What do you call a year like 2020? The year of the pandemic? The year of grief and death? The year reason gave way to delusion? The year American democracy almost died? All we know for sure is this is the year humanity really wants to forget.
My very first post of 2020 was about the first twenty years of the 21st century and how for the first time in three centuries these years were free of wide-spread wars and human carnage. Little did I know that an invisible thing of nature we call virus would spread out of China and torment, by sickness and death, the rest of the world. But that was not the only scourge Americans had to endure. Besides the coronavirus that chipped away on our health we had to confront another virus that chipped away on our faith in truth and trust and eventually in democracy. It is hard to tell which virus was the most damaging.
The study of history is informative not so much for satisfying our curiosity about events of the past, but rather because it teaches us how little human behavior has changed over time despite our advances in science and technology. In 1347, Europe was hit by a plague that came to be know as Black Death. It was responsible for depopulating Europe by up to 50%. Like the coronavirus it had come from Asia. In many ways, its victims experienced familiar emotions that we saw amongst us: grief, anger, denial and despair. Instead of blaming China, Black Death era Europeans blamed and scapegoated, demons, witches, and a frequent target, the Jews.* Instead of recommending bleach, hydroxychloroquine and ultraviolet light, the Black Death pandemic was exorcised with maniacal public dances, rubbing the body with chopped onions or dead snakes if available, self-flagellation, or taking arsenic and mercury.
The similarities in reaction are stunning. But how can we justify them in our contemporary world, which is light-years ahead in scientific, medical and technological knowledge? What do we make of the denial in the face of so much evidence? I have no other explanation but to admit that in super-tense situations emotions prove to be stronger than reason for too many people. In the year 2020, large swaths of the population either refused or were unable to inform reason with knowledge and information from science to control their emotional instincts. For many Americans, risk aversion and precautions were subordinated to the political ends of one person, Donald Trump, President of the US.
While the pandemic was raging through America, spreading sickness and death, another virus, political in nature, started to take hold. Its symptoms were mistrust in the integrity of the upcoming presidential election and outright paranoid conspiracy theories of voter fraud. Practices, like voting by mail, not challenged heretofore, including the recent primary elections, were now suspected as instruments of electoral malfeasance by American citizens and foreign operators, including a dead one!
Between election day, November 3, and December 14, when the electors cast their votes, Americans lived through weeks of one challenge of the presidential vote after another; challenges that engulfed lower and supreme state courts, the Supreme Court of the USA itself, appeals to state legislature to dismiss the duly elected electors, even asking election officials to undo what had come out of the ballot box. At first glance, these challenges could charitably count as gestures of bad faith. But the ongoing and strenuous insistence to overturn the people’s verdict in the face of no supporting evidence and even after all legitimate means had been exhausted, has to be called by its true name: a wishful call for a coup d’ etat.
It is tempting to draw a parallel between natural and political viruses. A natural virus can infect healthy and unhealthy people, but it is most dangerous to those with underlying health conditions. The same way, a political virus can infect anyone, but it mostly thrives in people with underlying conditions, like financial decline, diminished political power and social status, identity crisis, and fear of the “other.” There are millions of Americans with these underlying conditions and there is much blame to go around. But then there are the super-spreaders of division, conspiracies, and delusions that, like parasites, thrive on these underlying conditions. As a result, many Americans, have resorted to the easy comfort of conspiracy theories and fantastical promises of a coming restoration to their rightful place.
So, there we are at the end of this horrible year facing these two viruses. Fortunately, we have the science to fight the one that came out of nature. By now, vaccines are available and sooner or later the Covid-19 will no longer threaten our physical existence. What, however, about the political virus? How will America inoculate itself and rid of it? What will take for this to happen? There are always voices of optimism that put their faith in the better angels of America, or the eventual return of common sense, or the yearning for reconciliation. But do we have a catalyst for any of these beneficent forces to come to our rescue?
If there is a chance to restore the political health of America, responsible political and thought leaders have to step forward and restore reason and trust in the public square. Paranoid, delusional and fraudulent ideas should not be given the oxygen to poison the body politic. Failure in stemming the corrosive influence of the political virus will, in the end, turn out to be much more devastating than the coronavirus.
As I am headed toward the exit door of this year, I am happy to see that science triumphed, relieved that American democracy survived, and very aware that resilience and reason are worth keeping alive.
* In the middle of the Black Death epidemic hysteria, Pope Clement VI, to his credit, tried, but to no avail, to tame the anti-Semitic sentiments by appealing to reason.
* The information about the Black Death came from the book Apollo’s Arow of Nicholas Christakis, a doctor and professor of social and natural science at Yale University.
Let's Reason 
Pandemic is the word of the year, according to Merriam-Webster.
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