Uncertainty in a Bleak Moment

by Amir Taheri  •  March 29, 2020 at 4:00 am

     

• Uncertainty may also be affecting politics in Iran, where the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei may have slowed down his bid for exclusive hold on power, in the hope that Hassan Rouhani, the hapless president, will end up carrying the can for the disaster caused by the pandemic.
• On positive note, the pandemic may have slowed down India's tragic rush towards a major Hindu-Muslim civil war that threatened to tear its democracy apart.
• If the best we hoped for a few months ago didn't happen, there is no reason why the worst that we now fear may come to pass. The beauty of uncertainty is that it works both ways.

(Image source: iStock)

Regardless of its denouement, the current coronavirus crisis may end up affecting the authority of the political, economic, media and scientific elites who shape world public opinion. The function of the elites, and their clam to legitimacy, has been linked to their ability to create certainty, in defiance of all and sundry Cassandras.

However, the current crisis, which struck like thunder out of the blue, has reasserted the evanescence, even the uncertainty, of human affairs. Just a few weeks ago the received wisdom was that stock exchanges will continue to move upwards while US President Donald J. Trump would sail to a second term and the post-Brexit European Union would settle for a period of anemic growth on the edge of recession. Globally, the elites peddled the certainty of business as usual.

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