No One Wants a Pandemic Amnesty. That's a Mistake.
No One Wants a Pandemic Amnesty. That's a Mistake.
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Nazis in the dock during the Nuremberg Trials
Hell hath no fury like the Terminally Online and Outraged who’ve been told it might be time to forgive their enemies. Yesterday, Emily Oster – one of our leading economists – offered a hopeful suggestion in the pages of the Atlantic: Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty.
“We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID,” the essay begins. It is a modest proposal, and not in the Swiftian sense. Oster, who has charted a difficult middle-ground position on COVID restrictions since the beginning, admits she was wrong about various things (like universal masking, wiping down groceries, and the wisdom of closing schools.). She points out that both minimizers and alarmists have also been proven mistaken since 2020. Perhaps, she suggests, we should remember that “most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.” Let’s let bygones be bygones and stop digging in our heels.
The response was predictable. Both alarmists and minimizers – the former tagged as “COVIDians,” the latter “COVIDiots” by their respective foes — insisted that they were not interested in peace talks. “Hell No,” declared the center-right National Review, citing the appalling suspension of civil liberties by blue-state governors. (A state of emergency remains in California, and will until at least February 2023.)
The left, still outraged at the end of mask mandates in most places, still desperately afraid of Long COVID, regards Oster’s proposal with equal if not greater contempt. This tweet from an influential figure with 412,000 followers got thousands of likes and retweets, and sums up the response of those who think our collective response to the pandemic has been too mild. (Many of these folks wish we were doing more to follow the Chinese example).
I’m not writing today about COVID policy. My instincts are with those who think we locked down too long and too hard; I oppose mandates. At the same time, I do not think those who enforced mandates and lockdowns are power-mad autocrats. I trust that they are still doing the best they can with the information they have, even if I think they are massively overreaching. I do not think bad policies are always made by bad people.
Both those who think we did too much to combat COVID and those who think we did too little agree: it is too soon to talk of forgiveness. Over and over again one theme rises in the deluge of scornful tweets and angry thinkpieces that followed Oster’s proposal: no amnesty without accountability. We need the other side to admit they were wrong! We need the other side to apologize abjectly! We need to see policy changes first, either in the form of a massive increase in funding for COVID response, or a permanent injunction against mandates and the closure of schools and businesses.
We are a people raised on stories of the Nuremberg Trials and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Almost all of you are too young to remember the first, and most of you have only a vague image of an anguished Desmond Tutu presiding over the second, but these two events have shaped our sense of how peace is made after a great harm was done. No one gets forgiven without asking for forgiveness; admitting error is a prerequisite for restoration or pardon.
The public found it satisfying to watch defiant Nazis sent to the gallows. They found it satisfying to watch the architects of apartheid break down in tears (real or feigned) before the reconciliation commission. Nazism and apartheid were, to slightly understate things, bad ideas that were beaten on the literal and figurative battlefields. The hangman and the jailer dealt with the defeated. And wasn’t it sweet that they did!
My friends on the left are desperate to see Donald Trump perp-walked into prison. My friends on the right are eager to see a tearful Hunter Biden led away in handcuffs. Both groups look back at what has transpired since March 2020 and are enraged. Too much was done! Too few were saved! The neglect was criminal! The lockdowns were fascism! Each side, raised on the narratives of Nuremberg and Cape Town, is certain that if they just dig in their heels and fight a bit harder, a final victory can be won and the other side will surrender. Either Gavin Newsom or Ron DeSantis will end up in the dock, confessing either fascist overreach or reckless neglect.
The great problem of our contemporary age is that we are all addicted to triumphalist fantasies. We’re convinced that our enemies are literal Nazis who can be defeated on the battlefield, and that it’s surely only a matter of time until those we despise end up trapped in a bunker in Berlin, Palm Beach, or Pacific Heights. Once defeated, there can be no quarter for those who peddled the lies! After all, we are still hunting down the tiny handful of still-living centenarian Nazi camp guards. We wheel their desiccated and bewildered frames into German courtrooms to face overdue accountability, and no one questions that justice holds it must be so. So too we must hunt down every last trafficker of untruths!
Okay, that’s a smidge of hyperbole. But the overall point stands: too many of us think we can defeat the other side. Too many of us are convinced that the alternative to total victory is the destruction of everything we hold dear, so we press on, infuriated at the grotesquely premature discussion of amnesty and forgiveness.
Next Tuesday is the midterm election. A modest prediction: there will not be a huge wave either way. The GOP may or may not take back Congress, but if they do, they will not have massive majorities. We will remain a bitterly divided nation, and too many partisans will remain stubbornly convinced that the election results mean only that we must redouble our efforts to free this great nation from the grip of the wicked. No one will seriously talk about coming together, or compromise. Would you have compromised* with Adolf Hitler in early 1945, when his overthrow was surely at hand? Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with His heel!
You may not like Emily Oster’s centrism on COVID. You may not like the idea of granting an amnesty to those who have not yet admitted they were wrong. But I assure you, the final victory of which you dream is a dangerous, childish fantasy, fed by Hollywood movies and misremembered history. The other side isn’t going anywhere, and neither is yours. The only decision now is whether you will support a call for grace, or a call for blood. The third option — that sweet victory of Good over Evil — will not come, and we smother our present happiness and our children’s future by believing it possible.
* A couple of people have read this as my suggesting we should have struck a deal with Hitler in early 1945. That’s not what I am arguing — rather, both sides tend to think of their ideological opponents as being literal Nazis, or the moral equivalent, and thus impossible with which to compromise.