Thread by @juliettekayyem

Thread on January 6th, mass shootings and THE DEVIL NEVER SLEEPS. As I wrote this weekend below, much too coy for some of you, we study crises not simply because of what they tell us about a moment but what they tell us about how we got to that moment. 1/

A crisis is unique, a specific kind of event. I use the word carefully. In wonk speak, it is a moment (known as the "boom") of surprise disruption that threatens a high priority value and presents a restricted amount of time in which a response can be made. 2/

So an active shooter or an attack on the capitol is a crisis, though in my work in THE DEVIL NEVER SLEEPS I'm hoping to take the surprise out of our planning. Nevertheless, they are also a moment that exposes something deeper, like a mirror to what is already wrong. 3/

In #Uvalde, we look for a specific explanation -- a broken radio, a weak incident commander -- but there won't be just one. There are so many, including a cover up that is a part of the crisis. I explain here the myth of the "single point of failure." 4/

The ethnic, political and power differentials in #Uvalde were already known. The coverup makes all understanding somewhat suspect, inconclusive. This story on how to even pronounce #Uvalde says so much about those fissures. 5/

As we enter the 1/6 hearings, and what they will disclose, the day of crisis itself is merely the culmination of a tactic used by the WH to utilize violence or the threat of violence for political gain. There were other tactics -- some in court, politics, the states. 6/

There is so much talk now about the narrative of 1/6. Details matter. But there won't be a single point of failure. I think of it as a hurricane whose contours were known and understood, whose warnings were ignored, and that hit a place already weak, divided, not resilient. 7/

There is a day of crisis -- a Category 5 -- but
the levees were already crumbling and the institutions already frail. 8/

We focus on a school shooting or 1/6, the moment of boom, because life is at stake. But we go back because we will learn, as we are in Texas and will in DC, that none of it could be described as unimaginable. 9/

I write about this -- about memory and disasters, single points of failure, and what we can learn and unlearn from stories of disasters -- and have been sheepish about talking about it of late, the strange balance of a professional career that is more relevant in tragedy. 10/

But THE DEVIL NEVER SLEEPS was intended to help all of us by not simply teaching us to learn to fail, safer and understand what has been missing in how we think about disasters and crises.
Maybe the title was too on point. 11/11
amazon.com/Devil-Never-Sl…