The new coronavirus pandemic is affecting our daily lives in many unexpected ways. We are particularly trying to understand why some people are not heeding official advice about social isolation. I believe this relates to a particular kind of political malady that has been emerging in recent years – something we might call “crisis fatigue”.
After two decades that have almost been defined by wave upon wave of crises, it’s possible that the public has simply become immune to warnings from politicians and habitually distrustful of their claims.
I propose that crisis fatigue is a sociopolitical condition. It’s the tiredness that comes as result of the constant fear associated with repeated warnings about crisis, disaster or catastrophe. It also refers to the weakening of political or other social structures caused by repeated narratives of impending doom. That is, falling levels of trust in politicians, political institutions and political processes as a succession of crises gradually saps the public’s confidence that their representatives actually have the ability to respond.
There’s no doubt that Covid-19 represents a global health pandemic. Its implications for older and vulnerable people are stark. It feels like a war without a conventional enemy. There is a certain fearfulness and uncertainty “out there” which is itself almost tangible. Nevertheless, there continues to be a problem with people not taking seriously the advice to stay indoors.
It’s hardly surprising that politicians and senior officials are responding with exasperated frustration. And yet I can’t help wondering if part of the problem is that the notion of crisis has simply become the new normal, particularly for millennials. Life for them must be a bit like living through a Billy Bragg song: “Crisis after crisis, with such intensity”.
Since the millennium, they’ve survived against a backdrop of global financial crisis, mass refugee movement, violent revolutions in the Middle East, constant terror threats, a succession of global pandemics – SARS in 2003, bird flu in 2005, swine flu in 2009, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014 and now Covid in 2019. They absorb doom-laden narratives about globalisation and suffer from the growth of economic precarity. They hear about the “death” or “end” of democracy and catastrophic climate change. Is it any wonder that mental health and wellbeing services are generally discussed in crisis-laden terms?
Coronavirus brings an additional layer of pressure, strain and stress on sections of society that were already feeling anxious or were struggling to survive.
Many people now simply live in fear all the time. Life resembles a constant flow of crises and disasters – real, perceived and artificially engineered for gain. All too often this fear appears to defeat enlightenment ideas about human progress. I can’t help but think about my old friend Zygmunt Bauman and his notion of “liquid fear”:
Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when the fears that pervaded social life in the past could be left behind and human beings could at last take control of their lives and tame the uncontrolled forces of the social and natural worlds.
The sunlit uplands have turned into a fool’s paradise. We live in a state of constant anxiety about the dangers that lurk in an unattended suitcase, the rarity of snow – and now, even a cough or a sneeze. The emergence not of free, but of fearful, societies seems to be the crowning achievement of the 21st century so far.
As Ben Debney, a specialist in moral panics, has recently explained:
Crisis has long had political uses for ruling groups … elites and their intellectual courtiers often manufacture crises themselves … Where not directly complicit themselves in the process of engineering crises for political purposes, elites and their ideological lickspittles reveal time and time again a tenacious capacity to exploit legitimate crises. Much about the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic reflects this historical truism.
Think, for example, of US president Donald Trump’s repeated attempts to label it “a foreign virus” or “the Chinese virus”. Naomi Klein has already identified the rapid emergence of a form of “coronavirus capitalism”, whereby governments around the world are busily exploiting the crisis to push for no-strings-attached corporate bailouts and regulatory rollbacks. Winners will keep on winning and losers will just have to survive.
It’s also important to note that living in a perennial state of crisis or emergency cannot be seen as living in a free society. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has made this point with more precision than I ever could in his analysis of “the state of exception”. He believed that the tendency for governments to use crisis conditions as a justification for claiming exceptional powers for themselves has become normalised.
The bigger background question that Coronavirus highlights – and one which needs to be grappled with as soon as possible – is how we move away from a dominant “culture of crisis” and begin to nurture a more balanced and sustainable way of living together.
Opinion: Brad West been one of the sharpest critics of decriminalization
Published Apr 22, 2024 • Last updated 2 hours ago • 4 minute read
VICTORIA — Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West fired off a letter to Premier David Eby last week about Allan Schoenborn, the child killer who changed his name in a bid for anonymity.
“It is completely beyond the pale that individuals like Schoenborn have the ability to legally change their name in an attempt to disassociate themselves from their horrific crimes and to evade the public,” wrote West.
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The Alberta government has legislated against dangerous, long-term and high risk offenders who seek to change their names to escape public scrutiny.
“I urge your government to pass similar legislation as a high priority to ensure the safety of British Columbians,” West wrote the premier.
The B.C. Review Board has granted Schoenborn overnight, unescorted leave for up to 28 days, and he spent some of that time in Port Coquitlam, according to West.
This despite the board being notified that “in the last two years there have been 15 reported incidents where Schoenborn demonstrated aggressive behaviour.”
“It is absolutely unacceptable that an individual who has committed such heinous crimes, and continues to demonstrate this type of behaviour, is able to roam the community unescorted.”
Understandably, those details alarmed PoCo residents.
But the letter is also an example of the outspoken mayor’s penchant for to-the-point pronouncements on provincewide concerns.
He’s been one of the sharpest critics of decriminalization.
His most recent blast followed the news that the New Democrats were appointing a task force to advise on ways to curb the use of illicit drugs and the spread of weapons in provincial hospitals.
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“Where the hell is the common sense here?” West told Mike Smyth on CKNW recently. “This has just gone way too far. And to have a task force to figure out what to do — it’s obvious what we need to do.
“In a hospital, there’s no weapons and you can’t smoke crack or fentanyl or any other drugs. There you go. Just saved God knows how much money and probably at least six months of dithering.”
He had a pithy comment on the government’s excessive reliance on outside consultants like MNP to process grants for clean energy and other programs.
“If ever there was a place to find savings that could be redirected to actually delivering core public services, it is government contracts to consultants like MNP,” wrote West.
He’s also broken with the Eby government on the carbon tax.
“The NDP once opposed the carbon tax because, by its very design, it is punishing to working people,” wrote West in a social media posting.
“The whole point of the tax is to make gas MORE expensive so people don’t use it. But instead of being honest about that, advocates rely on flimsy rebate BS. It is hard to find someone who thinks they are getting more dollars back in rebates than they are paying in carbon tax on gas, home heat, etc.”
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West has a history with the NDP. He was a political staffer and campaign worker with Mike Farnworth, the longtime NDP MLA for Port Coquitlam and now minister of public safety.
When West showed up at the legislature recently, Farnworth introduced him to the house as “the best mayor in Canada” and endorsed him as his successor: “I hope at some time he follows in my footsteps and takes over when I decide to retire — which is not just yet,” added Farnworth who is running this year for what would be his eighth term.
Other political players have their eye on West as a future prospect as well.
Several parties have invited him to run in the next federal election. He turned them all down.
Lately there has also been an effort to recruit him to lead a unified Opposition party against Premier David Eby in this year’s provincial election.
I gather the advocates have some opinion polling to back them up and a scenario that would see B.C. United and the Conservatives make way (!) for a party to be named later.
Such flights of fancy are commonplace in B.C. when the NDP is poised to win against a divided Opposition.
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By going after West, the advocates pay a compliment to his record as mayor (low property taxes and a fix-every-pothole work ethic) and his populist stands on public safety, carbon taxation and other provincial issues.
The outreach to a small city mayor who has never run provincially also says something about the perceived weaknesses of the alternatives to Eby.
“It is humbling,” West said Monday when I asked his reaction to the overtures.
But he is a young father with two boys, aged three and seven. The mayor was 10 when he lost his own dad and he believes that if he sought provincial political leadership now, “I would not be the type of dad I want to be.”
When West ran for re-election — unopposed — in 2022, he promised to serve out the full four years as mayor.
He is poised to keep his word, confident that if the overtures to run provincially are serious, they will still be there when his term is up.
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LIVE Q&A WITH B.C. PREMIER DAVID EBY: Join us April 23 at 3:30 p.m. when we will sit down with B.C. Premier David Eby for a special edition of Conversations Live. The premier will answer our questions — and yours — about a range of topics, including housing, drug decriminalization, transportation, the economy, crime and carbon taxes. Click HERE to get a link to the livestream emailed to your inbox.
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