2020 INTRODUCTION | Contagion and Community

It has become an unfortunate and trite truism that these are ‘unprecedented times.’ Henry Kissinger lent that phrase some appropriate gravitas recently, when he wrote that the COVID-19 crisis recalls to mind his time with the 84th Infantry Division at the Battle of the Bulge. “Now, as in late 1944,” Kissinger intoned, “there is a sense of inchoate danger, aimed not at any particular person, but striking randomly and with devastation.”1

For those whose memories may not stretch as far back as Dr. Kissinger’s, the present Coronavirus crisis may call to mind more recent dislocations: 9-11 and the Financial Crisis. After the attacks of September 11th, 2001, we were forced to conclude that “over there” was “over here”—and that there is no retreating from the world. This inspired a pervasive sense of vulnerability and the concomitant priority of increased vigilance regarding “them.”2 It was against this backdrop that the events of the Financial Crisis played out. Not yet a decade after 9-11, in 2008 we were made sharply aware that everything everywhere touches everything everywhere. ‘Globalization’ meant that vague and impersonal economic ‘contagion effects’ triggered deeply personal and lasting economic consequences. This, in turn, has shaped much of our current political tenor.