal mess
As Twitter’s new policy emphasizes, Americans whose jobs involve pressing buttons on keyboards to create or manipulate symbols into ideas might not really need to go to the office to do so. A laptop and an internet connection are sufficient. Then, when it’s time for a break, DoorDash or Grubhub hastens lunch to the work desk, helping you avoid the coughs and foreign doorknobs of eating out. Later, Instacart or Amazon Prime Now drops groceries on stoops. TaskRabbit lets you schedule assistance with errands, and Washio will pick up and deliver your laundry. Nowadays doing something for real, with your own body, sometimes feels stranger than summoning it by smartphone.
For an even broader demographic, entertainment has become shut-in, too. Cable and streaming have made cinema-going precious. Hanging out with friends is enjoyable, but Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, and others make socializing possible from anywhere.
Against the backdrop of coronavirus uncertainty, the banal normalcy of this reality finally hit me over the weekend: I live this way by default now. I ordered wallpaper online, so I can redecorate my home without even leaving it. A week earlier, Best Buy had already delivered my new television, an irresponsibly huge apparatus I mounted on the wall. I fired it up and loaded in all my accounts: Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime—enough content for a lifetime of excellent, let alone compromised, respiratory health.
Read: I prepared for everything, but not coronavirus on a cruise ship
From the next room, I’ve uploaded this story to Google Docs, where my editor and I have revised it by wire, across whole states. I didn’t meet, or even talk on the phone, with any of my colleagues at The Atlantic who were involved in the process. Like the employees of many media companies, we communicate with one another on Slack, one of O’Hara’s stay-at-home stocks. Together, from afar, we quietly tap away at stories, which you can then read on a screen in any setting you wish—from atop a Peloton saddle, perhaps, or while Netflix streams on the television.
Not everyone gets to make that choice. As my colleague Alexis Madrigal noted last week, the gig workers who handle DoorDash or Amazon deliveries actually have to risk entry into the material world, putting them at far greater risk of contagion. Service-sector workers in retail, health-care, transit, teaching, and housekeeping have even less ability to choose when and where they do their jobs. From the beginning, the safety and security of service and flex workers has taken a back seat to that of the knowledge-economy elites who are their customers. A massive power imbalance is at work here.
There’s peril for white-collar workers, too. Homeboundedness risks becoming an excuse for further belt-tightening, a version of disaster capitalism inspired by contagion rather than economic crisis. If remote learning, work, and leisure prove more profitable or more easily controlled than their in-person equivalents, employers with the means to make temporary shifts permanent might attempt to do so. Eventually, an unseen worker might be seen as an unnecessary one.
Even so, the benefits of a life online have begun to outweigh the costs for some Americans. The flip side of quarantine’s threat is technology’s promise—we have been preparing for the end of in-person work for some time. As this week began, one of my Georgia Tech school chairs encouraged faculty to consider how we might conduct our classes remotely should the need arise. But that possibility is already daily practice. Canvas, an online courseware platform, powers our classes. We hold institutional licenses to videoconferencing services similar to Zoom. And we are invested in large-scale online education, including online degrees that enroll thousands of students all around the world.
Never before in human history has it been so easy to do so much without going anywhere. Cinema box-office receipts fell sharply in 2019, as streaming entertainment became more plentiful and high quality. Apps and games and podcasts and digitally delivered matter of all kinds have followed suit. Now, absolutely drowning in it, the last thing anyone might worry about is getting bored at home.


Tom McTague

Tom McTague is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic , and co-author of Betting the House : The Inside Story of the 2017 Election • The Decline of the American World Other countries are used to loathing America , admiring America , and fearing America ( sometimes all at once ) .
But pitying America ?
That one is new .
• What Boris Johnson Should Have Known A touch of Churchillian circumspection—rather than just bulldog bravado—might have saved the prime minister ’ s moral and political authority .
• Our Democracy Will Survive This Pandemic To combat the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powerful .
What does that mean for liberty and the democratic norms that protect us ?
• The prime minister has returned to work , bringing his characteristic positivity with him .
For it to succeed , he needs to back up his rhetoric with results .
• Boris Johnson Can Remake Britain Like Few Before Him The British prime minister , released from the hospital today , needs to show he ’ s more than just a feel-good story .
• Britain Just Got Pulled Back From the Edge The country has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing so made real change more likely once this is all over .
• Humor helps us take back control and connect—two things we have lost in our fight against the pandemic .
• His diagnosis with the coronavirus illustrates the paucity of the war metaphor we ’ ve all adopted in combatting the pandemic .
• Once again , we are looking to leaders for protection .
But how they offer it must change .
• The president ’ s decision to bar travelers from Europe is an early indication of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relations .
• The Coronavirus Is More Than Just a Health Crisis National leaders are leaning on experts to help deal with the outbreak , but the really difficult decisions are not medical .
They are political .
• Tension between the prime minister and those tasked with enacting his program has revealed the clash of ideas over how to run a country .

Tom McTague is a former staff writer at The Atlantic based in London.
He is a co-author of Betting the House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election , and is working on a new book about the history of Britain’s euroskeptic revolution called Conquest: The Fracturing of Britain.
Fabrice Coffrini / Getty Qatar Won For its hosts, this World Cup has already delivered on its PR potential.
Marc Atkins / Getty Empires of Soccer England’s game is America’s, for now. But the Qatar World Cup shows that no undisputed set of values can unite us all.
Erik Carter / The Atlantic The Qatar World Cup Exposes Soccer’s Shame The absurd spectacle of a tiny Gulf petrostate hosting the world’s premier tournament reveals the ugly side of “the beautiful game.”
Ben Pruchnie / Getty Boris Johnson Is Still Afloat This comeback attempt proved abortive, but it revealed a will to power fully intact. Rishi Sunak had better watch out.
Erik Carter / The Atlantic Britain’s Guilty Men and Women Liz Truss was just the latest. For the past dozen years, each leader has left the country poorer, weaker, and more divided than the last.
Getty; The Atlantic Don’t Blame Brexit How tempting it is to trace Liz Truss’s economic fiasco to the decision to leave Europe. If only Britain’s malaise were that simple.
Erik Carter / The Atlantic; Getty The Liz Truss Travesty Becomes Britain’s Humiliation Even by British traditions of political failure, this prime minister’s brief tenure has been a spectacular disaster.
Max Mumby / Indigo / Getty The Hobbit King Charles III is far more interested in the benefits of traditional English hedgerows than the great, global glory of Britain.
Bettmann / Getty The Queen of the World The paradox of Elizabeth II’s reign was that in presiding over a shrinking empire, she became a modern global monarch.
Pablo Delcan What America’s Great Unwinding Would Mean for the World The conundrum facing America’s allies is how to cope with a great imperial power in decline that is still a great imperial power.
Getty; The Atlantic For Britain’s Tories, the Answer Is Always Margaret Thatcher In their vying claims to Iron Lady nostalgia, the leadership contenders reveal a Tory party struggling for coherence and renewed purpose.
John J. Custer Why Britain Changed Its China Stance The cycles of London’s engagement with Beijing reveal how the U.S.’s ability to keep allies in line for its great-power competition is weakening.
Robert McNeely / White House / Getty The Work of Giants Crumbles David Trimble leaves a tremendous legacy, but politics passed him by.
Raphael Neal / Redux England Can’t Take the Heat Being in London this week has been like having your home teleported somewhere else.
Getty / The Atlantic Ignore the Chaos. Britain’s System Is Working. The country does not escape its various political crises despite its constitution. It escapes these crises because of it.
Carl Court / Getty The Worst, Best Prime Minister Boris Johnson achieved almost nothing except for one very big thing: Brexit.
Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto / Getty The Game Is (Probably) Up for Boris Johnson His most senior ministers are getting off the carousel of chaos because they just don’t see him governing the country.
Ben Hickey America’s Necessary Myth for the World The great paradox in the world today is that the “dumb simplicity” of America’s self-perception is both obviously bogus and fundamentally true.
The Atlantic; Getty The Accidental Trumpification of NATO In a narrow but important sense, the world has become more amenable to the former president. And yet.


Kathy Gilsinan

Kathy Gilsinan is a contributing writer at The Atlantic .
She was previously an editor at World Politics Review .
• How China Is Planning to Win Back the World As its global image takes a big hit , the Chinese Communist Party is using an arsenal of spin , obfuscation , hyperbole , and outright disinformation to win back its reputation .
• China ’ s Bargain on Global Influence Is Paying Off The U.S. gives more money than China to many international organizations .
So why do they seem more sympathetic to Beijing ?
• The End of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the government ’ s pandemic response , Trump is allowing American governors to flex new muscles .
• Can the West Actually Ditch China ?
How severely can countries really punish China when many of them need Beijing for the most crucial of things—medical supplies ?
• The Race to Build New Hospitals The Army Corps of Engineers is converting dozens of hotels and convention centers .
Can it do it fast enough ?
• A few weeks ago , National Guardsmen in the state got an impossible assignment .
And then they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Deceived the WHO U.S. senators are calling for investigations and the president is threatening to cut off funding .
What happened ?
• An Unhealthy Military Is Struggling to Fight COVID-19 Even as it ’ s called upon to aid the coronavirus response across the country , the military is struggling to contain the disease among its own personnel .
• The Chinese Communist Party is trying to present itself as a global leader in pandemic response .
If it declares success too early , it may lead the world back into disaster @ @ @ @ @ @ @ troops in Afghanistan ; now he ’ s making sure you don ’ t run out of food during the coronavirus crisis .
• If you want one set of policies , you can ’ t be choosy about character .
• Americans don ’ t need Russia ’ s polarizing influence operations .
They are plenty good enough at dividing themselves .
• The group is bigger now than when it founded its self-styled caliphate , and America ’ s conflict with Iran is only making the fight against it more complicated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Zone Trump Doesn ’ t Want to Leave The president ’ s resistance to withdrawing from the country boils down to three of his main enemies : ISIS , Iran , and Obama .

Kathy Gilsinan is a St. Louis-based contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her book, The Helpers: Profiles From the Front Lines of the Pandemic, comes out in March 2022.
She was previously an editor at World Politics Review .
Getty; The Atlantic What I Found When I Looked for the Helpers Even in the midst of death and divisiveness, people are working to fix different pieces of American life the pandemic broke.
Illustration by Chad Hagen Missouri Is the Next Front in the COVID Culture War Can Eric Schmitt—Missouri’s anti-mandate attorney general—sue his way to the U.S. Senate?
Arsh Raziuddin / The Atlantic How China Is Planning to Win Back the World As its global image takes a big hit, the Chinese Communist Party is using an arsenal of spin, obfuscation, hyperbole, and outright disinformation to win back its reputation.
Shutterstock / The Atlantic China’s Bargain on Global Influence Is Paying Off The U.S. gives more money than China to many international organizations. So why do they seem more sympathetic to Beijing?
Shutterstock / The Atlantic The End of the Imperial Presidency By ceding control over the government’s pandemic response, Trump is allowing American governors to flex new muscles.
TR / AFP / Getty Can the West Actually Ditch China? How severely can countries really punish China when many of them need Beijing for the most crucial of things—medical supplies?
Brigida Sanchez / DVIDS The Race to Build New Hospitals The Army Corps of Engineers is converting dozens of hotels and convention centers. Can it do it fast enough?
Master Sgt. Michael Davis / DVIDS Vermont’s Great Experiment A few weeks ago, National Guardsmen in the state got an impossible assignment. And then they pulled it off.
Ju Peng Xinhua / eyevine / Redux How China Deceived the WHO U.S. senators are calling for investigations and the president is threatening to cut off funding. What happened?
Historical / Getty An Unhealthy Military Is Struggling to Fight COVID-19 Even as it’s called upon to aid the coronavirus response across the country, the military is struggling to contain the disease among its own personnel.
Kevin Frayer / Getty Images The Problem With China’s Victory Lap The Chinese Communist Party is trying to present itself as a global leader in pandemic response. If it declares success too early, it may lead the world back into disaster.
Cpl. William Hester / DVIDS / Katie Martin … A Marine General’s Next Battle: Grocery-Store Logistics Larry Nicholson once led 20,000 troops in Afghanistan; now he’s making sure you don’t run out of food during the coronavirus crisis.
Wil Sands / Redux The Coronavirus Comes to a ‘Handshake Town’ The capital’s main business relies on human contact. Now professional networkers are confronting its dangers.
diego_cervo / Getty / Katie Martin / The … Friendships in the Age of Quarantine How people pull together, even at a moment of social distancing
The Atlantic Confessions of an Ex–Never Trumper If you want one set of policies, you can’t be choosy about character.
James Mackenzie / Reuters The U.S. Once Wanted Peace in Afghanistan Now it’s setting its sights much lower.
Mikhail Svetlov / Joe Raedle / Drew Angerer … The Russian Trolls’ Next Favorite Candidate Americans don’t need Russia’s polarizing influence operations. They are plenty good enough at dividing themselves.
Ali Hashisho / Reuters The Inconvenient Truth About ISIS The group is bigger now than when it founded its self-styled caliphate, and America’s conflict with Iran is only making the fight against it more complicated.
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters Iraq Is the One War Zone Trump Doesn’t Want to Leave The president’s resistance to withdrawing from the country boils down to three of his main enemies: ISIS, Iran, and Obama.


Ezekiel J. Emanuel

The senator from California seems like the obvious choice to be Joe Biden ’ s running mate .
So why is she keeping mum about her thinking ?
A few weeks ago , an adviser to Kamala Harris called me to talk through some polling data .
“ We understand that Joe Biden ’ s the nominee , but the party is so much different than a septuagenarian white male , ” the adviser said .
“ Kamala Harris is more symbolic of that changing America—America coming together—than some of the other potential candidates ” for vice president .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because , officially , Harris is pretending that she ’ s not campaigning to be Biden ’ s running mate .
In public , Harris has repeatedly insisted that she ’ s not talking about or thinking about her prospects of being picked .
But judging from my conversations with people around Harris , she and her team use her prospects to book events and television hits that aim to show she ’ s neither overeager nor overambitious .
She and her team are avoiding situations that could create stumbles .
They ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ background , and the force of her personality propel her .
They ’ re picking specific moments for her to grab attention on the Senate floor or send a calibrated tweet .
They ’ re tuning out political reporters who are stuck on their couches , looking to drum up content during the pandemic .
They ’ re trying to ease concerns in Biden ’ s orbit that if she ’ s picked and they win , she ’ ll start running for president the morning after the inauguration .
They want her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be the Democratic nominee in 2024 .

In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.
This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
Over the past eight years or so, I’ve been obsessed with two questions. The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married. More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.


theatlantic--2020-03-25--The President Is Trapped

The President Is Trapped

The qualities we most need in a president during this crisis are calmness , wisdom , and reassurance ; a command of the facts and the ability to communicate them well ; and the capacity to think about the medium and long term while carefully weighing competing options and conflicting needs .
We need a leader who can persuade the public to act in ways that are difficult but necessary , who can focus like a laser beam on a problem for a sustained period of time , and who will listen to—and , when necessary , defer to—experts who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We need a president who can draw the nation together rather than drive it apart , who excels at the intricate work of governing , and who works well with elected officials at every level .
We need a chief executive whose judgment is not just sound , but exceptional .
There are some 325 million people in America , and it ’ s hard to think of more than a handful who are more lacking in these qualities than Donald Trump .
But we need to consider something else , which is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a rapid and even more worrisome psychological and emotional deterioration in the commander in chief .
This is not a certainty , but it ’ s a possibility we need to be prepared for .
Read : The four possible timelines for life returning to normal Here ’ s how this might play out ; to some extent , it already has .
Let ’ s start with what we know .
Someone with Trump ’ s psychological makeup , when faced with facts and events that are unpleasant , that he perceives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public standing , simply denies them .
We saw that repeatedly during the early part of the pandemic , when the president was giving false reassurance and spreading false information one day after another .
After a few days in which he was willing to acknowledge the scope and scale of this crisis—he declared himself a “ wartime president ” —he has now regressed to type , once again becoming a fountain of misinformation .
At a press conference yesterday , he declared that he “ would love to have the country opened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by Easter , ” which is less than three weeks away , a goal that top epidemiologists and health professionals believe would be catastrophic .
“ I think it ’ s possible .
Why not ?
” he said with a shrug during a town hall hosted by Fox News later in the day .
( Why Easter ?
He explained , “ I just thought it was a beautiful time , a beautiful timeline.
” ) He said this as New York City ’ s case count is doubling every three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now setting the pace for the world .
As one person who consults with the Trump White House on the coronavirus response put it to me , “ He has chosen to imagine the worst is behind us when the worst is clearly ahead of us.
” After listening to the president ’ s nearly-two-hour briefing on Monday—in which , among other things , Trump declared , “ If it were up to the doctors , they may say … ‘ Let ’ s shut down the entire world.
’ … This could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problem that you start off with ” —a former White House adviser who has worked on past pandemics told me , “ This fool will bring the death of thousands needlessly .
We have mobilized as a country to shut things down for a time , despite the difficulty .
We can work our way back to a semblance of normality if we hold out and let the health system make it through the worst of it.
” He added , “ But now our own president is undoing all that work and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in taking on a difficult challenge , he is dragging us toward failure and suffering .
Beyond belief .
”

For his entire adult life, and for his entire presidency, Donald Trump has created his own alternate reality, complete with his own alternate set of facts. He has shown himself to be erratic, impulsive, narcissistic, vindictive, cruel, mendacious, and devoid of empathy. None of that is new.
But we’re now entering the most dangerous phase of the Trump presidency. The pain and hardship that the United States is only beginning to experience stem from a crisis that the president is utterly unsuited to deal with, either intellectually or temperamentally. When things were going relatively well, the nation could more easily absorb the costs of Trump’s psychological and moral distortions and disfigurements. But those days are behind us. The coronavirus pandemic has created the conditions that can catalyze a destructive set of responses from an individual with Trump’s characterological defects and disordered personality.
Peter Wehner: The Trump presidency is over
We are now in the early phase of a medical and economic tempest unmatched in most of our lifetimes. There’s too much information we don’t have. We don’t know the full severity of the pandemic, or whether a state like New York is a harbinger or an outlier. But we have enough information to know this virus is rapidly transmissible and lethal.
The qualities we most need in a president during this crisis are calmness, wisdom, and reassurance; a command of the facts and the ability to communicate them well; and the capacity to think about the medium and long term while carefully weighing competing options and conflicting needs. We need a leader who can persuade the public to act in ways that are difficult but necessary, who can focus like a laser beam on a problem for a sustained period of time, and who will listen to—and, when necessary, defer to—experts who know far more than he does. We need a president who can draw the nation together rather than drive it apart, who excels at the intricate work of governing, and who works well with elected officials at every level. We need a chief executive whose judgment is not just sound, but exceptional.
There are some 325 million people in America, and it’s hard to think of more than a handful who are more lacking in these qualities than Donald Trump.
But we need to consider something else, which is that the coronavirus pandemic may lead to a rapid and even more worrisome psychological and emotional deterioration in the commander in chief. This is not a certainty, but it’s a possibility we need to be prepared for.
Read: The four possible timelines for life returning to normal
Here’s how this might play out; to some extent, it already has.
Let’s start with what we know. Someone with Trump’s psychological makeup, when faced with facts and events that are unpleasant, that he perceives as a threat to his self-image and public standing, simply denies them. We saw that repeatedly during the early part of the pandemic, when the president was giving false reassurance and spreading false information one day after another.
After a few days in which he was willing to acknowledge the scope and scale of this crisis—he declared himself a “wartime president”—he has now regressed to type, once again becoming a fountain of misinformation. At a press conference yesterday, he declared that he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” which is less than three weeks away, a goal that top epidemiologists and health professionals believe would be catastrophic.
“I think it’s possible. Why not?” he said with a shrug during a town hall hosted by Fox News later in the day. (Why Easter? He explained, “I just thought it was a beautiful time, a beautiful timeline.”) He said this as New York City’s case count is doubling every three days and the U.S. case count is now setting the pace for the world.
As one person who consults with the Trump White House on the coronavirus response put it to me, “He has chosen to imagine the worst is behind us when the worst is clearly ahead of us.”
David Frum: The worst outcome
After listening to the president’s nearly-two-hour briefing on Monday—in which, among other things, Trump declared, “If it were up to the doctors, they may say … ‘Let’s shut down the entire world.’ … This could create a much bigger problem than the problem that you start off with”—a former White House adviser who has worked on past pandemics told me, “This fool will bring the death of thousands needlessly. We have mobilized as a country to shut things down for a time, despite the difficulty. We can work our way back to a semblance of normality if we hold out and let the health system make it through the worst of it.” He added, “But now our own president is undoing all that work and preaching recklessness. Rather than lead us in taking on a difficult challenge, he is dragging us toward failure and suffering. Beyond belief.”
YES AND NO. The thing to understand about Donald Trump is that putting others before self is not something he can do, even temporarily. His attempts to convey facts that don’t serve his perceived self-interest or to express empathy are forced, scripted, and always short-lived, since such reactions are alien to him.
This president does not have the capacity to listen to, synthesize, and internalize information that does not immediately serve his greatest needs: praise, fealty, adoration. “He finds it intolerable when those things are missing,” a clinical psychologist told me. “Praise, applause, and accolades seem to calm him and boost his confidence. There’s no room for that now, and so he’s growing irritable and needing to create some way to get some positive attention.”
Adam Serwer: Trump is inciting a coronavirus culture war to save himself
She added that the pandemic and its economic fallout “overwhelm Trump’s capacity to understand, are outside of his ability to internalize and process, and [are] beyond his frustration tolerance. He is neither curious nor interested; facts are tossed aside when inconvenient or [when they] contradict his parallel reality, and people are disposable unless they serve him in some way.”
IT’S USEFUL HERE to recall that Trump’s success as a politician has been built on his ability to impose his will and narrative on others, to use his experience on a reality-television show and his skill as a con man to shape public impressions in his favor, even—or perhaps, especially—if those impressions are at odds with reality. He convinced a good chunk of the country that he is a wildly successful businessman and knows more about campaign finance, the Islamic State, the courts, the visa system, trade, taxes, the debt, renewable energy, infrastructure, borders, and drones than anyone else.
Read: How the pandemic will end
But in this instance, Trump isn’t facing a political problem he can easily spin his way out of. He’s facing a lethal virus. It doesn’t give a damn what Donald Trump thinks of it or tweets about it. Spin and lies about COVID-19, including that it will soon magically disappear, as Trump claimed it would, don’t work. In fact, they have the opposite effect. Misinformation will cause the virus to increase its deadly spread.
So as the crisis deepens—as the body count increases, hospitals are overwhelmed, and the economy contracts, perhaps dramatically—it’s reasonable to assume that the president will reach for the tools he has used throughout his life: duplicity and denial. He will not allow facts that are at odds with his narrative to pierce his magnetic field of deception.
But what happens to Trump psychologically and emotionally when things don’t turn around in the time period he wants? What happens if the tricks that have allowed him to walk away from scandal after scandal don’t work quite so well, if the doors of escape are bolted shut, and if it dawns on even some of his supporters—people who will watch family members, friends, and neighbors contract the disease, some number of whom will die—that no matter what Trump says, he can’t alter this epidemiological reality?
All of this would likely enrage him, and feed his paranoia.
As the health-care and economic crises worsen, Trump’s hallmarks will be even more fully on display. The president will create new scapegoats. He’ll blame governors for whatever bad news befalls their states. He’ll berate reporters who ask questions that portray him in a less-than-favorable light. He’ll demand even more cultlike coverage from outlets such as Fox News. Because he doesn’t tolerate relationships that are characterized by disagreement or absence of obeisance, before long we’ll see key people removed or silenced when they try to counter a Trump-centered narrative. He’ll try to find shiny objects to divert our attention from his failures.
All of these things are from a playbook the president has used a thousand times. Perhaps they’ll succeed again. But there’s something distinct about this moment, compared with every other moment in the Trump presidency, that could prove to be utterly disorienting and unsettling for the president. Hush-money payments won’t make COVID-19 go away. He cannot distract people from the global pandemic. He can’t wait it out until the next news cycle, because the next news cycle will also be about the pandemic. He can’t easily create another narrative, because he is often sharing the stage with scientists who will not lie on his behalf.
The president will try to blame someone else—but in this case the “someone else” is a virus, not a Mexican immigrant or a reporter with a disability, not a Muslim or a Clinton, not a dead war hero or a family of a fallen soldier, not a special counsel or an NFL player who kneels for the national anthem. He will try to use this crisis to pit one party against the other—but the virus will kill both Republicans and Democrats. He will try to create an alternate story to distract people from an inconvenient truth—but in this case, the public is too afraid, the story is too big, and the carnage will be too great to be distracted from it.
America will make it to the other side of this crisis, as it has after every other crisis. But the struggle will be a good deal harder, and the human cost a good deal higher, because we elected as president a man who is so damaged and so broken in so many ways.


theatlantic--2020-04-05--The Revolution Is Under Way Already

The Revolution Is Under Way Already

The United States may not be having a revolution right now , but we are surely living in revolutionary times .
If we do not perceive them as such , it is because news coverage and everyday conversations alike turn on nonhuman agents .
Instead of visionary leaders or outraged crowds , viruses , markets , and climate change seem to shape events today .
History feels like it is out of our hands .
People sometimes imagine yesterday ’ s revolutions as planned and carried out by self-conscious revolutionaries , but this has rarely , if ever , been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ periods in which social actors with different agendas ( peasants stealing rabbits , city dwellers sacking tollbooths , lawmakers writing a constitution , anxious Parisians looking for weapons at the Bastille Fortress ) become fused into a more or less stable constellation .
The most timeless and emancipatory lesson of the French Revolution is that people make history .
Likewise , the actions we take and the choices we make today will shape both what future we get and what we remember of the past .
Analogies between the first months of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ easy to draw .
Anthony Fauci , the infectious-diseases expert whom President Donald Trump often sidelines or ignores , is Jacques Necker , the popular finance minister to Louis XVI .
Necker ’ s firing in early July 1789 was viewed widely as a calamity : “ It was like losing your father , ” the mathematician and astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly wrote in his memoirs .
The recent spike in American gun and ammunition sales recalls the Parisians who stormed the Bastille Fortress in the hope of finding weapons and gunpowder .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ individuals imprisoned there , but that was not the crowd ’ s original intent . )
The conflict among city , state , and federal officials over coronavirus-related closures directly parallels 1789 ’ s municipal revolutions , in which some cities had leaders who quickly proclaimed devotion to the new National Assembly , while the leaders of other cities remained loyal to the old structures of absolutist royal power and the mayors and aldermen of yet others were violently deposed .
That comparisons can so easily be made between the beginning of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ does not mean that Americans are fated to see a Reign of Terror or that a military dictatorship like Napoleon ’ s looms large in our future .
What it does mean is that everything is up for grabs .
The United States of America can implode under external pressure and its own grave contradictions , or it can be reimagined and repurposed .
Life will not go back to normal for us , either , because the norms of the past decades are simply no longer tenable for huge numbers of Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 3.3 million American workers filed new unemployment claims .
The following week , 6.6 million more did the same .
Middle-class Americans who placed their retirement savings in the stock market have recently experienced huge losses .
Even before the pandemic , black Americans on average had only 7 percent of the wealth of white ones ( Native Americans , even less ) .
Among non-Hispanic white Americans , deaths from drug abuse , suicide , and alcohol continue to rise .
Nearly 2.5 million people are incarcerated .
Trust in existing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Congress ) was already vanishingly small .
Is it safe to go grocery shopping in a pandemic ?
Should we wear masks ?
Nobody knows who to believe .

Fear sweeps the land. Many businesses collapse. Some huge fortunes are made. Panicked consumers stockpile paper, food, and weapons. The government’s reaction is inconsistent and ineffectual. Ordinary commerce grinds to a halt; investors can find no safe assets. Political factionalism grows more intense. Everything falls apart.
This was all as true of revolutionary France in 1789 and 1790 as it is of the United States today. Are we at the beginning of a revolution that has yet to be named? Do we want to be? That we are on the verge of a major transformation seems obvious. The onset of the next Depression, a challenge akin to World War II, a national midlife crisis—these comparisons have been offered and many more. But few are calling our current moment a revolution, and some have suggested that the coronavirus pandemic—coinciding as it has with the surge in Joe Biden’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and the decline of Bernie Sanders’s—marks the end of any such possibility. “The Coronavirus Killed the Revolution,” declared the headline of a recent essay in The Atlantic by Shadi Hamid, who argued that the COVID-19 crisis makes people crave “normalcy” over deep structural change. As a historian of 18th- and 19th-century France, I think claims like these are mistaken.
An urgent desire for stability—for a fast resolution to upheaval—is in fact absolutely characteristic of any revolutionary era. “I pray we will be finished by Christmas,” wrote one beleaguered member of the French Constituent Assembly to a good friend in October 1789. In reality, of course, the assembly took another two years to finish its tasks, after which another assembly was elected; a republic was declared; Louis XVI was put on trial and executed in January 1793; General Napoleon Bonaparte became “first consul” in 1799 and emperor in 1804; Europe found itself engulfed in wars from 1792 to 1815. In short, life never went back to how it had been before 1789.
Read: The social-distancing culture war has begun
The United States may not be having a revolution right now, but we are surely living in revolutionary times. If we do not perceive them as such, it is because news coverage and everyday conversations alike turn on nonhuman agents. Instead of visionary leaders or outraged crowds, viruses, markets, and climate change seem to shape events today. History feels like it is out of our hands.
People sometimes imagine yesterday’s revolutions as planned and carried out by self-conscious revolutionaries, but this has rarely, if ever, been the case. Instead, revolutions are periods in which social actors with different agendas (peasants stealing rabbits, city dwellers sacking tollbooths, lawmakers writing a constitution, anxious Parisians looking for weapons at the Bastille Fortress) become fused into a more or less stable constellation. The most timeless and emancipatory lesson of the French Revolution is that people make history. Likewise, the actions we take and the choices we make today will shape both what future we get and what we remember of the past.
Analogies between the first months of the French Revolution and our current moment are easy to draw. Anthony Fauci, the infectious-diseases expert whom President Donald Trump often sidelines or ignores, is Jacques Necker, the popular finance minister to Louis XVI. Necker’s firing in early July 1789 was viewed widely as a calamity: “It was like losing your father,” the mathematician and astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly wrote in his memoirs. The recent spike in American gun and ammunition sales recalls the Parisians who stormed the Bastille Fortress in the hope of finding weapons and gunpowder. (They incidentally released a handful of individuals imprisoned there, but that was not the crowd’s original intent.) The conflict among city, state, and federal officials over coronavirus-related closures directly parallels 1789’s municipal revolutions, in which some cities had leaders who quickly proclaimed devotion to the new National Assembly, while the leaders of other cities remained loyal to the old structures of absolutist royal power and the mayors and aldermen of yet others were violently deposed.
That comparisons can so easily be made between the beginning of the French Revolution and the United States today does not mean that Americans are fated to see a Reign of Terror or that a military dictatorship like Napoleon’s looms large in our future. What it does mean is that everything is up for grabs. The United States of America can implode under external pressure and its own grave contradictions, or it can be reimagined and repurposed. Life will not go back to normal for us, either, because the norms of the past decades are simply no longer tenable for huge numbers of Americans. In a single week in March, 3.3 million American workers filed new unemployment claims. The following week, 6.6 million more did the same. Middle-class Americans who placed their retirement savings in the stock market have recently experienced huge losses. Even before the pandemic, black Americans on average had only 7 percent of the wealth of white ones (Native Americans, even less). Among non-Hispanic white Americans, deaths from drug abuse, suicide, and alcohol continue to rise. Nearly 2.5 million people are incarcerated. Trust in existing institutions (including the Electoral College and Congress) was already vanishingly small. Is it safe to go grocery shopping in a pandemic? Should we wear masks? Nobody knows who to believe.
Read: Red and blue America aren’t experiencing the same pandemic
Much like the past 40 years in the United States and Western Europe, the 1700s were a period of remarkable economic, social, and technological transformation. Comparatively cheap mass-manufactured goods from Britain and China sparked what historians call the 18th-century “consumer revolution.” In the 1780s, four-fifths of working-class Parisian households had more than 10 dishes in their cupboards, and more than half had a gold watch (in the 1720s, the figures were 20 percent and 5 percent). Whole new media forms emerged—the modern novel, easily reproduced prints, mass-market newspapers heavy on advertisements—as did new physical places (coffee shops, lending libraries, Freemason lodges) and virtual spaces (“the Republic of Letters” and “public opinion”) where those works were discussed and debated.
As sources of information proliferated, long-standing sources of authority (monarchy, aristocracy, and the established Church) feared losing power and turned reactionary. At the same time, the longer-term transformations on which these social and cultural innovations were built—the growth of European overseas empires and the emergence of settler colonialism, massive silver exports from South and Central America, the trans-Atlantic slave trade—continued, and in ever more brutal forms. More than 6 million Africans were sold into slavery in the 18th century—a time that some still call the “Age of Enlightenment.”
In the summer of 1789, as peasants attacked chateaus and revolutionaries vowed to “abolish privilege,” many members of the elite felt that their world had suddenly fallen apart. In truth, it had been disintegrating for decades. Today, as in the 1790s, an old order is ending in convulsions. Even before the coronavirus prompted flight cancellations and entry bans, climate activists were rightly telling us to change our modes and patterns of travel. Even before nonessential businesses were shut by government orders, online shopping and same-day deliveries were rapidly remaking retail commerce, while environmental concerns and anti-consumerism were revolutionizing the fashion industry. The pandemic and resulting public-health crisis have caused an abrupt and salutary revaluation in which cleaners, care workers, grocery-store stockers, and delivery drivers are gaining recognition for the essential work they have been doing all along. Taken together, these changes may not look like a revolution—but real revolutions are the ones that nobody sees coming.
Shadi Hamid: The coronavirus killed the revolution
The men and women who made the French Revolution—a revolution which, in a few short and hectic years, decriminalized heresy, blasphemy, and witchcraft; replaced one of the oldest European monarchies with a republic based on universal male suffrage; introduced no-fault divorce and easy adoption; embraced the ideal of formal equality before the law; and, for a short time at least, defined employment, education, and subsistence as basic human rights—had no model to follow, no plans, no platform agreed upon in advance. As the UCLA historian Lynn A. Hunt has argued, they made it up as they went along. Yet for more than two centuries, elements of their improvised politics have been revolution’s signature features: a declared sovereignty, devised symbols, an anthem, war. At the junction Americans face today, however, we need to imitate not the outcome of the French revolution but the energy, creativity, and optimism of the French revolutionaries.
Human beings are responsible both for much of what is wrong and for much of what could be right about the world today. But we have to take responsibility. In hindsight a revolution may look like a single event, but they are never experienced that way. Instead they are extended periods in which the routines of normal life are dislocated and existing rituals lose their meaning. They are deeply unsettling, but they are also periods of great creativity. As some Americans take shelter in their homes from a newly arrived threat and others put their health at risk to combat it, we can all mourn lost certainties, but we can also set about intentionally creating new possibilities. To claim this moment as a revolution is to claim it for human action.


theatlantic--2020-05-02--One Death Is a Tragedy. 60,000 Deaths Are a Great Success.

David A. Graham : Why Trump was deaf to all the warnings he received The comments were astonishing at a time when the death toll continues to pass ever more dizzying milestones , and at the end of one of the deadliest months in American history .
Yet when Trump was asked about Kushner ’ s remarks on Thursday , he endorsed them and argued that the White House ’ s only failure was in communicating its success .
“ I don ’ t think anybody has done the job that we ’ ve done , other than at public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t talk about the facts , ” he said .
“ You know , we ’ re the leader of the world .
We ’ re really the leader .
In this case , the leader of the world .
And we ’ ve done better .
If you look at our deaths , if you look at mortality rates , if you look at the things , we ’ re—in fact , I ’ m going to get a chart , because it ’ s maybe the most impressive thing—right ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. is indeed the leader of the world—in total COVID-19 deaths , to choose one metric .
It also leads other developed nations in the growth of its death rate .
Trump is not responsible for all of those deaths , no matter how shaky the federal response has been , but his premature declarations of victory at a time when the situation is manifestly dire are jarring .
They demonstrate a lack of empathy that has dogged Trump in past crises .
This empathy gap is not a problem merely of political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For leaders to solve a problem , they have to convince people they understand it .
Trump ’ s inability to understand the depth of human suffering in the pandemic has slowed his response at every turn and hobbled his ability to rally the resources needed to address the crisis .
Trump likes to say that one death is too many , but his seeming indifference to growing death tolls is reminiscent of the quip , sometimes attributed to Stalin , that one death is a tragedy and 1 million deaths is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a tragedy and 60,000 are a victory .
As Steve Benen has chronicled , Trump has curiously kept touting the low death toll , but keeps having to adjust up the number as the count rises .
“ We did the right thing , because if we didn ’ t do it , you would have had a million people , a million and a half people , maybe 2 million people dead , ” Trump said on April 20 .
“ Now , we ’ re going toward 50 , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
One is too many .
I always say it : One is too many .
But we ’ re going toward 50 or 60,000 people.
” Four days later , the estimated death toll exceeded 50,000 , though it is probably higher .
On April 27 , Trump said the toll was “ probably heading to 60,000 , 70,000.
” A couple of days later , the U.S. crossed the 60,000 milestone .
So on April 29 , Trump readjusted .
“ What we did is a great tribute to this country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lose 65,000 people—it ’ s so crazy to say it .
It ’ s just so horrible .
But if we lose 65,000 people , and instead of that going the other route , we would have lost a million or a million and a half or 2 million .
It ’ s possible .
It ’ s possible that you lost more .
But could you imagine ?
Look how horrible it is to lose 65 and then multiply that times many , many times .
That would not be sustainable .
@

“Nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won,” President Trump said on March 29. It was a moment of clarity and wisdom, the sort of sober leadership the nation seeks from a president in times of crisis.
And it was swiftly forgotten. A month later, Trump and his aides were ready to hang Mission Accomplished banners from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
“The worst of the pain and suffering is going to be behind us,” Trump said Wednesday. “We think we really have passed a big boundary. Much better days are ahead.”
During the same press availability, he boasted, “We did all the right moves … If we didn’t do what we did, you would’ve had a million people die, maybe more. Maybe 2 million people die. And if you think that we’d be at 65 or 70 or 60 or whatever the final number will be—one is too many. I always say it: One is far too many.”
The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was even more triumphal. “We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this, and I think that we’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed,” he said on Fox & Friends Wednesday. “So the government—federal government—rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story and I think that that’s really what needs to be told.”
David A. Graham: Why Trump was deaf to all the warnings he received
The comments were astonishing at a time when the death toll continues to pass ever more dizzying milestones, and at the end of one of the deadliest months in American history. Yet when Trump was asked about Kushner’s remarks on Thursday, he endorsed them and argued that the White House’s only failure was in communicating its success.
“I don’t think anybody has done the job that we’ve done, other than at public relations, because the press just won’t talk about the facts,” he said. “You know, we’re the leader of the world. We’re really the leader. In this case, the leader of the world. And we’ve done better. If you look at our deaths, if you look at mortality rates, if you look at the things, we’re—in fact, I’m going to get a chart, because it’s maybe the most impressive thing—right?—how we’ve done.”
The U.S. is indeed the leader of the world—in total COVID-19 deaths, to choose one metric. It also leads other developed nations in the growth of its death rate. Trump is not responsible for all of those deaths, no matter how shaky the federal response has been, but his premature declarations of victory at a time when the situation is manifestly dire are jarring. They demonstrate a lack of empathy that has dogged Trump in past crises.
This empathy gap is not a problem merely of political fortunes, but of material results. For leaders to solve a problem, they have to convince people they understand it. Trump’s inability to understand the depth of human suffering in the pandemic has slowed his response at every turn and hobbled his ability to rally the resources needed to address the crisis.
Trump likes to say that one death is too many, but his seeming indifference to growing death tolls is reminiscent of the quip, sometimes attributed to Stalin, that one death is a tragedy and 1 million deaths is a statistic. For Trump, one death is a tragedy and 60,000 are a victory.
David A. Graham: Harvey exposes Trump’s empathy deficit
As Steve Benen has chronicled, Trump has curiously kept touting the low death toll, but keeps having to adjust up the number as the count rises.
“We did the right thing, because if we didn’t do it, you would have had a million people, a million and a half people, maybe 2 million people dead,” Trump said on April 20. “Now, we’re going toward 50, I’m hearing, or 60,000 people. One is too many. I always say it: One is too many. But we’re going toward 50 or 60,000 people.”
Four days later, the estimated death toll exceeded 50,000, though it is probably higher. On April 27, Trump said the toll was “probably heading to 60,000, 70,000.” A couple of days later, the U.S. crossed the 60,000 milestone. So on April 29, Trump readjusted.
“What we did is a great tribute to this country. But if we lost—so if we lose 65,000 people—it’s so crazy to say it. It’s just so horrible. But if we lose 65,000 people, and instead of that going the other route, we would have lost a million or a million and a half or 2 million. It’s possible. It’s possible that you lost more. But could you imagine? Look how horrible it is to lose 65 and then multiply that times many, many times. That would not be sustainable.”
Within the next few days, that, too, will be obsolete. As heartfelt responses in the face of crisis go, “That would not be sustainable” doesn’t exactly radiate warmth. Trump seldom speaks of victims as individuals, and then only in stiff tones—even when discussing friends of his who have died. Grief simply isn’t a mode that suits him, and the absence is exacerbated by his focus on economic statistics and his tendency to engage in petty fights amid the crisis.
Trump’s struggles to convey any emotion but anger have been foretold in past crises. Consider the first great external disaster to strike the Trump administration, the 2017 hurricane season. Visiting Texas, the president seemed unable to relate to anything other than the massive size of Hurricane Harvey. And despite fitful attempts to telegraph that he cared, he stumbled even worse in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Trump argued that the storm was not a “real catastrophe” like Hurricane Katrina and callously tossed rolls of paper towels to desperate aid-seekers.
Trump’s inability to register the suffering may have played into the disastrous federal response to the storm. Eventual estimates placed the death toll from Maria at about 3,000 people, making it far more lethal than Katrina, and among the worst natural disasters in American history.
It is sometimes said that wars make presidents great; tragedies and disasters can at the very least make their greatest moments. The enduring images of many presidencies came when the commander in chief had to rally and console the nation.
After the Challenger explosion, Ronald Reagan said of the crew members who had perished, “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’” Barack Obama’s finest moment may have come as he eulogized the victims massacred at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. George W. Bush was never more popular or unifying than after his improvised “I can hear you!” at the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center.
Read: You should politicize the coronavirus
The pattern extends back through history: Think of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “date which will live in infamy” speech after Pearl Harbor, or Abraham Lincoln’s plea in his second inaugural address for Americans to “bind up the nation’s wounds” “with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.”
These moments do make presidents popular, at least temporarily, and it’s a testament to Trump’s poor handling of the crisis that his approval hasn’t budged beyond the narrow range in which it has resided for most of his presidency.
But the unity these presidents summon also helps rally the nation to a greater cause. For Roosevelt, that was fighting the Second World War; for Lincoln, it was looking ahead to the end of the Civil War. Trump has adopted the language of war, but he has not taken the example of his predecessors. As Mark Leibovich recently noted, Trump has all but abolished the shared American experience, recasting even something as universal as social distancing into an “us-versus-them.”
As the United States faces the greatest crisis since World War II, armed protesters are running amok in state legislatures, the president is feuding with governors, and public-health measures have become political footballs. It didn’t have to be this way. Americans are willing—desperate, even—to be inspired. A steady leader could bring the nation together to face the immense challenge ahead. But Trump is too busy taking a victory lap. One might even say that nothing could be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won.


Joshua Matz

The government ’ s reaction to COVID-19 in jails and ICE detention facilities must follow settled legal precedent on acceptable @ @ @ @ @ pandemic does not change that obligation .

ivan-96 / emarys / Getty / Katie Martin …
The Coronavirus Is Testing America’s Commitment to People’s Constitutional Rights
The government’s reaction to COVID-19 in jails and ICE detention facilities must follow settled legal precedent on acceptable conditions of confinement. The pandemic does not change that obligation.


Peter Beinart

Peter Beinart is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York .
• Battered by crises that require hard decisions , the president becomes a more cartoonish version of himself .
• As during the Cold War , the fight against racism at home strengthens the country ’ s hand in the world .
• His faith in America ’ s moral direction is out of step with how the protesters feel .
• Even a Bolder Biden Will Only Go So Far The pandemic has expanded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pentagon .
• The Democratic candidate tries to out-hawk Trump , but trying to beat Republicans at their own game is pointless—even dangerous .
• The president belatedly acknowledged how dire a threat COVID-19 is , but many of his enablers in right-wing media refuse to take his cue .
• The president had downplayed the coronavirus for short-term political gain .
But acknowledging the threat is in his long-term interest .
• After scuttling its partnership with Beijing on public health , the U.S. was unprepared for the pandemic .
• In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overthrow the establishment .
Biden ’ s Super Tuesday voters felt otherwise .
• The Two Things That Sank Buttigieg ’ s Candidacy The changes in the primaries that made it harder for the former South Bend mayor to succeed also constitute progress for his party .
• Many in the party elite remain deeply skeptical of the Vermont senator , but rank-and-file voters do not share that hesitation .
• In the end , the president succeeded in doing precisely what he wanted in the first place : tarring a leading Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When Other Republicans Didn ’ t Showing genuine moral courage , the former national security adviser appears to have told the truth about Trump .
• He previously trained his nativist ire on Muslims and Latinos .
Now African immigrants appear to be in the president ’ s sights .

Peter Beinart is a professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York.
Getty / Kamala Harris Campaign / Arsh Raziuddin … Immigrants Don’t Just Change Voting Patterns Kamala Harris’s parents showed that new arrivals create new possibilities.
David McNew / Getty The Electoral College Is Also a Climate Problem If the West Coast fires were happening in swing states, presidential candidates wouldn’t be able to ignore the issue.
The Atlantic Trump Has a Different Definition of Corruption The president helps himself to public resources, but that doesn’t count—as long as he upholds “Republican values.”
Nancy Shia / Archive Photos / Getty Biden’s Holiday From History The arc of Biden’s public career does not easily align with the Democratic Party’s current mood.
SAUL LOEB / AFP / Getty Kamala Harris Did What She Had To In attacking her record on crime policy, her critics are ignoring how politics actually works.
Alex Majoli / Magnum Biden Goes Big Without Sounding Like It Perceived as a moderate, he has embraced strikingly progressive goals without facing any political backlash.
Shutterstock / Paul Spella / The Atlantic Democrats Are Allowing Trump to Frame the Debate on China If they keep speaking the GOP’s language, it will haunt them for years to come.
Getty / The Atlantic What Kasich Gives Biden The Republican ex-governor amplifies the Democratic candidate’s remarkably simple message to voters.
Getty / The Atlantic Trumpism Is the New McCarthyism The battle to define this president’s legacy is already under way. Centrists and the activist left fundamentally disagree over what Trump represents.
Getty / The Atlantic Trump Gets Trumpier Under Stress Battered by crises that require hard decisions, the president becomes a more cartoonish version of himself.
GHI Vintage / Universal History Archive / Universal … The Protesters Are Upholding America’s Moral Authority Abroad As during the Cold War, the fight against racism at home strengthens the country’s hand in the world.
Getty / The Atlantic Cities May Have No Choice But to Defund the Police By creating state budget crises amid nationwide protests, Mitch McConnell may be accelerating cuts to local police departments.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty The World Left Obama’s Soothing Rhetoric Behind His faith in America’s moral direction is out of step with how the protesters feel.
BRITTAINY NEWMAN / New York Times / Redux Even a Bolder Biden Will Only Go So Far The pandemic has expanded his ambitions—just not enough to challenge the Pentagon.
Mark Reinstein / MediaPunch / IPX / AP … Biden Should Release His Papers His senatorial records may contain evidence relevant to Tara Reade’s accusation.
Lintao Zhang / AP The Utter Futility of Biden’s China Rhetoric The Democratic candidate tries to out-hawk Trump, but trying to beat Republicans at their own game is pointless—even dangerous.
Andrew Harnik /AP In Right-Wing Media, the Pivot Didn’t Happen The president belatedly acknowledged how dire a threat COVID-19 is, but many of his enablers in right-wing media refuse to take his cue.
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters Trump Finally Recognized His Mistake The president had downplayed the coronavirus for short-term political gain. But acknowledging the threat is in his long-term interest.
Alicia Tatone Trump’s Break With China Has Deadly Consequences After scuttling its partnership with Beijing on public health, the U.S. was unprepared for the pandemic.


theatlantic--2020-03-25--Red and Blue America Agree That Now Is the Time to Violate the Constitution

To assess how Americans weigh the trade-off between preserving civil liberties and halting the spread of the coronavirus , we conducted a survey last week , just as state and local governments were beginning to implement their most restrictive policies yet .
The survey reveals a remarkable willingness to tolerate civil-rights violations in order to confront the pandemic , regardless of party affiliation .
We presented a nationally representative sample of 3,000 U.S. residents with eight possible policy responses to the outbreak , all of which may be unconstitutional , including forced quarantine in a government facility , criminal penalties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people entering the country , and conscription of health-care workers .
We also asked our sample to imagine that public-health officials had reviewed the policies and estimated that each would likely save some number of lives , hypothetical figures that we provided .
A majority of respondents supported all eight of these policies , most by considerable margins .
The proposals with the lowest support were seizing businesses and banning all citizens and noncitizens outside the country from entering , but these policies still had 58 and 63 percent support , respectively .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ support were banning noncitizens from entering the country ( 85 percent ) and conscripting health-care professionals to work despite risks to their own health ( 78 percent ) .
Both policies burden a defined minority of the population , so it ’ s not surprising that large majorities support them .
But criminalizing speech based on its content , an idea antithetical to modern American constitutionalism , was also very popular : About 70 percent of respondents supported restricting people ’ s ability to say things that may qualify as misinformation .
Likewise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all religious services and gatherings , thereby restricting religious freedom .
And even when we explicitly told half of our sample that the policies may violate the Constitution , the majority supported all eight of them—even the speech restrictions .
Adam Serwer : Trump is inciting a coronavirus culture war to save himself Perhaps the most striking feature of our results is the broad bipartisan endorsement of these liberty-restricting policies .
Like other surveys , ours reflected a huge gap between Democrats and Republicans in approval of President Donald Trump ’ s handling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats expressed approval , while 88 percent of Republicans did .
One might have reasonably concluded that different policy preferences were driving these responses : that Democrats want aggressive government intervention , which they feel the president has failed to deliver , while Republicans—encouraged by Trump ’ s early dismissal of the outbreak—prefer a wait-and-see or laissez-faire approach .

Countries are taking extraordinary measures to slow the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these measures limit individual freedom and may also violate rights guaranteed by national constitutions. Italy’s complete lockdown, enforced by criminal penalties, probably violates its constitution. Norwegian lawmakers have proposed an emergency law that temporarily gives the government unprecedented power to override the constitution and national laws to thwart the virus. Meanwhile, without consulting the Israeli Parliament, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enacted emergency regulations allowing for stunning surveillance power to combat the virus. Never one to waste a good crisis, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán will likely be able to rule by decree for the foreseeable future.
Polly J. Price: How a fragmented country fights a pandemic
The United States now faces this same dilemma: To what extent should the Constitution be violated to fight the coronavirus? Lockdowns, especially ones that apply to people who haven’t tested positive for the virus, are constitutionally questionable. The threat by the leaders of Newark, New Jersey, to prosecute residents who spread false information about the virus—if carried out—could violate the First Amendment. Some people in California have challenged the city of San Jose’s authority to force a gun shop to close, citing their right to arm themselves. Perhaps most alarming, the U.S. Department of Justice “has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies.”
To assess how Americans weigh the trade-off between preserving civil liberties and halting the spread of the coronavirus, we conducted a survey last week, just as state and local governments were beginning to implement their most restrictive policies yet. The survey reveals a remarkable willingness to tolerate civil-rights violations in order to confront the pandemic, regardless of party affiliation.
We presented a nationally representative sample of 3,000 U.S. residents with eight possible policy responses to the outbreak, all of which may be unconstitutional, including forced quarantine in a government facility, criminal penalties for spreading misinformation, bans against certain people entering the country, and conscription of health-care workers. We also asked our sample to imagine that public-health officials had reviewed the policies and estimated that each would likely save some number of lives, hypothetical figures that we provided.
A majority of respondents supported all eight of these policies, most by considerable margins. The proposals with the lowest support were seizing businesses and banning all citizens and noncitizens outside the country from entering, but these policies still had 58 and 63 percent support, respectively. The proposals with the highest levels of support were banning noncitizens from entering the country (85 percent) and conscripting health-care professionals to work despite risks to their own health (78 percent). Both policies burden a defined minority of the population, so it’s not surprising that large majorities support them. But criminalizing speech based on its content, an idea antithetical to modern American constitutionalism, was also very popular: About 70 percent of respondents supported restricting people’s ability to say things that may qualify as misinformation. Likewise, 77 percent of respondents support suspending all religious services and gatherings, thereby restricting religious freedom. And even when we explicitly told half of our sample that the policies may violate the Constitution, the majority supported all eight of them—even the speech restrictions.
Adam Serwer: Trump is inciting a coronavirus culture war to save himself
Perhaps the most striking feature of our results is the broad bipartisan endorsement of these liberty-restricting policies. Like other surveys, ours reflected a huge gap between Democrats and Republicans in approval of President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic: 34 percent of Democrats expressed approval, while 88 percent of Republicans did. One might have reasonably concluded that different policy preferences were driving these responses: that Democrats want aggressive government intervention, which they feel the president has failed to deliver, while Republicans—encouraged by Trump’s early dismissal of the outbreak—prefer a wait-and-see or laissez-faire approach.
But our findings suggest that’s not the case. Democrats and Republicans alike are willing to sacrifice civil liberties to fight the virus. The two groups show almost identical levels of support for detaining sick people in government facilities, conscripting people to work, prohibiting the spreading of misinformation, and banning all people (citizens and noncitizens alike) from entering the country. Seventy-four percent of Democrats supported each of the eight proposed policies, while 71 percent of Republicans did. This small disparity contrasts with several recent survey findings showing that Americans with different political affiliations are responding to the crisis very differently. For example, The Atlantic reported on Friday that blue states are responding more aggressively to the outbreak than red states are, and an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted last week found that Democrats were 28 percentage points more likely to be concerned about someone in their family getting the COVID-19 than Republicans. Even so, both sides are convinced that aggressive measures are needed to save lives.
Often, efforts to roll back civil liberties face political opposition, but now bipartisan support for rights-restricting COVID-19 responses could smooth the path for constitutional erosion. James Madison predicted as much when he described constitutional rights as “parchment barriers,” easily transgressed when the majority is so inclined. And indeed, history presents numerous examples of liberty violations made in the face of security threats: the Alien and Sedition Acts signed into law by President John Adams, Japanese American internment camps during WWII, and the use of torture after 9/11. After the threat has subsided, Americans must recognize any constitutional violations for what they were, lest they become the new normal.