How 2020 changed America

From fights over masks and vaccines to the loss of social connection, the year 2020 accelerated many of the trends that were already happening in America and created new obstacles for the country to overcome. In his book 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed, sociologist Eric Klinenberg takes on a journey back to that year and everything that happened in it through the eyes of seven New Yorkers, one from each of the city's boroughs.Klinenberg, who recently delivered the Colloquium on the Environment lecture for the Penn State Sustainability Institute, joins us on Democracy Works to discuss how the pandemic accelerated political polarization and distrust in institutions in America and what we can do to repair that damage before the next pandemic or other major crisis comes our way. The book and the podcast interview allow us to see 2020—and, ultimately, ourselves—with clarity and empathy. Klinenberg is the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of Palaces for the People, Going Solo, Heat Wave, and Fighting for Air. He has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, and This American Life. He recently visited Penn State to present the 2025 Colloquium on the Environment for Penn State Sustainability; watch his lecture here.

Chris Beem
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. I'm Chris Beem.

Candis Watts Smith 
I'm Candis Watts Smith.

Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle, and welcome to Democracy Works. This week, we are talking with Eric Klinenberg, who is the Helen Gould Shepherd professor in the social sciences and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU, author of several books, including one that I love about libraries called palaces for the people. But today we're talking with him about his most recent book, 2021 city, seven people, and the year, everything changed. And this is you know, as we record this, we're about five years out from the height of the lockdowns and all of the changes that we kind of revisit with Eric in this interview, but he contends that in a lot of ways, we never we haven't really reckoned with that year, the pandemic and otherwise and we rushed To get back to the way things were, pre pandemic?

Chris Beem
Yeah. I mean, I think you we're going to have a lot of listeners who are like, what are we talking about? The pandemic for that's over, and we're glad to have it in the rear view mirror. And for Eric, that is exactly the point, exactly the problem, right? We we went, we put this all behind us way too fast. We didn't evaluate, we didn't review. We didn't think about how, how things went south and how things could have gotten better. And you know, and kind of like William Faulkner talking about the past, we haven't really put it behind us at all. It's still impacting our lives, socially and politically in some really important and negative ways.

Candis Watts Smith 
Well, I am glad that we're talking about this, and I think it's right on time last month, on March 11, that was exactly five years when the NBA announced that one of the Utah Jazz basketball players had tested positive for COVID. And like, they were like, the game is over.

Chris Beem
The season is over.

Candis Watts Smith 
And I think that was kind of like the first moment in the United States where it was like, this is a real thing, yeah, it was shocking.

Chris Beem
They were almost ready, right? They were ready to play, yeah, yeah. I was in the stadium, and they're like, forget it. It really go,

Candis Watts Smith 
Yeah, yeah, yes. And, I mean, also I remember thinking, Oh, this is gonna last like two weeks. But the thing is, is that I had been thinking this whole five years, like, when are we going to commemorate the millions of people who lost their lives during COVID In May 2020, just two months later, there was, I don't know if you Remember that New York Times spread of 100,000 names of people had died, and then it was like 250,000 and then it kind of like stopped counting. And so even in the moment, there was a way of forgetting what had happened. For many people. I mean, I have a student who I love dearly. His he's from Brazil, and his mother died of COVID, so I know that he remembers sometimes wonder what it's like for other people to act like it didn't happen when it like would have completely reshaped his life. 

Chris Beem
He didn't. I have similar and different reaction, you know, reading through his, you know, his stuff, and being reminded of these mask fights and, you know, all the terrible stuff that went on and how scary it was. We were hearing different advice and changing and, you know, I mean, there's something kind of, you know, natural about, about wanting to forget all that and and just remembering it was, was unpleasant, you know, let them, you know, let alone living through it well.

Candis Watts Smith 
I mean, let me just, I think you're right. I mean, there are, if you just kind of zoom back in your memory, there are many ugly things that happened at during that time. But I can also think about, for example, my son ended up going to school that August because we lived in State College, and I remember him like telling me about playing pool noodle tag so that they get social distance, but still play tag. Well, I had a meeting with like six friends every week for every. Week for hours, we would just sit on Zoom and talk, and I remember, you know, like, Okay, well, we're gonna go for a walk in the park, because we can't go to the gym. And I bought a bike and rode around, you know, State College, you know, and there was a so called racial reckoning, where people were reading books about whiteness and white supremacy and racial equity. And so there were things that came out of those moments that weren't bad, and we've heard things that could have been extended if we had the discipline. Remember the parts that were helpful to us but we've I mean, and I can say myself, I don't zoom with those friends every week, and I miss it, you know. But I think that end of forgetting the bad parts. We also forgot the innovations, and we forgot the things that we did well, well,

Jenna Spinelle
And I think that Eric sort of encapsulates a lot of what you just said, both in the book and in our interview, because a lot of the book is broken up into seven vignettes one person from each borough of New York City, and they encapsulate the person who ran a mutual aid network in the Bronx and a teacher in Queens and people who navigated every single aspect of this. So it is, I think, a good reminder of the range of experiences that we all went through. And also, Eric also does a lot of work on social infrastructure. And I think to what you were saying, Candace, that's maybe part of the reason why we haven't been able to keep up a lot of the innovations that happen, because we don't have outside of a crisis situation. We don't have the infrastructure to support a lot of those interactions. So as you might tell a lot to get to here. So let's go now to the interview with Eric Klinenberg. 

Jenna Spinelle
Eric Klinenberg, welcome to Democracy Works. Thanks for joining us today. 

Eric Klinenberg
It's good to be here. Thank you. 

Jenna Spinelle
So I was just before we got on this call going back through the last few pages of your most recent book, which is all about 2020, and you end that book, sort of musing about what the year 2020 might bring for the future and the pandemic as a gateway from one world to the next, imagining something better. But as we sit here in early 2025 it feels to me, in some ways, like we're moving back to a pre pandemic world, instead of moving forward to something that's that's different, I guess. I wonder how you are thinking about that, that question from the end of the book, as we record today.

Eric Klinenberg
Yeah, well, you're right to say that there was the possibility of having the pandemic turned into a portal to a better world. But I think the note I end on and the book came out in 2024 and the paperback was just released recently. I think the note I end on is that does not appear to be where we're headed. It appears that we're headed to something that is, in some ways, I think, worse than where we were, but before 2020 and certainly at this moment in the US, to me, it feels much more dangerous, and the reason in part, is because we've really refused to look seriously at what happened during 2020 I believe so much of what happened in the US in 2024 including the Election, was fostered by our will not to know about what we experienced, about why the cascading crises of 2020 were so much worse than they had to have been. And I think our refusal to reckon with what we lived through has, I can't say it faded us to this precarious state, but it certainly made it much more likely now with the kind of attack on the idea of public health and the institutions of public health that we've relied upon for so long, I you know, my concerns about what could happen with an avian flu outbreak or whatever the next health crisis is are really quite profound. So I, in a way, I think we'll all soon have nostalgia for 2019, every indication at the moment is that things are really things are really going downhill fast,

Jenna Spinelle
Well, and on that point about polarization, you know, we talk about it a lot on this show, but it's usually sort of, you know, looking looking back or, you know, looking across different different trends and things. But you and some of the graduate students and researchers. Since you work with you really observed it in real time, both in in social media and also in some of the stories that you tell, the interviews that you did. So let's start with the social media piece. You spent a lot of time in both left and right leaning Facebook groups, probably to the detriment of your own mental health. Tell us about some of the things that that you saw in the ways that you saw polarization playing out in those areas.

Eric Klinenberg
Well, I mean, I guess the fundamental thing I would say is that while you might think that there was some shared experience of this pandemic threat in what what happened in social media is that people effectively lived through different pandemics. The you know, the meaning of these events varied so much, and it just became so clear as you looked at the conversations in different kinds of Facebook groups. So, you know, on the right, this clearly represented a problem, a health threat, that was quickly exaggerated by the Democratic Party and the left more generally, so that they could assert control over the American people and impose their values and ideas about freedom and redistribution of goods and equity on a country that other would not otherwise would not accept it, and they were quite attuned to what they thought were exaggerations of the threat and to the introduction of new policy programs that they thought were, you know, would not otherwise have been popular. They looked out for the hypocrisies of Democratic leaders, and those were used to illustrate just clearly what a, you know, what a political ploy this was. So, for instance, when Gavin Newsom very affluent and increasingly powerful governor in California who had emerged as a major voice against President Trump at the time, when Gavin Newsom was discovered, you know, eating with a group of friends at one of America's most expensive restaurants, the French Laundry in Napa, as he asked other Californians to avoid restaurants and close them down. The you know, this just was seen as real evidence that the Democratic Party was was not serious, that that, that it could not be trusted when Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, was discovered to have suppressed the numbers on the mortality and morbidity in nursing homes across the state, you know, this was again seized upon As evidence of, you know, of a lack of integrity, and so if you followed the, you know, the Facebook conversations for people on the right of that, that was the real story of the pandemic, and China was also a perpetrator. World Health Organizations were seen as to be sources of skepticism. Over time, as the pandemic went on, you could see a lot of skepticism about vaccines and that that's very interesting, because I would say, if there are any, there any great policy successes that came from the Trump administration during the pandemic, it was operational warp speed. And you know, you could easily imagine a scenario where, you know, like, instead of calling them Pfizer and moderna, we called the vaccines Ivana and Ivanka. And you know that every time you got a shot there was you got a Trump band aid. You know, right? Like they the right could have celebrated that achievement, but, but the President didn't do that for reasons we could get into and and so that that meant that, you know, vaccine skepticism, skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry, of the medical science leadership in this country, as We know from the criticisms of Dr Fauci, you know, brought rose to the temple,

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, watching videos of mask confrontations and people in in public spaces, on airplanes and restaurants. You know, public transportation, yeah, having these fights and you know, we can all remember stories of, yeah, in in stores, and all kinds of places where these things bubbled up.

Eric Klinenberg
Well, yeah, I mean, you're pointing to the fact that this had a big online life as well. It really did. There's a while where this was like the, one of the key sources of entertainment for Americans, like, why? You know, watching the crazy videos of people beating the crap out of each other, you know, in grocery stores, in. Parks, on airplanes, you know, wherever they encountered one another. I think what was so fascinating was the the way in which we, collectively, in the United States, transform the mask from this, like, you know, thin piece of cloth, into this incredible symbol that carried the weight of all of our political ideology, and I think that happened again, in part, because of the kind of dysfunction of president, President Trump's leadership at the time. So what we quickly learned is that that was not a lightly held view that in his administration, he let it be known that, you know, anyone wearing a mask would be seen as cowardly. You know, afraid feminine, not masculine and strong and brave, and nobody wears masks, and like very famously, Mike Pence, the Vice President, goes to the Mayo Clinic, where you go to get care. If you know the doctors where you live can't figure out what's wrong with you and really need to come up with a better diagnosis and a better treatment. Very sick people are there, and pence refuses to wear a mask in this facility where everyone patients, doctors, nurses, janitors, restaurant workers, everyone is wearing a mask. And he's photographed that way, and just becomes clear, like, if you're on the right, bearing your face is like a symbol of your allegiance to that. Yeah. But then the crazy thing that happens, I think, is, if you're a Democrat or you're on the left now, like it's the opposite. So you see all the political candidates at the time start filming TV commercials and posters with themselves wearing masks and on social media all kinds of people, not just candidates. As regular people start, they change their profile picture, right? So it's now Jenna in a mask now. And now my I changed my Twitter, you know, name to Eric, hashtag wears a mask, Klinenberg, and we start getting really angry at other people if we're walking down the street and we're in a grocery store and they're not wearing a mask. It's like this personal feeling, like your blood starts to boil. You want to punch somebody, you know, it's like our temperature goes up. And I think, you know, obviously that's rooted in the fact that wearing a mask was protected behavior. It was a way of looking out for other people was an expression of concern about fellow citizens solidarity.

Eric Klinenberg
But the mask also became a kind of a badge of honor. It became like a sign of you know, became a symbol of which, of what of your team. And so it meant much more than just a public health tool. And so then we had this kind of new iconography right in the US, and the mask became this politically charged object, in a way that it didn't in most places, even in England, where people were less likely to wear masks than the US. It wasn't politicized in that same way. It didn't have that same ideological meaning. And then I fear what's happened is that after masks, we just did the same thing with vaccines, so that now we have these kind of standard tools for public health that are responsible for, you know, saving millions of lives, and they have a political significance that's going to make them much less acceptable. And now that, you know we have this new administration in power, you know there might be not just a refusal to take vaccines or to wear a mask, but an attack on the very system that makes it possible for for them to be produced. And I think this has dire consequences.

Jenna Spinelle
Well, and these factors also sort of forced everyone, as you were just laying out these dichotomies, that sort of forced people to take a side, even if they didn't really want to. At first, you have a lot of fascinating stories and vignettes in this book, but one I want to ask you about in particular that's relevant to this conversation is the story of Mac's public house on Staten Island, and how the proprietors of that restaurant kind of got caught up in all of this when they went in, sort of wanting to be a political and just run a restaurant for their community. Tell us what, what happened there? Yeah.

Eric Klinenberg
I mean, that's a amazing story and a key part of the book. And I guess we should say that the structure of the book is, is, you know, that it kind of alternates between, you know, chapters that are. More about these kind of big picture questions, like Why we became more so distrustful, or why there was such controversies in masks. And then there's a set of characters, you know, that who are profiled at light. So the book is called 2021 city, seven people in the year, everything changed. And one of the people, and maybe the most interesting kind of case in the book is this guy, Danny Presti. He's on Staten Island, which is the most conservative borough in the New York and when I look for characters, I wanted to find somebody who you know roughly represented the story of their borough is to some great extent. And I thought Danny story really did. He's a bar manager. He and a buddy had opened a bar together, were in the process of opening a bar together in 2019 it took a long time to get the liquor license, and they were really frustrated about, why is it that there's this like State Liquor Authority whose sole job is to issue, you know, liquor licenses. And it takes, like, as long as they want it to take, you know, could be a year before they let you do business. And that, what an arrogant and horrible thing to do, to make someone wait that long, like he's trying to start a business. And, you know, put bread on the table. And if you call and ask, you know, when, when do you know, when, when do you think this will happen? It's like it's going to happen when it happens, you know, like this kind of experience, the state authority is being really arrogant and indifferent to their fate. And it took nine months to get the license, and they put a lot of time and money and effort into it, and Danny was doing a lot of work to get the bar ready, and finally got the license in late 2019 and in early 2020 you know, trying to get things going. And the goal for the bar was that it was going to be this community place like you said. He was not really a politically driven guy. You know, didn't want to have like the news on it was like place you would go watch sports or hang out with friends after work, or, you know, after a softball game. And we might think of bars as, you know, sketchy places sometimes, and they can be a source of, you know, violence or conflict, or, you know, all kinds of, you know, things we worry about, but bars are also vital social infrastructure, and they're gathering places where people do a lot of important socializing. Arguably, one of the issues in America today is that we're socializing less with each other face to face. We spend too much time on our screens. And, you know, one can make the case that, you know, bars could be an important part of local social life. So prestige bar gets shut down when the pandemic starts. And he accepts that, you know, it's a pandemic, it's scary. He doesn't want anyone to get sick and die because they were hanging out his pub. But then it kind of goes on for a long time to shut down, and he and his partner try to get guidance on when they can open, and they don't really get any guidance. No one knows. It just goes on and on and on. And eventually, like, the restrictions get loosened a little bit, and they start to make food that they can deliver, but they're not really, like, set up for that, and you can't really make much money on it, because the delivery fees are all the services that they have. Then they open, but then they close down again, and they they're in this horrible cycle where they they can't figure out when they're going to be open. They feel like they're out of control, and it feels really arbitrary to them, like when they open and when they close and and they feel the indifference of the mayor of New York City and the governor of New York State, and they're both Democrats and self defined progressives, and they get angry about it, and Danny starts to watch more and more right wing TV and go on the internet and hear this kind of criticism of, you know, this state that will let you just have your own business and punish This little people, and they couldn't get a lot of stimulus money at this bar because a new business, and you might remember, like when they set up those rules for how businesses could get aid, like a lot of really big businesses that are set up with all the fancy lawyers and the network ties to government, like, got millions and millions of dollars in relief like, you know, Cheesecake Factory was raking it in and and they got a few $1,000 you know, this place, but it was nothing. So at some point, as Danny gets more and more radicalized, you know, reading and listening to people talk about the with the horrors of the Democratic Party. He makes a connection to this activist agitator who likes to create scenes and spectacles. And they basically come up with this plan that they're going to turn their pub into what they called an autonomous zone. And they went to Home Depot. And they got some signs, and they got some tape, and they like, literally taped out and spaced out the picture of it in the book. This demarcation saying, this is now an autonomous zone. And they just opened the bar. And of course, the sheriffs came and shut them down, and that kept happening. And then they went on TV and Facebook, and the next thing you knew, this pub and this guy became the center for these big rallies for for the right and like the proud boys, and they're like, we're we're coming to the New York City to organize demonstrations about, you know, the pandemic response and then Danny got deeper and deeper into this movement and found more causes that he cared about. You know, he was very much against mask mandates and vaccine mandates and all kinds of things. Came to see himself as a freedom fighter. I think his story is important, because, first of all, it's a good reminder that a lot of Democrats and progressives who had their eye on the big picture about, you know, the suffering from disease and death from disease, failed to take seriously what some of the costs of the lockdown were. We've talked about a lot in terms of like performance of children in school and stress and anxiety and things like that, but for a lot of small business owners and workers who couldn't get access to the aid that many millions of people did. It was really devastating experience, and there was a kind of refusal to talk about the costs of some of these lockdowns and and what to do about it. Other countries did much more to protect workers. Did much more to protect businesses in the US. It felt really arbitrary. But also, I think, do you know during 2020 the right kind of planted seeds for a lot, many of the criticism, excuse me, many of the criticisms of the Democratic Party. Of course, the Democrats would win the election in 2020 but those criticisms really registered, and as the pain of the pandemic went on in 2122 that anger emerged, and I think Danny Presti story really allows us to see how that happened. And I think it's especially important for people who see themselves as liberals or progressives and who feel like they the story of the pandemic is really just a story of Trump's failure. I think they they need to kind of grapple with stories like Danny Presti.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and I hope people will will pick it up to read not just his story, but the other six people from across the city you won from each each borough, as you mentioned that that you profile. We're not gonna have time to get to the rest of them today, unfortunately, but I said at the beginning, I wanted to come back to Elon Musk, and I've been thinking a lot about your book palaces for the people, and the idea of social or civic infrastructure that you mentioned earlier. These are libraries, community centers, parks, places where we gather, and an important part, of course, of our democracy, everybody from Tocqueville to Putnam has talked about the importance of these places. And it seems to me, there might be no greater enemy of civic infrastructure than Elon Musk. It seems to be at odds with everything that he purports to be about. So I guess my question for you is that, you know, I think a lot of people listening to the show really value civic infrastructure. So what should they be doing? How should they be thinking about this dynamic, given the place we find ourselves in? 

Eric Klinenberg
Yeah, well, so in palaces for the people, which came out a few years ago, I read about what I call social infrastructure, and when I say social infrastructure, I'm referring specifically to the physical places that shape our capacity to interact and engage each other, places like libraries and swimming pools and playgrounds and parks schools are, you know, prominent in the public sector. You know, in the private sector. You know, pubs and bars and restaurants and coffee shops and beauty salons, barber shops and places like this are, are often important. And then there's a whole set of like nonprofit community organizations. You think about the YMCAs of the world, I argue in the book that they have been overlooked in our conversation about, you know what, why people are on their screens all the time, and why we've grown so far apart from one another. I think we once built a lot of social infrastructure and recognized that it played us. Key role in an open society, in a democratic society, and in a gallat egalitarian society, but in recent decades, we've invested much less, and we see a proliferation of places in the private market. You know, if you're an affluent person, you can join a country club, you can go to a fancy cocktail bar. There's all kinds of places for you, I read a lot about libraries in the book because for me, they're, they're kind of the most exemplary form of social infrastructure. They're radically inclusive. They're free to get into them. You know, they they're very generous in their spirit. You know, you feel really dignified and recognized and welcomed when you walk into a library. But also, like you can take your cultural heritage and bring it home with you on the honor system. You know, basically, it's an kind of amazing institution. They're designed well, often they're built well, they're programmed by librarians. They're maintained, you know, when they're working well and so, you know, like, if the library did not exist today, it would, and I proposed that we build libraries in every suburban, urban neighborhood, and have some of them, you know, look like mansions with giant granite marble lions, you know, On the stairway like that would seem like a preposterous idea, that no legislature in the United States would approve the money would take to build all the libraries we have, and yet we have them, which is really telling about, like, where we once were as a society. And so what could we do now that the Elon Musk of the world seem to be in charge? I mean, it's a defensive moment for sure, because there is a real, concentrated attack on these public institutions. I worry a lot about what will happen for funding for the libraries that we have and the parks that we have, that clearly the push from the Trump administration is to privatize everything, and we see these institutions really under attack. And so I guess the what I worry about with the musks of the world is that they have and all of the oligarchs who were up on stage, you know, with Trump and his inauguration, is the what, what they want more than anything else, is for us to be on our screens. And they have invested enormous amounts of money in keeping us there. They have the best designers, they have the best modelers, they have the best software engineers. They are. They're they're trying to figure out how to keep us hooked on our screens. They want us to make our purchases there, right? They want us to do all the things that matter on our screens. And I think the problem is that we haven't put that kind of energy or investment into the physical world and and so it's no surprise that for a lot of people, it's it's no competition. It's more awesome to be online than it is to be in a dilapidated park or a library that's not open, or basketball court that doesn't have hoops because they've, you know, fallen apart and taken down. So I guess there's, there's the question about what happens at the federal level, which I'm not optimistic about. And then more more pragmatically, there's the prospect of what you can do where you live, like you know, in your town, in your city, in your neighborhood, in your state. You know, how do we lobby to try to make sure that we continue to invest in social infrastructure? Because we know that it affects our quality of daily life. We know that it matters for our health and our happiness. And I think one of the real problems in America today is even in moments when the economy seems to be humming along, unemployment is low, inflation is going down, people still feel unhappy. There's a sense that something is deeply wrong, and I think it has to do with our failure to invest in each other and our shared places.

Jenna Spinelle
And your work is is fantastic to help folks who might be feeling lost at sea remind us of what what unites us, and you know the the places that we can come together as as a community and as communities. So I hope that folks will check out your books, maybe assign them in classes for our academic listeners and keep up with everything that you do. Eric Klinenberg, thank you for your time today. 

Eric Klinenberg
Thank you. It's been great being here.

Chris Beem
Not only is it really interesting and important reminder, but it's also a series of very human stories which kind of speaks to what we were talking about earlier, right? And I, as I was reading this, I was reminded of this story from my own life that I have to recount to you so my wife is a manages a care management unit in a hospital. And. And she has a lot of experience with psych ward, so when anything goes off, they usually call her in. And so they called her into this room, and there's a an elderly man you know, in the room, and he's very sick, and the whole family is around, and none of them will wear masks. And, you know petticles, you know you need to wear masks. You know he's sick and and there they said, We don't believe in masks. And I was just astonished the irrationality of this, right? I mean, first of all, first of all, masks are not something that you can believe in or not, right? I mean, if they were going into surgery, would they say,

Chris Beem
Mr. Surgeon, we don't believe in masks. We don't want you to wear it. Well, of course, they wouldn't right. And second of all, it's a breaking hospital, right? If there's any place where you need to be concerned about germs, and you need to affirm the realities of medical science. It's there. And third, it's their relative who is most in danger. But yet, for all this, they were going to just this was what the hill that they were going to let him die on? Because we don't believe in masks, and I just, I'm infuriated by that. I don't know how you begin to argue against that, but that is where we are, and that is the and these people vote, and they vote in mass and and I don't know what we're going to do, but, but this is a a not just a deeply irrational, but a cultish reaction and and it just like I said, it just infuriates me.

Candis Watts Smith 
So this reminds me of two things. The first is that there was a moment in the pandemic, when we everyone thought it was an old people's disease, and then there was, like a turn where it was like, oh, but now, like minorities are like, you know, like black and brown people are getting it at extraordinary rates, if we believe them, that they can't Breathe. I remember seeing this sign, and it said, sacrifice the weak. Wow. And and I thought like, do you mean your grandmother? 

Candis Watts Smith 
Do you know what I mean? It was so callous, and I it stunned me, because I just thought, you are more concerned with moving on with your life than the lives of vulnerable people. And so I just was reminded of that sign when you were telling that story. But also so the second thing that it makes me think of is Charles Mills's idea around the epistemology of ignorance, and so Charles Mills is writing about. I mean, he's focusing specifically on white racial ignorance and how dominant groups will construct and maintain ignorance about marginalized groups in order to maintain their own social and political dominance. But what I when I talk about this and think about this, one of the things he starts off is saying that we have an assumption that ignorance is passive, that oh, people just don't know, and if they knew better, they would do better. But he ultimately argues that there are often, you know, situations where ignorance or gaps in people's knowledge is aggressively pursued. You can make an effort to not learn what you should learn, and you can actively unlearn what you know, the knowledge that has been shared with you. Konig Burke doesn't use this language, but he he is talking about that. He starts off with that, that you know, there's a way in which people dismissed information, dismissed knowledge, including Trump, where he says, Well, they say you should wear a mask. But I personally am not going to do that. And so I feel like that kind of that, that Mills is kind of concept around that is helpful just to understand, how is it that you've managed to not believe in masks, how to actively pursue action of science and expertise in order. Order for you to maintain your own sense of self, whatever that is. So in that way, I mean, like we shouldn't be too surprised. We see it in a lot of different ways. It's just incredibly, incredibly, it's troubling. I guess you would say.

Chris Beem
Well, it does speak to the he hopelessness of trying to argue someone out of that position. If it's not a matter of if Ignorance isn't a matter of knowledge but a matter of will, then you know you're not going to get them out of that condition simply by telling them facts, right? And and you know it's not, it's not simply will, per se, it is a it is. There's something very rational about that arc, about but that about that position, right? Because all of us are tribal, all of us have a deep sense of self identity, and all of us have a narrative that we use to make sense of the world and to make sense of our own place in it, and if your narrative is that the elite are using this opportunity to destroy our freedom, that they that they're all hypocrites and all lying, and they really don't know what's going on, and they're blowing this out of proportion. If you think all of that is true, then yeah, you can quite readily come to the position where you know that all of that is more important than someone telling you, all right? Well, there's these little molecules that might contain the virus, and the mask is there to stop them, right? 

Candis Watts Smith 
I think that there are we have to do, like a dual analysis. There is the analysis of Trump and his behavior. And then there is, you know, just regular people. And I, I mean, if I'm gonna give, like a charitable reading, I think that, I think Eric would say, or at least I would say that on among regular people, you know, let's go back to the mask thing. You know, we're like, you know, liberals are like mask or other, you know, a way to protect other people. It's not just about you. And I think that even that kind of talk was from people who have the luxury of focusing on mask as protection, who could stay home most of the day, would get their groceries delivered by somebody else, who, you know, all of these things. And so we got, like, we have this elite who is, I think you're right, incapable of thinking about the public good, and then you have a group of people who are like, What the heck, yeah. And so like this. These two things combined meant that there are some number of vulnerable people who could be scooped up by a person who's saying, you know, the other party is not for you.

Chris Beem
What you're talking about is policy. And I think part of what kleinenberg is talking about is culture, and I am sympathetic to that. So I hear that more. But his little talk, his little thought experiment about public libraries, I thought, was really powerful, right? That imagine a world where public libraries don't exist and you want to advocate for them. You go to this society and say, here's what I want to do. You know, I want to build these beautiful buildings all over the country, and you can go there and on the honor system, take stuff out and bring it back, and how likely that would be to pass. And I think he's right. And I think you you know, for all the abject failures of our former culture, there was an a sense in which education and culture was something that everyone had a right to, everyone had a right to access to, and that was understood to be part of what's important about becoming a democratic citizen, and we have none of that. Being a democratic citizen now means I have my rights and I have my freedoms, and if they contrast with yours, that's your problem, not mine.

Candis Watts Smith 
But I also think that there was a moment out of COVID that says, if we can say, here are the. Lessons learned from COVID and shift policy to reflect the lessons that we've learned about the necessity for a stronger, tighter social safety net and better health care systems and and, and, and do that, then we would have also telegraphed, or like that series of policies would have telegraphed, people are deserving of health care, not because they can pay for it, or because they have certain jobs, but because they are human beings, or they're, you know, belong to this society, and they are, they should be entitled to that?

Chris Beem
No, you know, I don't disagree with that. And I think you're already seeing, you know, with the, you know, strong, almost visceral, visceral reaction to the Bernie and AOC tour, that there's an there's a segment of the American populace who is more than open to that kind of argument, and that too is a is a reflection of this post COVID world in which we find ourselves. Because some people are recognizing that that that society right now just isn't connected enough to these questions of, what do we owe to each other? But I just want to say that all of this is, you know, bespeaks the the importance of what kleinenberg has to say, and the importance of this frame of understanding where we are and how we got here. So thanks to Eric and to Jenna. I'm Chris Beem.

Candis Watts Smith 
And I'm Candis Watts Smith, thanks for listening.