Emergency, Democracy, and Public Discourse

Not all emergencies pose a surprise. Hurricanes, though devastating, are common and predictable. The bombing of Aleppo by Russian and President Assad’s forces caused a grave emergency to its inhabitants, but given the past brutal conduct of the Syrian Civil War, it came as no surprise. Not all emergencies evoke menacing uncertainty; in many of them, we have a clear sense of what they entail. The nature of the threat, its duration, and its impact are more or less predictable. The COVID-19 pandemic caught us unprepared; it appeared as a surprise (though we should have known better), and its future ruinous path is unknown to us. The conjunction of emergency, surprise, and uncertainty formed a perfect, unsettling, ominous storm. Unprepared and uncertain, we seek ways of responding to the pandemic. The effectiveness of our response to the threat and our capacity to weather its devastating impact rest on the strength of our public institutions and the quality of our political discourse.