A TRIBUTE TO NOAM CHOMSKY
The centrality of critical education in dark times

by Henry Giroux | Published: 00:00, Dec 13,2020


Noam Chomsky. — The Nation

Writers speak the unspeakable and the closer you get to it, the more real it is, which is part of making life possible for those who come after.
— Arthur Miller

THROUGHOUT his entire life, Noam Chomsky has used his knowledge, skills, and stature as a public intellectual to advocate for a radical change in societies that have failed to live to the promises and ideals of a radical democracy. Chomsky has made clear that intellectuals, artists, educators, and other cultural workers have a responsibility to use education to address grave social problems such as the threat of nuclear war, ecological devastation, and the sharp deterioration of democracy. And he has done it by communicating in multiple spheres to diverse audiences. His academic work and public interventions have become a model for enriching public life and addressing staggering forms of economic inequality, needless wars, and class and racial injustices. He has worked tirelessly to inspire individuals and social movements to unleash the energy, insights, and passion necessary to keep alive the spirit, promises, and ideals of a radical democracy. He models his own work on the responsibility of intellectuals by drawing from a wide variety of disciplinary fields and in doing so embraces a notion of education that turns intellectuals and cultural workers into border crossers and refiners of the moral imagination. This talk is dedicated to his courage and relentless spirit of resistance.

Across the globe, democratic institutions such as the independent media, schools, the legal system, certain financial institutions, and higher education are under siege. The promise, if not ideals, of democracy are receding as right-wing populism and an updated version of fascist politics are once again on the move subverting language, values, courage, vision, and hope for a more just and humane world. In the current historical moment, we are witnessing a crisis of education, consciousness, civic imagination, and democratic values. Education has increasingly become a tool of domination as right-wing pedagogical apparatuses controlled by the entrepreneurs of hate attack workers, the poor, people of colour, refugees, immigrants from the south and others considered disposable. In the midst of an era when an older social order is crumbling and a new one is struggling to define itself, there emerges a time of confusion, danger, and moments of great restlessness. The present moment is once again at a historical juncture in which the structures of liberation and authoritarianism are vying for shaping a future that appears to be either an unthinkable nightmare or a realisable dream.


The dark times that haunt the current age are epitomised by a new crop of authoritarians who echo the politics of a totalitarian past and have come to rule in the United States and a number of other societies. These architects of a new breed of fascist politics increasingly dominate major cultural apparatuses and other commanding political and economic institutions across the globe. Their nightmarish reign of misery, violence, and disposability is legitimated, in part, in their control of all sorts of knowledge producing settings that construct a vast machinery of manufactured consent. This reactionary educational formation includes the mainstream broadcast media, digital platforms, the internet, and print culture, all of which participate in an ongoing spectacle of violence, the aestheticisation of politics, the legitimation of opinions over facts, and an embrace of a culture of ignorance. For instance, in the United States, Donald Trump’s shaping of political culture has become in many ways more toxic and damaging than his public policies given his undermining of the civic fabric, rule of law, and democracy itself. He normalised racism, state violence, hatred, and disinformation by not only bringing it to the centre of power, but also by deeply embedding a toxic, death-dealing politics deep into the American consciousness and culture. Trump used the term ‘fake news’ as an instrument of power to disdain the truth and call the press the enemy of the American people. Anti-intellectualism and a hatred for the truth became the new normal in American culture. Under such circumstances, the growing reign of authoritarianism and right-wing popular movements waged a war on critical forms of education, regarded the truth with disdain, and disparaged the very presence of critical judgement in any sphere where civic literacy asserted itself. This plague of ignorance and culture of lies took place in the midst of a death dealing pandemic accelerated by a bungling mode of governance that disdained scientific evidence, played down the seriousness of the virus, offered no national plan to deal with the pandemic, and confused science with pseudo-science. As infections rose and deaths skyrocketed, the United States turned into a funeral home. Trump’s response was to focus relentlessly on the bogus claim that he won the presidential election while relentlessly attempting to legitimate and circulate a range of bizarre and utterly delusional right-wing conspiracy theories.


It is hard to imagine a more urgent moment for taking seriously the call to make education central to politics. The rule of authoritarianism is imposed less and less by military coups than it is through elections subverted by the force of oppressive forms of education that extend from the schools to the social media and other cultural apparatuses. The educational force of the cultural sphere is now amplified by the merging of power and new instruments of culture that have produced powerful sites of struggle in an effort to normalise and legitimate dominant ideas, values, and social relations. Making education central to politics means that any viable notion of education has to address the cultural forces shaping policies and society so as to create a formative culture in the service of democratic modes of agency, desires, and identities. If education is going to work in the service of democracy, it needs a new vision and language in which the call for real change resonates with the concrete needs, desires, values, and modes of identification that working-class people of every stripe can understand and relate to critically. As Stuart Hall once pointed out, without a politics of identification there is no hope for education in the service of creating critically informed agents. At stake here is the notion that education is a social concept, one rooted in the goal of emancipation for all people. Moreover, this is an education that encourages the acquisition of forms of human agency that are not content to enable people only to become critical thinkers. They should also be engaged individuals and social agents willing to intervene in the shaping of society. This is a pedagogy that calls us beyond ourselves, and engages the ethical imperative to care for others, dismantle structures of domination, and to become a subject rather than an object of history, politics, and power.

If we are going to develop a politics capable of awakening our critical, imaginative, and historical sensibilities, it is crucial for educators and others to create a political project infused with a language of critique and possibility, informed by the crucial notion that there is no substantive democracy without informed citizens. Such a language is necessary to enable the conditions to forge a collective international resistance among educators, youth, artists, and other cultural workers in defence of not only public goods, but also a democracy with the guarantee of not only civil and political rights, but also economic rights that ensure both dignity and a meaningful sense of agency. Such a movement is important to resist and overcome the tyrannical fascist nightmares that have descended upon the United States, Brazil, Hungary, India, and a number of other countries in Europe plagued by the rise of right-wing populist movements and neo-Nazi parties. In an age of social isolation, information overflow, a culture of immediacy, consumer glut, and spectacularised violence, it is all the more crucial to take seriously the notion that a democracy cannot exist or be defended without informed and critically engaged citizens.


Education must be broadly understood as taking place in multiple sites and defined, in part, through its interrogation on the claims of democracy. As Ariel Dorfman argues it is time to create the cultural institutions and pedagogical conditions in multiple sites extending from the mainstream press to the online digital world in order ‘to unleash the courage, energy, joy and, yes, compassion with which rebellious millions [can] defy fear and keep hope alive in these traumatic times.’ As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, ‘important forms of domination are not only economic but also intellectual and pedagogical and lie on the side of belief and persuasion [making it all the more] important to recognise that intellectuals bear an enormous responsibility for challenging this form of domination.’ This is an especially crucial demand at a time when the educational and pedagogical force of culture works through and across multiple sites. Schooling is only one site of education, while movies, television, books, magazines, the internet, social media, and music are incredibly significant forces in shaping world views, modes of agency, and diverse forms of identification. What this insight suggests is that academics, artists, intellectuals, and other cultural producers bear an enormous responsibility in addressing social problems, educating a broader public in ways that allow them to think critically and act with conviction and courage. They also need to support those institutions, public spaces, and cultural apparatuses where public issues can be debated, power can be held accountable, and intellectual inquiry is given the full range of its imaginative and critical possibilities.

The responsibility of public intellectuals also points, as CW Mills argues in The Sociological Imagination, to the work of translating private issues into larger systemic considerations, and to speak to people in ways that are accessible, can awaken their sense of identification, and illuminate critically the conditions that bear down on their lives. As intellectuals, it is crucial to remember that there is no genuine democracy without the presence of citizens willing to hold power accountable, engage in forms of moral witnessing, break the continuity of common sense, and challenge the normalisation of anti-democratic institutions, policies, ideas, and social relations.

In a time when truth has become malleable and Americans have been told that the only obligation of citizenship is to consume, language has become thinner and more individualistic, detached from history and more self-oriented, all the while undermining viable democratic social spheres as spaces where politics brings people together as collective agents willing to push at the frontiers of the political and moral imagination. Americans have forgotten their civic lessons, and in doing so ceded the ground of history to the purveyors of lies, militarism, and white supremacy. Trump’s support for the ideals of the confederacy makes clear that language is a doorway that can lead to normalising the horrors of the past. Risking the failure to learn from history, we fail to see elements of a horrendous past re-emerging as ‘an early warning system.’


Making education central to politics suggests that as artists, researchers, and academics we ask uncomfortable questions about what Arundhati Roy calls ‘our values and traditions, our vision for the future, our responsibilities as citizens, the legitimacy of our “democratic institutions”, the role of the state, the police, the army, the judiciary, and the intellectual community.’ Education has the task of creating the conditions in which people develop a collective sense of urgency that prompts a desire to learn how to govern rather than to learn merely how to be governed. Education for empowerment means creating informed and critically engaged social movements willing to fight the emotional plagues, economic inequality, human misery, systemic racism, and collapse of the welfare state caused by neoliberal capitalism and other forms of authoritarianism. Democracy’s survival depends upon a set of habits, values, ideas, culture, and institutions that can sustain it. Democracy is both fragile and always unfinished and its fate and future are not only a political issue but an educational one as well.

In the end, there is no democracy without informed citizens and no justice without a language critical of injustice. Democracy should be a way of thinking about education, one that thrives on connecting pedagogy to the practice of freedom, learning ethics, and on agency to the imperatives of social responsibility and the public good. In the age of nascent fascism, it is not enough to connect education with the defence of reason, informed judgement, and critical agency; it must also be aligned with the power and potential of collective resistance. We live in dangerous times. Consequently, there is an urgent need for more individuals, institutions, and social movements to come together in the belief that the current regimes of tyranny can be resisted, that alternative futures are possible and that acting on these beliefs through collective resistance will make radical change happen.

Noam Chomsky’s work is infused with the notion that history is open, and that it is necessary for people to think otherwise in order to act otherwise, especially if we want to imagine and bring into being alternative democratic futures and horizons of possibility. Chomsky’s importance in developing a vision infused with a mix of justice, hope, and struggle has never been more important than it is today. Moreover, in the face of the emerging tyranny and fascist politics that are spreading across the globe, it is time to heed his call to merge a sense of moral outrage with a sense of civic courage and collective action. At the very least, education is central to politics because it provides the foundation for those of us who believe that democracy is a site of struggle, which can only be engaged through an awareness of both its fragility and necessity. What we cannot do is look away. Goya was right when he warned, ‘the sleep of reason produces monsters.’


CounterPunch.org, December 11. 

Henry A Giroux currently holds the McMaster University chair for scholarship in the public interest in the english and cultural studies department and is the Paulo Freire distinguished scholar in critical pedagogy.

COVID-19 VACCINE
Struggle between human rights and property rights

by Dr Nazmul Alam | Published:Dec 13,2020 


Nurse May Parsons, right, administers the Pfizer/BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine to Margaret Keenan, left, 90, at University Hospital in Coventry, central England, on December 8 making Keenan the first person to receive the vaccine in the country’s biggest ever immunisation programme. — Agence France-Presse/Pool/Jacob King

A UK grandmother, Margaret Keenan, has become part of history by becoming the first person in the world to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as part of a mass vaccination programme. COVID-19 vaccines have been developed at a record speed in less than a year of the pandemic. Of the several hundred candidates who started the race, Pfizer-BioNtech, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Moderna-NIH, and Sputnik V vaccines are among the front-runners. A fundamental challenge now is to make the vaccines available to billions of people. The UN secretary general, António Guterres said, ‘The recent breakthroughs on COVID-19 vaccines offer a ray of hope. But that ray of hope needs to reach everyone.’

Given the current supply and demand scenario, experts, however, speculated that it could take several years to produce enough vaccines to immunise the global population. Governments are negotiating deals to secure COVID-19 vaccines for their countries. High-income countries are getting more grounds in making deals with major vaccine developers and reserving the lion’s share of the world’s manufacturing capacity. Many of them are contracting for an excess number than they need to vaccinate their entire population before the immunisation even becomes a reality in many low-income countries.

England as the first country that started a mass vaccination programme confirmed its 40 million doses and expects to have 10 million doses by the end of 2020. The United States could begin its mass vaccination within days in December and has already placed an order for 100 million doses for Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine. Canada’s first vaccination could begin by the third week of December on receiving an initial batch of up to 249,000 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine. Canada is, in fact, on top of the global ranking for vaccine contract per capita; it solicited enough doses five times its need. By and large, high-income countries have reserved six billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines through bilateral deals with pharmaceutical companies while low-income countries have not yet signed a single such deal.

To address inequity issues of vaccine availability, the World Health Organisation, Gavi, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations launched a scheme called Covax. It aims to provide lower-income countries with enough doses to cover 20 per cent of their population. So far, Covax has a lifeline which is the only viable way in which citizens in low-income countries to get access to COVID-19 vaccines. However, the Covax initiative faces some serious obstacles of underfunding and non-cooperation of a few big countries such as China and the United States. G-20 leaders in a virtual summit hosted by Saudi Arabia in October 2020 pledged to ensure a fair distribution of the vaccines worldwide but it offered no specific new funding to meet that goal.

South Africa and India have called for the World Trade Organisation to suspend intellectual property rights related to COVID-19 to ensure the availability of vaccines for people in low- and middle-income countries. If accepted, this temporary ban of IP rights would allow local level production of vaccines sooner in large quantities at affordable prices. Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical industry and many high-income countries strongly oppose this move. They argued that intellectual property is not a barrier to access and that an equitable access can be achieved through voluntary licensing, technology transfer arrangements and donor-funded approaches. In another argument, they highlighted the agreements that AstraZeneca and Novavax have established with the Serum Institute of India for vaccines. But the counter-argument is that company-led voluntary transfer initiatives have delivered limited results. For example, AstraZeneca’s vaccine manufacturing agreements with Indian and Brazilian companies lack transparency about costs; and Pfizer and BioNTech, whose vaccine candidate has shown promising results, have shown no sign of licensing or technology transfer yet.


Another remarkable campaign signed by world leaders, including Nobel laureates, former heads of state and government, political leaders, artistes, international NGOs and institutions is to declare COVID-19 vaccines a global common good. They urge governments, foundations, charity organizations, philanthropist individuals and social businesses to come forward to produce and distribute the vaccines for all people. Campaigners are pleading for the COVID-19 vaccine formula to be placed in the public domain and made available to any production facility that operates under strict international regulatory supervision. What impact this campaign would make is not clear yet, of course; there are complex underlying causes to untangle the battle of human rights and property rights.

The availability of COVID-19 vaccines is not the only hurdle for the LMICs. There are myriad of systemic challenges that are also part of their ongoing indigenous problems. Insufficient financing, the lack of infrastructure for storage, and the transport and delivery of vaccines are important. COVID-19 vaccines would be expensive for many. Pfizer is charging $19.50 a dose for the first 100 million doses of an order. Moderna plans to charge from $25 a dose. AstraZeneca said that it would sell its vaccine for prices between $3 and $5 a dose. But this no-profit promise could expire before July 2021. Johnson & Johnson also said that it would not profit from the sales of its vaccine to poorer nations and China said that its vaccine would be made a global public good. For countries with huge population, needs to mobilise billions of dollars to procure vaccines for their entire population will further strain their already fragile economy.

Various vaccines demand different storage needs, making it difficult for countries to know how to prepare and whether to invest in cold-chain facilities. Pfizer’s vaccine, for example, has to be transported at -700C requiring deep-freeze airport warehouses and refrigerated vehicles using dry ice. Even when the vaccines arrive in low-income countries, they might lack the transport links and road networks to distribute the doses to all geographic locations. In many low-income countries, only urban areas are well-resourced; health centres in rural areas and informal settlements may not have a working fridge. AstraZeneca’s vaccine can be stored, transported, and handled at normal fridge temperatures of between 20 and 80°C for at least six months. Moderna’s vaccine can also be transported and stored at fridge temperatures, but only for a month.


While childhood vaccinations are a common norm in most low-income income countries, people of all age groups, especially the elderly, will need the COVID-19 vaccine as a priority. This will require the counties to carry out major vaccination education campaigns and logistical support to reach the elderly people. Most vaccines, including Pfizer’s, require two shots. In rural parts of many countries, where people are harder to contact or may live a long way from vaccination centres, some people may not come back for a second shot.

Despite an international agreement to allocate the vaccine equitably around the world, billions of people in poor and middle-income countries might not be immunised with COVID-19 vaccines until 2023 or even 2024. Amnesty International’s adviser Tamaryn Nelson has stressed on agreeing to the intellectual property rights waiver, which is a crucial way to protect the right to health of billions of people no matter where they live. She has also highlighted that we can only put an end to COVID-19 pandemic if we recognise the human rights obligations and ensure that those most in need of life-saving vaccines are not left behind.


Dr Nazmul Alam is an associate professor of public health at Asian University for Women. He also worked as an associate scientist at the ICDDR,B.

Coronavirus: 

Trump and religious right rely on faith, not science

 March 29, 2020

Christian pastor Shawn Bolz has recently said the U.S. economy would surge despite the conronavirus. He has said: ‘Even now several vaccines are coming out as well as a natural dying out of the virus itself.’ There is no known vaccine for COVID-19. He is pictured here at an event in April 2016. (Bolz Ministries)

As the coronavirus pandemic spreads globally, many governments have forbidden large gatherings. Some groups have been slow to heed the call, however.

This month in the United States, several neo-charismatic preachers decided not to cancel their church meetings and events. Some have since said they would move their meetings online.

Others appeared to minimize the physical health threats of the virus or emphasized how atonement, spiritual preparation or protection is strengthened through church tithing or donations.

These initial and ongoing response of some of these leaders have highlighted dangerous worldviews that stress the authority of Christian charismatic personal prophecy and sees in calamitous events signs of Christ’s final triumph.

Religious leaders emboldened by Trump?

According to religion researchers at the University of Southern California, Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religious movement in the world. The neo-charismatic movement is often referred to as the “third wave” of Pentecostalism. In this movement, evangelical churches which are not part of the established Pentecostal tradition, embrace the “Pentecostal experience,” distinguished by its emotional expressiveness, spontaneity in worship, speaking or praying in “unknown tongues” and healing. Participants often characterize themselves as “spirit-filled” Christians.

As the number of coronavirus infections grows in the U.S., ideas advanced by neo-charismatic leaders may have dire consequences.

Some of these religious leaders may become more emboldened by President Donald Trump’s recent comments. Trump said he wanted to have the U.S. economy back on track and Christian churches packed on Easter, before reluctantly taking the advice of U.S. health officials and extending social isolation at least through the month of April. Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer called this vision of Americans in churches an “American resurrection.”

Some of the neo-charismastic leaders may be increasing public tolerance for Trump’s approach. Others have echoed Trump — including an editorial in the Wall Street Journal — and have suggested the economy should be the top priority.

Meanwhile, among other religious leaders, the president’s desire for “packed churches” at Easter prompted widespread criticism, with the executive director of Massachusetts Council of Churches saying the president is “co-opting Easter for capitalism.”
Defying social distancing directives

In early March, L.A.-based Christian pastor Shawn Bolz, who has almost 50,000 twitter followers, told Fox News the “Lord showed me the end of the coronavirus.” On his Facebook page, Bolz wrote that several vaccines are coming out. There is currently no vaccine for COVID-19.

Bolz also recently claimed on a Christian website that the economy would surge, that Donald Trump would win another electoral term, that “God’s going to turn the tide of this thing” and the U.S. would “hit one of the greatest times … of economic stability.”

President Donald Trump has called for full churches at Easter. Here he is pictured at the White House with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Pastor Jack Graham, Paula White-Cain and Vice President Mike Pence. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

On March 15, Rodney Howard-Browne, a Pentecostal pastor at the River at Tampa Bay Church, told his church to greet each other with a handshake, saying that his church would not close until the “Rapture,” or the meeting of all Christian believers with God in heaven.

Howard-Browne has shared anti-vaccination information on social media and has also circulated Trump’s comments regarding his hope to “pack the churches on Easter.”

Prosperity gospel preacher Kenneth Copeland told a Christian magazine that the fear of the coronavirus was a sin. He said when people fear they give the devil a pathway to their bodies.

On Twitter he told his 432,000 followers: “No weapon meant to hurt you will succeed … No disease. NO VIRUS. … Believe it. Receive it. Speak it in Jesus’ Name!”

Copeland, who is wealthy also told people to continue tithing to the church even if they lose their jobs due to the coronavirus.

When science prevailed

Florida-based Paula White-Cain, chair of the president’s evangelical advisory board and the person who prayed over President Trump before his swearing in addressed her many followers on March 17 regarding coronavirus in a Facebook update.

White-Cain asked viewers to spend 15 days at home physically distancing to help flatten the curve. But she also asked her followers to pray to be spiritually saved and to continue to support her ministry by giving a donation such as US$91. The figure of 91 recalls Psalm 91, a favoured text for the protection of believers in times of trouble.

Paula White-Cain, the religious advisor to President Trump, has so far advised her followers to stay home for 15 days. Here White-Cain is pictured at the benediction at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2018. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Initially, Guillermo Maldonado, pastor of a megachurch in Miami and has more than 100,000 Twitter followers, told his congregation on March 15 not give in to the “demonic spirit of fear,” of the coronavirus, to continue attending meetings and to not “heed warnings from officials to avoid crowded spaces.”

But Maldonado had a change of heart and on his blog writes that “safety is our No. 1 priority.” His ministry will now follow requests from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A belief in supernatural abilities?

Mike Bickle, a Kansas City pastor, said in a YouTube sermon on March 22 that the virus is part of the enemy’s agenda — that enemy being Satan — to stop “stadium Christianity” in the U.S. and worldwide. Bickle said, “there are 20 stadium events planned in 2020 across our nation … and the enemy says, ‘Enough! I’m going to stop this!’”

These neo-charismatic leaders’ battle with the virus is one they consider to be “spiritual warfare,” where they confront and take authority over the “spirit of fear” and over the disease in the name of Jesus.

Some part of of their responses could be attributed to their “victorious eschatology.” This idea refers to the belief that the church will rise in victory before the return of Christ — something that would be heralded by apocalyptic signs.

In this context, these neo-charismatic leaders may believe Christians will be endowed with supernatural abilities, working miracles and healing people from diseases, also having the responsibility of converting souls to the Christian message.

Many of these preachers are writing end-time scenarios. There have been several scenarios presented which interpret stories from the Bible which they use as an authority and as a way to legitimize their beliefs — many of which could have deadly consequences.

Author

André Gagné
Associate Professor, Department of Theological Studies; Full Member of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, Concordia University
Disclosure statement
André Gagné receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

How COVID-19 led to Donald Trump’s defeat

December 7, 2020 

Did the COVID-19 pandemic doom Donald Trump’s re-election? Our study examining the effect of COVID-19 cases on county-level voting in the United States shows that the pandemic led to Trump’s defeat on Nov. 3.

Our analysis suggests that, all things being equal, Trump would likely have won re-election if COVID-19 cases had been between five and 10 per cent lower. In particular, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — which President-elect Joe Biden won by a slim margin — would have remained red if cases had been five per cent lower.

Trump would have also added Michigan to this list if cases had been 10 per cent lower.

This finding is at odds with some initial news analyses that indicated regions with the worst COVID-19 outbreaks voted for Trump.

Join thousands of Canadians who subscribe to free evidence-based news.Get newsletter

In fact, national polls and academic studies suggest that Trump’s voters are significantly less likely to wear masks and comply with social distancing, which in turn increase the probability of outbreaks. So Trump voters in Trump-friendly jurisdictions, due to their aversion to wearing masks, had more dramatic COVID-19 outbreaks leading up to the election.

Mostly maskless Trump supporters gather for a rally in Miami on Nov. 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

The COVID-19 effect

We estimated the effect of COVID-19 cases and deaths on the change in Trump’s county-level share of votes between 2016 and 2020.

To account for potential alternative explanations, we included a large number of pandemic-related controls, including measures of social distancing, that captured differences in virus containment measures that might have affected cases and had an impact on Trump support.

In an attempt to measure the causal relationship between COVID-19 cases and votes for Trump, we used the share of workers employed in meat-processing factories associated with COVID-19 outbreaks as a source of external variations in COVID-19 cases. Doing so mitigated the risk of a spurious correlation between the incidence of the pandemic and Trump support.

We found that voters living in counties with a high number of COVID-19 cases were less likely to vote for Trump. This effect appears strongest in urban areas and in swing states. The strong results in cities are likely driven by suburban areas, where Trump performed much better in 2016 than he did in 2020.

These results suggest that some Trump voters may have switched to Biden because of the pandemic. In addition, we found no evidence that counties with a large increase in unemployment compared to the pre-pandemic period were more likely to switch from Trump to Biden. This last result seems to indicate that health concerns trumped — pardon the pun — economic conditions.

Retrospective voting

Now that we have an answer to our initial question, how can we explain these results? There are two possible explanations as to why the pandemic decided the 2020 presidential election.

On the one hand, voters may have electorally sanctioned Trump for how he handled the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, the U.S. economy was performing well, and Trump, while extremely polarizing, enjoyed strong support among Republican voters.

The virus changed the narrative, and Trump’s response was widely criticized. He consistently downplayed the risks of the disease, refused to embrace basic health precautions such as masks and repeatedly criticized epidemiologists and scientists, including those advising him. 

Protesters stand outside the White House to demonstrate against Trump’s lax handling of COVID-19. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

His response, in contrast to leaders in other developed democracies, was profoundly unsuccessful, as the recent dramatic surge of cases has demonstrated once more.

This explanation is in line with a well-established theory in political science: retrospective voting. In a nutshell, that’s when citizens evaluate and vote based on their perceptions of the incumbent’s performance. If incumbents are perceived as incompetent, citizens vote them out of office.

While intuitive, this theory has not been always empirically true. However, it does seem to have some value in explaining the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Economic fears, need of social safety net

On the other hand, some voters may have switched to Biden from Trump due to the pandemic-fuelled recession. A severe public health threat and major economic losses may have shifted preferences in favour of an expansion of the social safety net, including health care and unemployment insurance programs.

Volunteers load boxes of food into cars during a Greater Pittsburgh Community Food bank drive-up food distribution in Duquesne, Pa., on Nov. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Since the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate are more likely to champion these policies, Biden reaped the electoral benefits of this switch in voters’ preferences.

This explanation is in line with studies that suggest political preferences are shaped by personal experience. The same studies show this switch in political preferences is often long-lasting.

For instance, there is evidence that people growing up in a recession are more likely to favour state intervention and large social welfare programs.

This second explanation would be good news for the Democratic Party even in subsequent elections, when, hopefully, the pandemic will not dictate the narrative of the campaign but may still be fresh in the memories of voters.

Authors

Abel Brodeur
Associate professor, health economics, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

Leonardo Baccini
Associate professor, political science, McGill University

Leonardo Baccini receives funding from SSHRC (Canada).

Stephen Weymouth
Associate professor, international business, Georgetown University

Donald Trump: how COVID-19 killed his hope of re-election – new research

November 30, 2020 

The sun sets on the Trump White House. EPA-EFE/Samuel Corum

When Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19 on October 2 and was hospitalised a day later it was widely assumed this would put a major crimp in his re-election campaign. In the event, the US president recovered quite quickly and returned to the campaign trail with gusto after a typically bullish photo-op as he arrived back at the White House.

But survey evidence – initial findings from which are published here for the first time – shows that, despite having apparently triumphed over the virus, he did not escape the grasp of COVID-19 and that his handling of the pandemic played a crucial role in his defeat in the November 3 election.

COVID-19’s horrific toll on human life and its devastating effects on millions of people’s economic and psychological wellbeing have become omnipresent realities. So it’s hardly surprising that the University of Texas at Dallas’ national Cometrends survey, which was conducted in the two weeks before the presidential election, indicates that the pandemic was the dominant issue on many voters’ minds.

Graph 1: Important issues facing the country, October 2020. 

Source: Cometrends October 2020 pre-election survey, Author provided

As the first graph, above, shows, 62% of 2,500 respondents cited the COVID crisis as one of the top three issues facing the country, while 39% said it was the single most important. No other issue – not even the ailing economy – was chosen as most important by one person in five.

The salience of the pandemic as an issue was a major problem for Trump because an overwhelming number of voters judged that he had mishandled the crisis. As the second graph, below, shows, two-thirds of the Cometrends survey respondents said that they disapproved of the president’s response, while only one person in four approved. When given another chance to comment on his pandemic performance later in the survey, 51% said it had been “bad” or “terrible” and only 38% said “good” or “excellent”.

Graph 2: Approval of Trump’s job performance on most important issue.

 Source: Cometrends October 2020 pre-election survey, Author provided

These dismal ratings for the president on coronavirus were quite opposite to those for the economy – among people who thought the economy was the most important issue, 69% approved of the job the president was doing and only 25% disapproved. Although this was good news for Trump, only a relatively small minority (17%) of voters gave the economy top billing as their most important issue. Moreover, he could not rely on various other issues to improve his job approval rating – across all issues other than the pandemic, only 41% approved of the president’s performance compared with 50% who disapproved.

Graph 3: Probability of voting for Trump by importance of COVID-19 issue. with statistical controls for other issues, partisanship, ideology and demographics. 

Source: Cometrends October 2020 pre-election survey, Author provided

The third graph, above, shows clearly that if electors were not that concerned about the pandemic they were more likely to vote for Trump as president. But if they gave the issue the top priority they were much less likely to do so. The graph illustrates the impact of COVID-19 on voting for the president, while at the same time statistically taking into account a number of other factors that influence voting behaviour.

The latter include attitudes to the economy, the environment, healthcare, law and order and race relations, as well as other important measures such as identifications with the Democratic and Republican parties, liberal-conservative ideological views and socio-demographic characteristics. The probability of voting for Trump is only 42% among voters who thought COVID-19 was the most important issue but 53% among those who prioritised some other issue in the top three.

This pattern is the opposite for that of the economy. More than three-quarters of voters who gave top priority to the economy supported Trump. That number fell to less than one in three among those for whom economic conditions were not a major concern.

These numbers are nearly identical to those for the large group of potential swing voters who think of themselves as political independents and have no attachment to either of the parties. Independents giving top priority to the pandemic made up nearly 13% of the voters in the Cometrends survey and, other things being equal, the probability of them voting for Trump was very mediocre, at just slightly over 40%.
Game-changing virus

As he was preparing for the 2020 campaign, Trump repeatedly emphasised that his case for re-election was strengthened by his demonstrated ability to deliver economic prosperity. Soaring stock prices and record low unemployment numbers for many groups of voters including ethnic and racial minorities, women and young people were helping the president to make his case. Then the pandemic came along and profoundly changed America and the election-year issue agenda.

As the election date of November 3 approached, most people focusing on the economy as the number one priority continued to give Trump high marks. But these people were now a distinct minority of the electorate. COVID-19 had become the dominant issue for millions of Americans and our survey evidence strongly indicates that most of them judged Trump very harshly for how he was handling the crisis. In many cases, those adverse judgements translated into votes for Trump’s opponent, Joe Biden.

Trump may have recovered physically from COVID-19. But his prospects of re-election took a body blow that he would not recover from.

Authors
Paul Whiteley

Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex
Harold D Clarke

Ashbel Smith Professor, School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas
Karl Ho

Associate Professor of Instruction, University of Texas at Dallas
Marianne Stewart

Professor of Political Science, University of Texas at Dallas
Disclosure statement

Paul Whiteley receives funding from the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council.

Harold D Clarke has received funding from the National Science Foundation (US).

Karl Ho receives funding from Hong Kong Research Grants Council, Taiwan Ministry of Education, Taiwan Fellowship.

Marianne Stewart receives funding from National Science Foundaton (US).
Partners

The Original Story of Flight: Pterosaur Precursors Discovered That Fill Gap in Early Evolutionary History

By VIRGINIA TECH DECEMBER 11, 2020

A high flying Pteranodon, a genus of pterosaur that included some of the largest known flying reptiles. Illustration courtesy of Elenarts / Adobe Stock. Credit: Elenarts

Here’s the original story of flight. Sorry, Wright Brothers, but this story began way before your time — during the Age of the Dinosaurs.

Pterosaurs were the earliest reptiles to evolve powered flight, dominating the skies for 150 million years before their imminent extinction some 66 million years ago.

However, key details of their evolutionary origin and how they gained their ability to fly have remained a mystery; one that paleontologists have been trying to crack for the past 200 years. In order to learn more about their evolution and fill in a few gaps in the fossil record, their closest relatives had to be identified.

With the help of newly discovered skulls and skeletons that were unearthed in North America, Brazil, Argentina, and Madagascar in recent years, Virginia Tech researchers Sterling Nesbitt and Michelle Stocker from the Department of Geosciences in the College of Science have demonstrated that a group of “dinosaur precursors,” called lagerpetids, are the closest relatives of pterosaurs.

Artistic rendering of Dromomeron (foreground) and associated dinosaurs and relatives, based off of fossils from Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Illustration courtesy of Donna Braginetz. Credit: Donna Braginetz

“Where did pterosaurs come from?’ is one of the most outstanding questions in reptile evolution; we think we now have an answer,” said Nesbitt, who is an associate professor of geosciences and an affiliated faculty member of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute and the Global Change Center.

Their findings were published in Nature.

Fossils of Dromomeron gregorii, a species of lagerpetid, were first collected in Texas in the 1930s and 1940s, but they weren’t properly identified until 2009. Unique to this excavation was a well-preserved partial skull and braincase, which, after further investigation, revealed that these reptiles had a good sense of equilibrium and were likely agile animals.

A partial skeleton of Lagerpeton (hips, leg, and vertebrae) from ~235 million years from Argentina. Further examination of this specimen helped tie features of lagerpetids to pterosaurs. Photo courtesy of Sterling Nesbitt. Credit: Virginia Tech

After finding more lagerpetid species in South America, paleontologists were able to create a pretty good picture of what the lagerpetids were; which were small, wingless reptiles that lived across Pangea during much of the Triassic Period, from 237 to 210 million years ago.

And in the past 15 years, five research groups from six different countries and three continents have come together to right some wrongs in the evolutionary history of the pterosaur, after the recent discovery of many lagerpetid skulls, forelimbs, and vertebrae from the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Madagascar.

What gave paleontologists the idea to take a closer look at lagerpetids as the closest relatives of pterosaurs? Paleontologists have been studying the bones of lagerpetids for quite some time, and they have noted that the length and shape of their bones were similar to the bones of pterosaurs and dinosaurs. But with the few fossils that they had before, it could only be assumed that lagerpetids were a bit closer to dinosaurs.

What really caused a shift in the family tree can be attributed to the recently collected lagerpetid skulls and forelimbs, which displayed features that were more similar to pterosaurs than dinosaurs. And with the help of new technological advances, researchers found that pterosaurs and lagerpetids share far more similarities than meet the eye.

Using micro-computed tomographic (µCT) scanning to reconstruct their brains and sensory systems within the recently discovered skulls, paleontologists determined that the brains and sensory systems of lagerpetids had many similarities with those of pterosaurs.

“CT data has been revolutionary for paleontology,” said Stocker, who is an assistant professor of vertebrate paleontology and an affiliated faculty member of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute and the Global Change Center.

“Some of these delicate fossils were collected nearly 80 years ago, and rather than destructively cutting into this first known skull of Dromomeron, we were able to use this technology to carefully reconstruct the brain and inner ear anatomy of these small fossils to help determine the early relatives of pterosaurs.”

One stark and mystifying finding was that the flightless lagerpetids had already evolved some of the neuroanatomical features that allowed the pterosaurs to fly, which brought forth even more information on the origin of flight.

“This study is a result of an international effort applying both traditional and cutting-edge techniques,” said Martín D. Ezcurra, lead author of the study from the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales in Buenos Aires, Argentina. “This is an example of how modern science and collaboration can shed light on long-standing questions that haunted paleontologists during more than a century.”

Ultimately, the study will help bridge the anatomical and evolutionary gaps that exist between pterosaurs and other reptiles. The new evolutionary relationships that have emerged from this study will create a new paradigm, providing a completely new framework for the study of the origin of these reptiles and their flight capabilities.

With the little information that paleontologists had about early pterosaurs, they had often attributed extremely fast evolution for the acquisition of their unique body plan. But now that lagerpetids are deemed the precursors of pterosaurs, paleontologists can say that pterosaurs evolved at the same rate as other major reptile groups, thanks to the newly discovered “middle man.”

“Flight is such a fascinating behaviour, and it evolved multiple times during Earth’s history,” said Serjoscha W. Evers, of the University of Fribourg. “Proposing a new hypothesis of their relationships with other extinct animals is a major step forward in understanding the origins of pterosaur flight.”

Some questions still remain in this evolutionary mystery. Now that lagerpetids are the closest relatives of pterosaurs, why are they still lacking some of the key characteristics of pterosaurs, including the most outstanding of those – wings?

“We are still missing lots of information about the earliest pterosaurs, and we still don’t know how their skeletons transformed into an animal that was capable of flight,” said Nesbitt.

Nesbitt, Stocker, and a team of Virginia Tech graduate and undergraduate students will continue to study animals that appeared in the Triassic Period – a period of time in Earth history when many familiar groups of vertebrates, such as dinosaurs, turtles, mammal relatives, and amphibians, first appeared. If and when conditions are safe, they plan on going into the field to collect more fossils from the Triassic Period.

Maybe soon, we will have more information to put some finishing touches on the original story of flight.

Reference: “Enigmatic dinosaur precursors bridge the gap to the origin of Pterosauria” by Martín D. Ezcurra, Sterling J. Nesbitt, Mario Bronzati, Fabio Marco Dalla Vecchia, Federico L. Agnolin, Roger B. J. Benson, Federico Brissón Egli, Sergio F. Cabreira, Serjoscha W. Evers, Adriel R. Gentil, Randall B. Irmis, Agustín G. Martinelli, Fernando E. Novas, Lúcio Roberto da Silva, Nathan D. Smith, Michelle R. Stocker, Alan H. Turner and Max C. Langer, 9 December 2020, Nature.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-3011-4

Fragments of Energy – Not Waves or Particles – May Be the Fundamental Building Blocks of the Universe

By LARRY M. SILVERBERG, NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY DECEMBER 11, 2020

New mathematics have shown that lines of energy can be used to describe the universe.

Matter is what makes up the universe, but what makes up matter? This question has long been tricky for those who think about it – especially for the physicists. Reflecting recent trends in physics, my colleague Jeffrey Eischen and I have described an updated way to think about matter. We propose that matter is not made of particles or waves, as was long thought, but – more fundamentally – that matter is made of fragments of energy.

In ancient times, five elements were thought to be the building blocks of reality.
From five to one

The ancient Greeks conceived of five building blocks of matter – from bottom to top: earth, water, air, fire, and aether. Aether was the matter that filled the heavens and explained the rotation of the stars, as observed from the Earth vantage point. These were the first most basic elements from which one could build up a world. Their conceptions of the physical elements did not change dramatically for nearly 2,000 years.

Sir Issac Newton, credited with developing the particle theory. Credit: Christopher Terrell, CC BY-ND

Then, about 300 years ago, Sir Isaac Newton introduced the idea that all matter exists at points called particles. One hundred fifty years after that, James Clerk Maxwell introduced the electromagnetic wave – the underlying and often invisible form of magnetism, electricity and light. The particle served as the building block for mechanics and the wave for electromagnetism – and the public settled on the particle and the wave as the two building blocks of matter. Together, the particles and waves became the building blocks of all kinds of matter.

This was a vast improvement over the ancient Greeks’ five elements, but was still flawed. In a famous series of experiments, known as the double-slit experiments, light sometimes acts like a particle and at other times acts like a wave. And while the theories and math of waves and particles allow scientists to make incredibly accurate predictions about the universe, the rules break down at the largest and tiniest scales.

Einstein proposed a remedy in his theory of general relativity. Using the mathematical tools available to him at the time, Einstein was able to better explain certain physical phenomena and also resolve a longstanding paradox relating to inertia and gravity. But instead of improving on particles or waves, he eliminated them as he proposed the warping of space and time.

Using newer mathematical tools, my colleague and I have demonstrated a new theory that may accurately describe the universe. Instead of basing the theory on the warping of space and time, we considered that there could be a building block that is more fundamental than the particle and the wave. Scientists understand that particles and waves are existential opposites: A particle is a source of matter that exists at a single point, and waves exist everywhere except at the points that create them. My colleague and I thought it made logical sense for there to be an underlying connection between them.

A new building block of matter can model both the largest and smallest of things – from stars to light. Credit: Christopher Terrell, CC BY-ND

Flow and fragments of energy

Our theory begins with a new fundamental idea – that energy always “flows” through regions of space and time.

Think of energy as made up of lines that fill up a region of space and time, flowing into and out of that region, never beginning, never ending and never crossing one another.

Working from the idea of a universe of flowing energy lines, we looked for a single building block for the flowing energy. If we could find and define such a thing, we hoped we could use it to accurately make predictions about the universe at the largest and tiniest scales.

There were many building blocks to choose from mathematically, but we sought one that had the features of both the particle and wave – concentrated like the particle but also spread out over space and time like the wave. The answer was a building block that looks like a concentration of energy – kind of like a star – having energy that is highest at the center and that gets smaller farther away from the center.

Much to our surprise, we discovered that there were only a limited number of ways to describe a concentration of energy that flows. Of those, we found just one that works in accordance with our mathematical definition of flow. We named it a fragment of energy. For the math and physics aficionados, it is defined as A = -⍺/r where ⍺ is intensity and r is the distance function.

Using the fragment of energy as a building block of matter, we then constructed the math necessary to solve physics problems. The final step was to test it out.
Back to Einstein, adding universality

More than 100 ago, Einstein had turned to two legendary problems in physics to validate general relativity: the ever-so-slight yearly shift – or precession – in Mercury’s orbit, and the tiny bending of light as it passes the Sun.

General relativity was the first theory to accurately predict the slight rotation of Mercury’s orbit. Credit: Rainer Zenz via Wikimedia Commons

These problems were at the two extremes of the size spectrum. Neither wave nor particle theories of matter could solve them, but general relativity did. The theory of general relativity warped space and time in such way as to cause the trajectory of Mercury to shift and light to bend in precisely the amounts seen in astronomical observations.

If our new theory was to have a chance at replacing the particle and the wave with the presumably more fundamental fragment, we would have to be able to solve these problems with our theory, too.

For the precession-of-Mercury problem, we modeled the Sun as an enormous stationary fragment of energy and Mercury as a smaller but still enormous slow-moving fragment of energy. For the bending-of-light problem, the Sun was modeled the same way, but the photon was modeled as a minuscule fragment of energy moving at the speed of light. In both problems, we calculated the trajectories of the moving fragments and got the same answers as those predicted by the theory of general relativity. We were stunned.

Our initial work demonstrated how a new building block is capable of accurately modeling bodies from the enormous to the minuscule. Where particles and waves break down, the fragment of energy building block held strong. The fragment could be a single potentially universal building block from which to model reality mathematically – and update the way people think about the building blocks of the universe.

Written by Larry M. Silverberg, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University.

Physicists Prove Anyons Exist, a Third Type of Particle in the Universe

Physicists give us an early view of a third kingdom of quasiparticles that only arise in two dimensions.

By Stephen Ornes December 12, 2020 


After decades of exploration in nature’s smallest domains, physicists have finally found evidence that anyons exist. First predicted by theorists in the early 1980s, these particle-like objects only arise in realms confined to two dimensions, and then only under certain circumstances — like at temperatures near absolute zero and in the presence of a strong magnetic field.

Physicists are excited about anyons not only because their discovery confirms decades of theoretical work, but also for practical reasons. For example: Anyons are at the heart of an effort by Microsoft to build a working quantum computer.

This year brought two solid confirmations of the quasiparticles. The first arrived in April, in a paper featured on the cover of Science, from a group of researchers at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Using an approach proposed four years ago, physicists sent an electron gas through a teeny-tiny particle collider to tease out weird behaviors — especially fractional electric charges — that only arise if anyons are around. The second confirmation came in July, when a group at Purdue University in Indiana used an experimental setup on an etched chip that screened out interactions that might obscure the anyon behavior.

MIT physicist Frank Wilczek, who predicted and named anyons in the early 1980s, credits the first paper as the discovery but says the second lets the quasiparticles shine. “It’s gorgeous work that makes the field blossom,” he says. Anyons aren’t like ordinary elementary particles; scientists will never be able to isolate one from the system where it forms. They’re quasiparticles, which means they have measurable properties like a particle — such as a location, maybe even a mass — but they’re only observable as a result of the collective behavior of other, conventional particles. (Think of the intricate geometric shapes made by group behavior in nature, such as flocks of birds flying in formation or schools of fish swimming as one.)

The known universe contains only two varieties of elementary particles. One is the family of fermions, which includes electrons, as well as protons, neutrons, and the quarks that form them. Fermions keep to themselves: No two can exist in the same quantum state at the same time. If these particles didn’t have this property, all matter could simply collapse to a single point. It’s because of fermions that solid matter exists.

The rest of the particles in the universe are bosons, a group that includes particles like photons (the messengers of light and radiation) and gluons (which “glue” quarks together). Unlike fermions, two or more bosons can exist in the same state as the same time.

They tend to clump together. It’s because of this clumping that we have lasers, which are streams of photons all occupying the same quantum state.

Anyons don’t fit into either group. What makes anyons especially exciting for physicists is they exhibit something analogous to particle memory. If a fermion orbits another fermion, its quantum state remains unchanged. Same goes for a boson.

Anyons are different. If one moves around another, their collective quantum state shifts. It might require three or even five or more revolutions before the anyons return to their original state. This slight shift in the wave acts like a kind of memory of the trip. This property makes them appealing objects for quantum computers, which depend on quantum states that are notoriously fragile and prone to errors. Anyons suggest a more robust way to store data.

Wilczek points out that anyons represent a whole “kingdom” containing many varieties with exotic behaviors that can be explored and harnessed in the future. He began thinking about them about 40 years ago in graduate school, when he became frustrated with proofs that only established the existence of two kinds of particles.

He envisioned something else, and when asked about their other properties or where to find these strange in-betweeners, half-jokingly said, “anything goes” — giving rise to the name.

Now, he says, the new studies are just the beginning. Looking forward, he sees anyons as a tool for finding exotic states of matter that, for now, remain wild ideas in physicists’ theories.

Welcome to the apocalypse: Artist renders Edmonton in dreadful, dystopian future

Mike Roshuk imagines a future where 'chaos has ruled'


Wallis Snowdon · CBC News · Posted: Dec 11, 2020 

In this digital painting by Mike Roshuk, Edmonton's arena becomes a chilling scene of a downtown destroyed. (Mike Roshuk)


An Edmonton artist is painting the city in a dark, dystopian light.

Mike Roshuk alters photographs of the capital, transforming familiar urban landscapes into stark images of post-apocalyptic destruction.

The digital paintings imagine a city in a not-so-distant future devoid of people, its buildings abandoned and crumbling with age.

The once glimmering skyscrapers of downtown appear dilapidated, their windows shattered and overgrown with rotting vegetation.

Once sturdy historic landmarks, turned to rubble.

Rogers Place becomes a dilapidated field hospital.
'Law and order has left'

The legislature appears on the edge of collapse, its columns cracked and stone turrets heaving dangerously. A military tank covered in graffiti stands watch nearby.

Roshuk said he delights in the details. Each one takes him eight to 10 hours to complete.

"I wanted to kind of tell a story," he said. "Where people can look at it and think, what happened?"

"Law and order has left. Chaos has ruled."

In this altered image of Jasper Avenue and 101st Street in a not so distant future, iconic buildings have begun to collapse. (Mike Roshuk)

Roshuk, who previously worked as a professional illustrator, said he began the "nerdy project" just for fun as the pandemic began to restrict daily life this spring.

He took photographs and then spent hours carefully altering them digitally on Photoshop.

A fan of video games, sci-fi films and the zombie genre, Roshuk said he wanted to imagine how some of his favourite plots would play out in his home city.

"Watching these movies, it's always like New York or L.A. or Las Vegas being destroyed," he said.

"After a while, it's like you kind of almost expect it, right? Like, OK, here's L.A. being hit by a tsunami again.

"You're so used to seeing these cities being destroyed by aliens or natural disasters, it just doesn't even resonate anymore."

Mike Roshuk says he delights in the dreadful details of his digital paintings. (Supplied by Mike Roshuk)

Roshuk said his renderings were partly inspired by Black Summer, a Netflix series set in the early days of a zombie apocalypse.

Many of the scenes in the show were filmed in Calgary and watching the plot unfold in familiar territory gave Roshuk a strange sense of foreboding.

"I started watching it and then I had to pause it and look it up, because so many of the locations were familiar," he said.

"It really gave me more like an uneasy feeling of dread because, you know, it's like it hit home.

"That's sort of where the inspiration for these images came from. I wanted to, I guess, give myself that same feeling of dread again."
'End-of-the-world fantasy'

Roshuk has been regularly posting his images online and they're garnering hundreds of comments on social media forums like Reddit.

Many have told Roshuk the images hit a little too close to home during a global pandemic.

"Because of timing and everything that was going on in the world and in the news, I kind of knew that they would go crazy a little bit and they'd really resonate with people," he said.

"This is just purely entertainment, a disaster, end-of-the-world fantasy. But it's neat when you put images out there and then they go a little bit viral, it's always interesting to see the different ways people like to spin it."

Roshuk's rendering shows the legislature being reclaimed by nature. A tank standing nearby hints at conflicts past. (Supplied by Mike Roshuk)

Roshuk plans to tackle his next project soon. He's musing over some images of big predators like bears battling on Jasper Avenue or a decimated West Edmonton Mall.

If not, Edmonton's cold, stark winter might also prove to be cruel enough inspiration.

"Now that it's snowing more, maybe I'll do some more pictures and have a snowy frozen wasteland of Edmonton. But I'm not really sure how different that will be from today."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wallis Snowdon is a digital journalist with CBC Edmonton. She has nearly a decade of experience reporting behind her. Originally from New Brunswick, her journalism career has taken her from Nova Scotia to Fort McMurray. Share your stories with Wallis at wallis.snowdon@cbc.ca


With files from Emily Fitzpatrick