On Niall Ferguson
Ferguson is considered one of the best current historians. He has written a new book called Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe that he was promoting yesterday in an interview with a D.C. bookstore (you can watch it on YouTube). He works at Stanford University now but is originally Scottish.
I have not read his new book yet but just watched the hour-long interview he did for it. A few thoughts. He talks about Covid-19 and natural disasters like earthquakes, exploding volcanoes, and plagues. (A somewhat frivolous thought: He looks remarkably young for someone in his late 50s, like a twin of Morrissey from The Smiths). He makes a distinction between natural disasters and man-made ones like wars and financial crises. Well, people are part of nature, but I agree with the distinction.
The only thing that bothered me about the interview is that both Ferguson and the interviewer repeatedly used the term “pandemic” for Covid-19. The term is a bugbear for me. I know a lot of people have died from the virus, but that always happens; people die from flu all the time. It is sad but true. And I don’t think it was a reason for authorities to take as many overly stringent measures as they did. Ferguson noted that Taiwan and South Korea were especially good in their response to the virus, possibly because they have “general paranoia” about being neighbors of the People’s Republic of China. He seemed to think war with China is a real threat, even if only “cyber-warfare.” I don’t think a physical war is going to happen.