This is Democracy – Episode 82: Life in a Time of Coronavirus

FEMALE 1: This.

MALE 1: Is democracy.

FEMALE 1: A podcast that exploits the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s-

MALE 1: – most influential democracy.

Zachary Suri: Hello and welcome to this episode of This is Democracy. Today, we are talking about the crisis that currently surrounds our entire planet, coronavirus. How can we think about our current lived experiences in a broader historical context? How can we use this moment for reflection and rededication? I’m Zachary Suri and I’m sitting here with Natalie Suri, an 11th grader at McCallum High School here in Austin, and Professor Jeremy Suri.

Jeremy Suri: Hello.

Zachary Suri: Our regular host, who recently discussed these issues in a video that has actually gone somewhat viral across the web. We’re recording now from our house, because this pandemic that we’re going to talk about today, has actually shuttered The University of Texas campus where we usually record our podcast. First though, before we get into these issues, I will read as always, my scene setting poem entitled, Invisible Fires for March 2020. “It feels a little odd to be in the center of a crisis, to float between minor irritation and nightmares of Armageddon, to see one’s life come to a standstill with the firemen trying to put out 3,000 invisible fires. We all learned about the importance of memory and asbestos while portable classrooms. I’ll find some bit of sentimentality to grasp among the graffiti along the Berlin Wall. All sends a small portion of the terror, searching the sky to find jets smashing into skyscrapers and the quick mass murders that consistently flash before our eyes, disappear in an instant. But it’s a bit disconcerting to think about memory in a time like this, to try and analyze the hidden terror we all feel climbing up our throats, to try and save this feeling for future generations to learn about from the comfort of hindsight and try to remember what it was like. The days when hand sanitizer was nostrils searing gold. It’s hard to see the invisible fires raging throughout the planet’s history. Hard to see this moment as anything but an infernal delay in the middle of our foreshadowed commitments. Hard to think of our current experience as anything that could possibly matter to anyone else. It’s hard not to sympathize with the sanctified saints whose heroism is already confirmed. Dedication, still crawling lethargically home from the bus stop weeks into impending doom. Empathy, preparing monologues for future courtrooms about the terror of isolation. Neighborliness, rushing to the supermarket to cram all the toilet paper we can find, the lacerated and broken grocery carts. Memory, finding something important amidst this jumbled mess of spring blossoms, overstuffed pantries, and the hardwood prophecies of modern life, seemingly bending to invisible fires.

Thank you. My poem today it’s really about what it’s like to try and reflect upon the meaning and the importance of a moment like coronavirus while still in the midst of the panic, the terror, and trying to make sense of these issues. Trying to see our lived experiences and our daily lives as part of a broader historical context. So Jeremy, as a scholar, how can we think about these issues and this current crisis from a historical perspective?

Jeremy Suri: So Zachary, first of all, your poem was wonderful.

Zachary Suri: Thank you.

Jeremy Suri: What it captured, I think was a historical truth which is that all periods in human history are characterized by moments of epidemic disease. Diseases and epidemics arise throughout human history because of the nature of our planet, but also because of the nature of human society. The diseases and pandemics that we confront at different times are manifestations of the vulnerabilities in our society. What do we focus on and what do we not focus on? What we’re seeing here, today with the coronavirus, is an old story. A story of infection and contagion, related to interactions between human beings that had not been thought through in terms of their hygiene and in terms of the control of those interactions. This particular virus began in a city in China, but it quickly spread. It spread not because the virus was so virulent, there have been many virulent viruses in our history, but because our global society was not properly prepared to manage the spread of this virus. It is the weakness of our international institutions and the weakness of our health institutions in modern global societies, that those weaknesses are being exposed by this virus today. You could say the same for prior epidemics and prior disease vectors in our society.

Zachary Suri: Yeah. You talked about these health institutions and in many ways, the breakdown of modern health institutions in the country. But how do we think about this breakdown of logistics from a political point of view and about the implications of this crisis for American politics?

Jeremy Suri: Well, there are many different modes of politics. We have been in a mode of politics in the United States and in other parts of the world that’s been very conflict-focused over the last at least 4-5 years, if not longer. Conflict leads one and leads societies to focus upon areas of immediate threat, not long-term threat. For a long time, scholars and medical experts have been telling us that these pandemics, first of all, are part of human history and have always been a part of human history, and they’ve been pointing to many of the risks that had been exposed right now; insufficient information about these issues, insufficient health care training, insufficient beds, insufficient respirators. All of this has been known, but our politicians, not just in the United States, but particularly in the United States, have been focused on the immediate sources of conflict, wars in Iraq, partisanship in our society, and have discounted these long-term threats. It’s very similar to what we confront with global climate change, where we know there are more climate disasters awaiting, but we have not found the political will to focus on. We’ve been in a moment of short-term political focus on conflict, not long-term public interest. I hope that changes with this crisis right now.

Zachary Suri: Yeah. You often like to talk about longer historical trends. How will we look back on this moment in the context of a broader history of our country in a few decades?

Jeremy Suri: It depends a bit on what we do through this crisis and what happens afterwards. But I think it’s quite clear we will look back on this moment as a wakeup call. A wake-up call to those who didn’t believe this was possible again. We might call it the revenge of history. Maybe we can tell that story every year in a different way. But it’s the revenge of history because these are the oldest forms of threats to human health and existence. We are ill-prepared as modern and as advanced as we are. We’re ill-prepared because we’ve taken our eyes off the ball. We focused on the wrong things. This is a wake-up call. It’s a wake-up call. I think that we need new leaders, leaders who are attentive and familiar with these issues. We need a new definition of citizenship. Citizenship can’t be about aggregating and acquiring everything that I want for myself. That’s how we have a shortage of toilet paper today. Citizenship has to be about sharing and various other things. So it is a wake-up call. Now what that looks like in our future politics, we’ll have to see. But I’m quite sure that as a historian, I’ll be one of a group of people in 10 years, writing about how the coronavirus fundamentally changed citizenship and I hope for better. It will certainly change how future leaders operate. A future leader will not, in the least the next decade, will not dismiss the severity of this crisis and threat in the way that many national leaders, especially American national leaders and American governors in some cases, including in Texas, dismissed the severity of this before.

Zachary Suri: So now, as a student, as a young person in society, what is it like to live through a defining historical moment like this? Something that will look back on as a moment of important historical change?

Natalie Suri: It’s cool to think that we are living in such an important time, and just that we get to be such a big part of history and experience it firsthand. It’s also really humbling, because even though we might not be experiencing the severity of the disease, it really makes us think about how other people are affected and how it’s not really an overreaction that our schools are closed because it really hurts some people and we just have to, it really makes me notice how privileged I am.

Zachary Suri: That’s wonderful. Jeremy, what can we all do to make the most out of this crisis? To think, as Natalie just showed us, about global citizenship, about rededicating ourselves?

Jeremy Suri: Well, I think what Natalie just said was perfect. We have to all recognize that we are part of a larger social mosaic. It’s one of the themes of our podcasts, that democracy is about the connections between people. We emphasize individuality, individual rates, individual wealth acquisition. But really democracy is defined by the connections between all of us, that’s why we tried to connect by this podcasts with people. What Natalie pointed out, I think, is we have to talk about the connections among us. We are isolating ourselves, creating social distancing, doing this podcast at home rather than on campus. Not simply because we’re concerned about our health, we are concerned about the health and many other citizens. We don’t want to inadvertently carry the virus to someone else who might be more vulnerable and become more sick. When we go to the store, we want to acquire the food we need for the next week, but we don’t want to take so much that we deny it to others, it makes others more unhealthy. These are obvious things, but these are things we often don’t talk about. We need to have a conversation, and Natalie really kicked it off very well about what our responsibilities are to those around us. Then that has to carry beyond the immediacy of this moment. As citizens, when we think about taxation, why do we pay taxes?

When we think about supporting schools, when we think about recycling and trying to do things to protect our environment, we need to think more deeply about how our actions interact with others and what kinds of leaders, what kinds of institutions, what kinds of people will inspire and encourage us to connect better and do things that benefit us as connected individuals in a democracy. The great leaders in our history and the history of other democracies had been alluded to inspire what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature, and the better angels of our nature is not benevolence, it’s a recognition of our interdependence and action there upon. That’s what we need to talk about now. That’s what we need to explain to our children and our colleagues and our friends. We need to think about that today for survival and think about that for tomorrow for what we hope will be a better democracy, less susceptible to viruses like these because it will be less susceptible if we’re working together in the ways we weren’t working together weeks and months ago.

Zachary Suri: This is all fine and good to talk about how we need to rebuild institutions and refocus ourselves to rebuilding democracy. But how do we ensure that this virus doesn’t spur, as in many ways 9/11 did, the decay of our institutions and a rise in xenophobia. How do we ensure that our measures to protect ourselves from such viruses don’t actually end up doing the opposite?

Jeremy Suri: Well, there’s a risk if that happens, and we’ve had certain figures, including the President of United States encouraging xenophobia in that way. That’s in some way a very common historical reaction. Democrats and Republicans historically have been responsible for that. When there’s a threat, it’s very easy to blame someone else and makes us feel good, and closing borders, locking people out often seems like a satisfying way to try to make oneself secure. In this case, we’ve closed the barn door after the horses already left the barn. The virus has already arrived in the United States. Locking people out of the country is not going to solve the problem. There might be something we need to do in the context of other measures. But let’s be clear, this virus, like other viruses, like the plague in the Middle Ages, it’s not foreign, it is a domesticated element. It is something that has come to our society but now become a problem within our society, it’s not a foreign threat.

The way we avoid xenophobia, the way we bring out the better angels of our nature, is for us to emphatically understand, reject, and educate ourselves against that kind of thinking. I think there is a historical tendency to want to blame others. It’s important for us, just as Natalie was saying, to talk about our interdependence and make that the center of the issue. We have to do that because that’s the only way in the short run to make ourselves healthier. Blaming others is not going to make us healthier, and it’s the only way in the long run to prevent this disease from coming again. At different moments in our history, we have had leaders who have stepped forward, and have encouraged us to see our personal benefit and our common benefit in escaping xenophobia and taking ownership of the problem. Democratic citizens own their problems, they don’t blame other people for their problems.

Zachary Suri: Natalie, does this message of communal work towards rebuilding our democracy over rededication to our values, does this resonate with you and with other young people?

Natalie Suri: It resonates with me because I’ve always, like during the school year, I always feel like I don’t have enough time to do the things that are important to me. Now with the virus, we have so much time because we are at home and now schools canceled for two more weeks. So now I feel like I have more time to get ahead on my homework, which I never had before, and more time to research things that I find interesting that I didn’t have before. While it is really annoying that you can’t go to school and see your friends and stuff, it also really gets you to appreciate school and the opportunities we have there. Because it just shows you how much you miss school even though during the school year you tend to hate school because of all the work, but you actually do miss it when you’re away for it for so long.

Jeremy Suri: We focused on what’s really important, doesn’t it? That’s wonderful.

Zachary Suri: Beyond just using this time we have to rededicate ourselves to citizenship, what lessons can we draw from our experience through this crisis itself? From our experience as in many ways a nation under siege to invisible fires as I said earlier.

Jeremy Suri: Well, I think that’s the key historical question. I think in prior moments, taking the influenza epidemic of 1918, for example, the HIV/AIDS crisis that I grew up with in the United States in the 1980s when people were fearful that if anyone coughed on them in the subway in New York, they were going to get aids, of course, they weren’t, but there was fear of that. It was tied to such horrible anti-gay rhetoric and things of that. In the past, we have learned as a society in these moments that the simple statements and the simple labels that we put on problems don’t match the realities, and we’ve dedicated ourselves to being better. Growing up in the 1980s, one of the educational lessons was to be more giving and open to people who had different lifestyles, because it wasn’t their lifestyles that were the threat. In fact, it was the exclusion of them in the prejudice toward them that made the AIDS crisis worse, not better. So it’s learning that lesson. Learning not to be altruistic, but learning to move beyond the labels that we use to differentiate and point blame, labels that actually make these problems much worse. Let’s take that for exactly where we are today. Calling this someone else’s problem, saying this only affects other people and not us, left us unprepared. Instead of thinking in January when we saw this terrible virus arise in Asia, instead of getting involved with helping those countries and also preparing ourselves, thinking it was someone else’s problem, blaming someone else, opened us now, as was the case in the 1980s with AIDS, to threats and damages that were not necessary.

So the historical lesson is that preparation is not about militarism. Preparation is about being willing to trust the science, look carefully at the science, and build institutions around that that’ll allow us to adjust. Democracy has its strength and its ability to adjust and adapt to new challenges, not to deny them. I think we’re seeing that today with our election system. Some of our primaries will have to be adjusted in their dates. Some of our school closures will require adjustments in how we educate people. That’s what we do in a democracy, and that’s the strength of this moment. If we’re able to do that and better serve our values by adjusting. We’ve been too rigid. We have stayed stuck within our ways of thinking and our existing institutions and poorly served our values as a consequence, rather than adjusting our institutions to better serve our values. If we become a more flexible, resilient society, we have learned the right lessons from this moment.

Zachary Suri: Yeah. That’s wonderful. I think really in this moment of crisis, we all need to rededicate ourselves to these values and to the people that matter most to us. This virus really gives us the opportunity to do just that. But I still think that most importantly, this moment offers us the opportunity to see the impact of our daily lives and lived experiences on a global and historical scale. That’s really what this podcast is about. Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you, Natalie, and thank you for joining us for this episode of This is Democracy.

MALE 1: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

MALE 2: The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lumpy, and you can find this music at harrisonlumpy.com.

FEMALE 1: Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday featuring new perspectives on democracy.