"Doubt and Skepticism"

 Friday’s disastrous meeting in the White House is a reminder of how doubt and skepticism can help us observers, and our political leaders. Certainly, there was enough blame for each of the three participants – President Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Vice President J.D. Vance – to take a share. Besides watching a re-run of the events on YouTube, I read twenty interpretations of the afternoon’s events, from all perspectives. Yet, I am still unsure how best to allocate blame. It is common knowledge that Mr. Trump is thin-skinned and likes to be praised. Mr. Zelensky is stubborn and theatrical – look at how he dresses. Mr. Vance is smart but immature, at least in matters of diplomacy.

 

All three made mistakes in that Oval Office meeting, but especially, in my opinion, Mr. Vance. He should have kept quiet. In debate or argument, Mr. Trump, right or wrong, does not need defending. He often digs himself into a hole, but just as often extracts himself. Mr. Zelensky would have been better served to have kept quiet, not argue with Mr. Vance, and let the offered deal play out. Mr. Trump, as everyone knows, shoots from the hip, but he is also quick to walk back what he has said. I feel confident he knows that Putin is a dictator and that Zelensky is not. Was he wrong to imply otherwise? Of course. But did Mr. Zelensky believe he could win over Mr. Trump by publicly disagreeing with him and his Vice President? It would seem so. Contrast Mr. Zelensky’s behavior with that of Emanuel Macron and Keir Starmer when they met with Mr. Trump.

 

Nevertheless, there is doubt in my mind as to who bears most responsibility.

 

I hope you find this essay of interest.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Doubt and Skepticism”
March 3, 2025

 

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect

confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

                                                                                                                                Robert Hughes (1938-2012)

                                                                                                                                Australian author & art critic

                                                                                                                                “Modernism’s Patriarch”

                                                                                                                                Time Magazine, June 10, 1996

 

“Our doubts are traitors and cause us to miss

the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” 

                                                                                                                                Lucio speaking to Isabella

                                                                                                                                Measure for Measure, 1604

                                                                                                                                William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

 

As the two epigraphs infer, doubt is personal. In her Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, the American poet wrote “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” On the other hand, in The Selected Letters of Tennessee Wiliams, the playwright is quoted: “I don’t believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work…”

 

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Doubt, including self-doubt, and skepticism are not synonymous but are related. Doubt can be defined as uncertainty regarding one’s abilities (as Lucio infers). It also serves as questioning one’s judgement (as Robert Hughes suggests). It is intuitive, reflecting a lack of knowledge, as Thomas wanted proof of Jesus’ resurrection. On the other hand, a skeptic is one with an open mind who questions the truth of something stated or alleged, or at least who defers judgement until more facts are available.

 

This is not to argue that belief in one’s self is uncommon. When a youth, I was not skeptical about much and had few self-doubts. Many of us were raised on the American folktale, The Little Engine that Could. Theodore Roosevelt, allegedly, expressed a similar sentiment: “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” All good advice, so long as it does not morph into cockiness, arrogance, or conceit. As I grew older, I read and thought more, I became more skeptical. I recall, when a teenager, the president of a brokerage firm who told me that the longer he worked in the business the less he felt he knew about finance.

 

Self-doubt is often a positive. Fyodor Dostoevsky struggled with doubt. In an 1855 letter to his friend Natalya Fonvizina, he wrote: “…the mind which does not labor will wither.”[1]Recently, I had a conversation with an old school friend, now living in Denver, and told him of my struggle with this essay. He reminded me of “Pascal’s Wager”[2] – that even if one cannot definitively prove the existence of God, it is better to believe in Him, as the potential benefits outweigh the risks of being wrong. Believe you can do it, he said.

 

But it is for our political environment I am most concerned, where skepticism has been overwhelmed by a tidal wave of hubris. In a 1901 letter to the Swiss professor of Greek and history Jost Winteler, the 22-year-old Albert Einstein wrote: “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” In our hyper politically-polarized world, neither doubt nor skepticism is widely extant. Instead there is an attitude of “either you’re with me or you’re against me.” This fractionalization has set brother against brother and friend against friend. Conservative students are hesitant about speaking out. In schools and universities, speech that is deemed “harmful” is disallowed. The dogmatism of progressives on the left and ardent Trump supporters on the right are notably void of skepticism.

 

At the risk of widening even further the gulf between conservatives and progressives, I place most (but not all) of the blame on progressives. Certainly, there are some on the right who don MAGA hats, pump fists in the air and, incoherently, raise their voices for Mr. Trump. However, most on the left do not just disagree with Donald Trump, they hate him, and they let hatred drive their responses; reason falls victim to emotion. In part, their aversion to Mr. Trump lies in his muddled syntax. Like Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter, Mr. Trump speaks in unintelligible riddles. Whether he is negotiating a deal, reflecting whomever he most recently spoke to, or speaking from ignorance, I don’t pretend to know. But I suspect he is neither as stupid nor as uncompassionate as he sometimes sounds. His opponents would be wise to let skepticism replace their instinct for immediate condemnation. 

 

We witness this arrogant audacity from media disciples of both parties, especially on televised cable evening news programs, podcasts and video-sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and Twitch. Social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) make it easier for viewers to limit their news to only that with which they agree. Do Rachel Maddow or Jesse Waters ever have moments of doubt, of questioning their loudly proclaimed ideologies? 

 

There are, of course, situations when conviction should be paramount – love for family, belief in freedom, and faith in God. “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think,” said Christopher Robin to Pooh. But generally, skepticism is healthy and doubt drives creativity.

 

True conservatives tend to be skeptics. In 1967, the prescient Daniel Patrick Moynihan was invited to speak to the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa: “Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.” Conservatives are concerned of the power that accrues to political leaders and for the tendency of the state to expand inexorably. This concern is not only because of the difficulty of paying for ever more programs, but because such growth threatens individualism, the bed-rock of conservative thought. Doubt and skepticism are generally associated with reflection, not spontaneity.

 

“Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind” are words attributed to educator John Dewey. Like chastity, as the philosopher George Santayana is alleged to have once said, it [skepticism] should not be relinquished too readily. Truth (the holy grail of the skeptic) is illusive, perhaps never to be discovered; it is the search that is important.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] As quoted by Gary Saul Morson, professor of Slavic languages at Northwestern University, in the February 28 issue of The Wall Street Journal.

[2] Blaise Pascal, 17^th Century French philosopher.

"The Durham Report and History"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Durham Report and History”

May 30, 2023

 

“Who controls the past controls the future.

Who controls the present controls the past.”

                                                                                                                                George Orwell (1903-1950)

                                                                                                                                Nineteen-Eighty-Four, 1949

 

In his 1982 story of a small Irish village, Passing the Time in Ballymenone, American historian Henry Glassie (1941-) wrote: “History is not the past but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view…” All histories reflect the author. But good historians account for that, differentiating between actual events and their personal opinions. The Founding Fathers were conscious of history when they selected Washington as the capital of the new United States in 1790. It was a “federal enclave,” separate from both the commercial/industrial north and the agrarian south. It was not beholden to one party or one faction.

 

However, over time, as its bureaucracy increased and as public sector unions took sway, Washington changed; so that today in the District, according to the Pew Research Center, Democrat registrations, among federal government employees, outnumber Republican registrations two to one. While the leaders of Washington’s agencies reflect whichever party is in power, permanent federal government employees are, on balance, sympathetic to the Democrat Party. 

 

The purpose of the Durham Report was to shine light on nefarious attempts to affect the outcome of the 2016 election – to address the widely accepted view that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to affect the outcome of the Presidential election that year. It also offers an alternative (and more accurate) perspective on subsequent efforts to undermine Mr. Trump’s Presidency. The Report details how the nation’s premier investigatory and intelligence services, in cooperation with the Clinton campaign, falsely implicated Mr. Trump as having colluded with Vladimir Putin to sway the election.   

 

While unsurprising to those of us skeptical of accusations of Russia collusion on the part of the Trump campaign in 2016, findings in the Report should concern all Americans. The idea that a few senior officials in Washington’s intelligence services would try to influence the outcome of a Presidential election campaign should send shivers up the spines of anyone who believes in our Constitution and the democratic process. I recognize there are those who believe Donald Trump was and is so vile a person that any means to keep him from office were and are justifiable, but that line of thinking leads to totalitarianism. 

 

Like many at the time, I was skeptical that Mr. Putin would prefer the mercurial Mr. Trump, a man he did not know as a politician, to a woman he did know and with whom he had dealt. The accusation, on its face, seemed absurd. What we did not know, and what the Durham Report tells us, is the extent to which leaders in Washington’s intelligence bureaucracy would go to provide federal support for one Party’s candidate. 

 

Forty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously wrote in The Washington Post: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  But facts can be misconstrued, mislabeled, or falsified. “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes truth,” is a law of propaganda, something known to psychologists as an “illusion of truth.” The Durham Report did not include indictments, but I suspect Special Counsel John Durham was concerned first with preventing another illicit attempt to use government employees to affect an election, but also with how history would recall the 2016 election and its aftermath. The Country does not need to be divided any further than it already is.

 

In a recent article for the Manhattan Institute, on a different subject, Zach Goldberg and Eric Kaufman wrote as to how facts can be “framed or contextualized” to increase political polarization. Compare, for example, mainstream media’s reporting on January 6 to their reports on Russian collusion. Both January 6 and the Russian collusion were undemocratic and violated the spirit of the Constitution, if not its actual principles. But one was performed in the open, for all to see. The other was done in secret, with falsified documents and lies to Congress. The January 6 riot was an illicit, but ridiculous unarmed attack on the Capital. It was not an insurrection, as the media likes to call it. The rioters were unarmed and there were no political or military leaders. The Capital police were armed, with one policeman shooting and killing an unarmed woman as she climbed through a window. The attack had no chance of succeeding. The best barometer we have to measure any shock to the nation is the stock market, an impartial assessor. On January 5^th, 2021, the Dow Jones Industrial Averages (DJIA) closed at 30,391.60. On January 6, they closed at 30,829.40, up 1.4%. On the 7^th, they rose again to 31,041.13. A week later they closed at 31,060.47.  In contrast, following the attacks on 9/11, markets were shuttered. When they re-opened six days later, the DJIA declined by 7.1%. On December 8, 1941, the Monday after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the DJIA closed down 3.5%. 

 

Yet prosecution of the January 6 participants proceeds. While participants in the Russian collusion are enriching themselves, giving speeches and selling books, more than a thousand January 6 rioters have been charged, with some languishing in jail without due process. The contrast is stark between Merrick Garland who weaponized the Justice Department and Special Counsel John Durham who chose not to indict those who had misused their power and position to pursue a false story. One abetted a polarized nation; the other helped soothe differences. What will history say?

 

The biggest scourge that faces us is not January 6 or even the Russian collusion hoax – it is wokeness, with its attack on free speech and its confiscation of the English language. It has polarized and bifurcated our nation. We need the healing that Mr. Durham offered, not the lies and the salt-in-the-wound that is the preference of Mr. Garland and minions like Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney. In Reason and Common Sense, George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Not knowing John Durham, I cannot be certain of his intent, but the consequence of his Report, as I see it, is an attempt to set the record straight as to exactly what happened and who truly colluded with Russia during the summer of 2016, and to prevent such iniquitous activities in the future. Durham did not seek retribution. He provided the nation with an honest rendering of the facts. Let history be the judge.

"Parents and Schools"

 Whether the current Administration is the most corrupt in the history of our nation, I leave to those better qualified to decide. But, as we know from the influence peddling of Hunter Biden and the recent revelations of Merrick Garland’s son-in-law’s business ties to the teaching of critical race theory, there is no question as to its corruption.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Parents and Schools”

October 16, 2021

 

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

                                                                                            Terry McAuliffe

                                                                                            Democrat gubernatorial candidate, Virgini

                                                                                            September 29, 2021, in debate with Glenn Youngkin

 

“Regardless of family background, students whose parents are involved in their

schooling are more likely to have higher grades and test scores, attend school

regularly, have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school.”

                                                                                        National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education, 2006

 

Terry McAuliffe was correct in the sense that it would be impossible for a school to design individual syllabuses for each child. Nevertheless, the input of parents should be sought, not denied. As the NCPIE (quoted above) expressed, when parents do take an active interest in the education of their children they achieve higher grades, gain better social skills and more easily adapt to school.

 

It was once rare for any American of any political persuasion to deny the importance of parents in the education of their children. As educator and author Dorothy H. Cohen (1915-1979) once observed. “No school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children’s best interests.” Now, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s weaponization of the Justice Department has put that partnership at risk. In response to a letter to President Biden from the National School Boards Association, which likened parents’ protests to acts of domestic terror, Mr. Garland said he would use the Patriot Act against those parents who have “threatened” school boards for the teaching of critical race theory-type themes, adopting NEA New Business Item 39[1], cancelling history and tradition, distributing sexually explicit curricular materials, and allowing transgender bathrooms.

 

Violence against any person, including school board members, is a crime, but disallowing dissenting voices of parents is a violation of their First Amendment rights. As for the rights of public schools to teach what they choose, consider Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2011 dissent in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants: “The ‘freedom of speech’ as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors without going through the minors’ parents or guardians.” To arbitrarily ignore parents’ concerns is what one would expect of a totalitarian regime more interested in indoctrination than education, not from the world’s foremost and oldest constitutional republic. 

 

In America, education flourished when it emphasized the basic elements or reading, writing and arithmetic, and, as students progressed, when it encouraged skepticism, inquiry and empiricism. Unfortunately, public school education today de-emphasizes education in favor of equity, to achieve graduation rates that reflect the racial composition of the student body. Standardized tests have been eliminated. The Regent Exams in New York have been watered down over the years, and in 2019 a commission was established to potentially eliminate the exams as a requirement for high school graduation. In this past year, New York’s Mayor de Blasio ordered the elimination of the city’s gifted and talented programs. In Oregon, Governor Kate Brown signed a bill ending a requirement that high school students prove they are proficient in reading, writing and math before they are granted diplomas. 

 

This dumbing down of educational standards is being done in the name of social justice, as the claim is that standardized tests are unfair to racial minorities and people of color. The sad thing is that those are the very people who have benefitted by such programs. In a list of the top ten secondary schools around the world attended by Nobel recipients over the past one hundred and twenty years, five are in the United States, four are in France and one in England. Of the five in the United States, four are elite public high schools in New York City. Historically, these schools have accepted the brightest students, regardless of race or color. While the student bodies of these schools may not be representative of the population, they reflect a truism that progressives do not acknowledge – that while people are equal in rights and under the law, they are not and never will be equal in abilities or aspirations. If there are too few blacks admitted to these elite high schools that is the fault of their elementary and middle schools, not of the tests. To claim otherwise suggests innate racial differences, which I do not believe to be true, and neither do the parents of these children, which can be seen in their demand for more charter schools and vouchers.

 

Wealthy parents, which include most members of Congress and a substantial number of the Washington bureaucracy, do not have to engage in heated discussions with local school boards, as they have options. If they do not like a school’s curriculum, they can move to a different district or enter their child in a private school. Poorer parents, regardless of race and especially those in inner cities and in rural areas, do not have that option; so, if they see or hear something of which they disapprove, they can and they should express their opinions. It is their duty as a parent.

 

The decline of the nuclear family has adversely affected all children, as it pertains to education Aristotle wrote that the family is nature’s established association for the supply of mankind’s everyday wants. In 1995, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was asked what was the biggest change he had seen over his 40-year career. He responded: “The biggest change, in my judgment, is that the family structure has come apart all over the North Atlantic world.” In the April 24, 2012 edition of The New York Times, William Bennett, former secretary of education, wrote: “The family is the linchpin of society, both economically and socially.”

 

Yet traditional family formations have been in decline for over half a century. According to PEW Research, 64% of all children today – those under age 18 – live in married two-parent households. In 1960 that number was 88%. According to the CDC, four out of every ten children today are born to unwed mothers. The statistics for black children are more devastating. In 1965, 24% of black children were born to unwed mothers. By 2018, according to the National Vital Statistics Report, 69% of black children were born out of wedlock. Because of the effects such births have on poverty and education, reasons for this decline should be investigated by a bi-partisan panel. One consequence, as it affects education, is that school boards, unions and teachers have accrued power at the expense of parents.

 

Schools should teach history and civics with honesty and without bias, while keeping historical actions taken and words written within the context of time and place. Like a nation, schools do not have to be perfect to be good. But they should not teach discriminatory policies, treat children as other than their biological selves, or alienate parents who only want what is best for their children. Morally and ethically, this is the right path to follow.

 

 

 

 

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[1] The NEA New Business Item states: “The NEA will provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or the 1619 project.”

"Truth or Consequences"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Truth or Consequences?”

June 1, 2020

“Who ya gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”

                                                                                    Chico Marx (1887-1961)

                                                                                    “Duck Soup,” 1933

Truth or Consequences was a long-running American game show, originally hosted by Ralph Edwards. If the contestant could not complete the “truth” portion there would be “consequences,” generally an embarrassing stunt. In 1950, Ralph Edwards announced he would host a show from the first town that changed its name to Truth and Consequences. On April Fool’s Day 1950, the town of Hot Spring, New Mexico voted to become Truth and Consequences.

“Quid est veritas?”, asked Pilate of Jesus. To Christians, truth is the word of God, for whom His son Jesus bore witness. For Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the “central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society,” while the “central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

The United States is a multi-racial and multi-ethnic country. We are White, Black, Native American, Asian, Hispanic and Pacific Islanders. According to the U.S. Census, 350 languages are spoken in the U.S. We identify as Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and multiple other religions. We come (or came) from most every country in the world. Yet, despite those differences in heritage, as Americans we have fundamental interests in common. We live under a Constitution that consumes only forty-one pages, at least in my copy – a Constitution that restrains rather than enables government. We live in a country where liberty is prized above all else; where fundamental rights are guaranteed. under the rule of law. We have a government comprised of three co-equal branches, and a military to safeguard us from foreign enemies. We have police forces to carry out our state and local laws. And we have a judicial system to assure laws are adjudicated fairly and equitably, and to protect us from those in government, be they politicians, bureaucrats or police who use power for their own purposes.

It is a fundamental right that permits people to demonstrate. Protestors and rioters have responded to the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. Videos of the arrest are difficult to watch and show excessive force by the police. The four officers involved were fired, and Derek Chauvin was arrested for murder. But we live in a nation of laws, not of men or mobs. Dozens of buildings in Minneapolis were destroyed. Riots broke out across the United States, calling for an end to police brutality. People have been killed. Stores have been vandalized. Police vehicles have been burned. This has happened before, usually with the help of imported professionals:  In 2012, George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, a young black man in Sanford, Florida. Two and a half years later Eric Garner died in a chokehold by a New York policeman. A month later Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old Black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri was killed by a White police officer, Darren Wilson. One year later, in Baltimore, Freddie Gray, a young black man, died of back injuries while being transported in a police van, accompanied by six police officers. Destructive riots ensued. Hundreds of small businesses were looted and destroyed, many of them minority owned. It is understandable why members of the Black community are outraged and feel the system is rigged against them. Yet, with all its flaws, our system of justice, over time, generally reveals truth.  Burning one’s neighbor’s place of business or employment will not bring back Mr. Floyd, but justice, when properly applied, can help right wrongs.

Police brutality exists; that is reality and needs to be corrected when and where it exists. Yet it is also true that without laws and their enforcement no society can survive. How many members of the press would willingly swap jobs with an inner-city policeman or policewoman? Inequality will never disappear. There will always be wealth and privilege, and there will also always be an underclass. The important thing, in a liberal society, is social and economic mobility – an up-escalator that carries the aspirant, those dedicated to education and work. On the down-escalator are the dependent and morally corrupt, with no sense of self-worth or appreciation of the dignity a job provides.

Truths about COVID-19 are evasive. In part, because it is a novel virus, which means it is new and little about it is known, and in part because facts and science change. Yet the mantra has been: “Follow the science,” accompanied by a knowing smirk. Fatality rates are debated, as are practices like wearing masks. Of the latter, the highly praised Dr. Anthony Fauci has been ambivalent. On May 26, in an interview with America Magazine, he said they “absolutely” should be worn in church. Two days later, in an interview on CNN, he referred to masks as a symbolic gesture.

The shut-down of the economy was based on imperfect knowledge – an absence of truth – yet with severe consequences: unemployment at Depression-era levels; bankruptcies that have included oil drillers, retail outlets, restaurants, theater chains, hospitals, meatpackers, dairy farms, gyms, airlines and tens of thousands of small businesses, with more to come. Despair and loneliness have increased, as have suicides and drug usage. Despite knowing the truth of who was most vulnerable (the elderly and those with comorbidity issues), politicians in a few states like New York allowed the hospital-released, COVID-19 infected into nursing homes, where a third of all deaths have occurred. Politicians in all states shuttered schools, affecting 56 million school age children who were at little risk. Doing so has hurt their educational prospects and endangered those who rely on school meals. And everything done was “approved” by so-called experts. Absent a vaccine, COVID-19 will not be eradicated and it cannot be contained; it must be managed.

In the midst of riots and a pandemic, we should not forget how far we have come as a nation and a people. To most, a hundred years is a long time, but in the life span of mankind it is a short period. The discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming was the beginning of the antibiotic revolution. It was in 1953 that Dr. Jonas Salk produced a vaccine against polio, a year after 3,000 children died from the disease. The U.S. Armed Forces were segregated during World War II. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. My generation was the first to raise children without fear of diseases like smallpox, tuberculosis and polio. My generation was the first to serve in an integrated Armed Forces. Real GDP per capita has increased three-fold over the past seventy years, while life expectancy has risen by ten years. While we are not perfect and there are those who are evil, we are a compassionate people. As a percent of GDP, Americans give four times what Europeans do to charities.  As a nation, the success we have had is due to the government our Founding Father’s bequeathed us, the capitalist system which promoted the innovation that enriched us, and a culture of self-reliance, liberty, respect for personal property and the rule of law and an intolerance for racism. We owe it to ourselves and to one another to encourage a culture that is gender and colorblind as regards justice, but also one that promotes respect, decency and civility. Vincit omnia veritas.

In last weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins wrote: “The vision of a people marching in the same direction, the same song in their hearts, is a fascist vision. It’s the societal ideal of North Korea.” That is not America. The American people can accept truth, and they can take the consequences when dealt with honestly, whether the subject is police brutality or a pandemic.