A few weeks ago, when discussing how the current pandemic would be remembered, I posited my theory that, at some point, we would start comparing coronavirus to Oklahoma City, Waco, and Ruby Ridge. My thinking was a vaguely mathematical extrapolation: in those days, we were comparing coronavirus to 9/11 (see my last post). Immediately after 9/11, the attacks were being compared to the Oklahoma City bombing (see Marita Sturken’s excellent book on the subject, Tourists of History). If a=b and b=c, then surely a=c, and at some point we would start comparing the coronavirus to the Oklahoma City bombing.

On April 19, NPR published a piece titled, “On 25th Anniversary of Oklahoma City Bombing, Officials Find Lessons for Today.” The piece is an attempt to bring together these fairly disparate traumatic experiences, drawing parallels between the “dehumanization” at the root of both the bombing and the pandemic. On April 20, a friend shared the following image on Facebook:

“For y’all who are too young to get the reference,” the Branch Davidians were a religious sect living on a compound just outside of Waco, Texas, which was besieged by the ATF and FBI in 1993. Waco was a thorny, murky muddle of political issues– the Second Amendment, the right to property, individual liberty, the limits of federal power… Waco was also cited by Timothy McVeigh, one of the Oklahoma City bombers, as the impetus for his attack. The reference to “Branch Covidians” is thus a similar move to NPR’s, drawing parallels between those earlier related events and the current coronavirus.

Whereas the previous logic of my hypothesis was more mathematical, and while I am wary of drawing comparisons between events (like Sontag, who warned that our understanding of disease gets obscured and influenced by our metaphors for those disease, I fear that comparisons will obscure and influence our perceptions and understandings of the pandemic), as the weeks and social distancing have dragged on, the more I see this particular comparison as an apt one. More than simple geographic proximity, such as New York being the epicenter of both 9/11 and the coronavirus, the same ethical and political issues seem to be at play in Waco/Oklahoma City and our current moment.

In late March, for example, as the pandemic was starting to spread throughout the US and states were beginning to issue shelter-in-place orders, there was a run on guns and ammunition, with many people rushing to stockpile before going into isolation. There was also debate about whether gun stores were considered “essential businesses” and whether they should be allowed to remain open during the pandemic in the way that groceries, pharmacies, and the like were. The Second Amendment, and the question of how many, and what kinds of, guns people are allowed to own was also at issue in the early ’90s in the cases of Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City. In all those cases, too, the Second Amendment was tied up with a dark element of white nationalism, specifically Christian white supremacy. So too this current moment, with white nationalists exploiting the chaos of the coronavirus to promote conspiracy theories online and to foment plans for mass destruction (one white supremacist was arrested for planning to bomb a hospital treating coronavirus patients, while others have been discussing plans online to “weaponize” coronavirus). Christian fundamentalism is also playing a huge role in the spread of the coronavirus– Liberty University, an Evangelical school, is one of the only schools that reopened after shelter-in-place orders were issued, allowing for coronavirus to spread among its student population. Evangelical leaders were also the ones who encouraged President Trump to downplay the threat of the virus, leading to delays in federal response and increased spread of the virus at the beginning of the year.

And of course, in all these cases is the question of individual versus collective liberty. Can the government compel us to leave our homes, as they did at Ruby Ridge and Waco? Can it compel us to stay in our homes, as it’s doing now with the coronavirus? The “Branch Covidians” that Facebook post referred to are protesting lockdown orders, arguing that it’s un-American to force someone to stay indoors if they don’t want to.

Despite my wariness of drawing comparisons, I think there’s an important point to be made about the particular kind of home-grown American anger at work in all these cases. It’s a fury directed at the federal government, fueled by white supremacy and Christian fundamentalism, that finds its expression in moments of perceived government overreach. Though Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City have largely been relegated to footnotes in our national history, overshadowed by the events of 9/11, I think they continue to have an enormous impact on our collective psyche, especially since the issues at their root were never, in fact, resolved. Second Amendment rights continue to be debated today, as is religious freedom. Far from being a distinctly separate event, I would even argue that our response to the coronavirus is an extension of our response to Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City, a continuation of that unresolved and ongoing debate. Thinking of the pandemic in those terms may illuminate how we should respond to it, and of the dangers it presents that we may not even yet be aware of.

In the college literature courses I teach, I often advocate for students to use a “compare and contrast” structure for their papers. It’s easy–elementary, in fact–but also surprisingly complex. The simplistic format allows students to tease out the more complex nuances in the texts. As the professor, I’m always acutely aware that this format only allows them to scratch at the surface, but it does afford them a firm grasp of that surface. There’s always much, much more to the texts than they ever see, but they do get the most essential points.

Which is why I understand why “compare and contrast” is the format we’ve reached for to understand our current situation, especially in New York. Comparing Coronavirus to 9/11 is an easily executed way of wrapping our minds around what’s happening. For the things that are comparable, it affords us the comforting knowledge that we’ve experienced these things before and survived. For the things that contrast with our previous experience, the contrast allows us to see them more clearly, to put them in perspective, to focus our anxiety on them, as the real things beyond our experience and control.

As an academic, though, and as one who studies literature of 9/11, I know that “compare and contrast” falls woefully short of capturing the full scope of the experience. Take, for example, the attention given to emergency response to both crises. They’re easily comparable, because they involve the same people, the same settings. Comparing them reassures us that we are again doing all the right things: New York’s Office of the Medical Examiner is yet again deploying mobile morgues, as it did after 9/11, allowing us, in both situations, to treat the dead with dignity and individuality. Comparing the events also allows us to see the contrasts: in 9/11, ERs and hospital staff waited for an influx of patients that never came, while during COVID-19, those same people and spaces are overwhelmed with an influx of patients far greater than what was anticipated. After 9/11, there was a swarm of people volunteering to donate blood that was not in fact needed; during COVID-19, there isn’t enough blood to go around.

Little attention is given, though, to other aspects of the events, the more slippery ones that don’t neatly fit into the “compare and contrast” model. There’s something similar, for example, in how both events involve planes, and travel, and the failure of bureaucratic systems to keep the threat out of the country. There should have been stronger security checks before 9/11, more stringent screening of the terrorists and their baggage. There should have been stronger medical screening for Coronavirus, a more systematic deployment of tests for travelers arriving at airports, whether or not they displayed symptoms. But even in this situation, despite the apparent comparability, it’s not a neat comparison. 9/11 involved evil people, intent on committing harm, whereas COVID-19 involves innocent civilians, often unaware themselves of the danger they carried. The hijackers entered America intent on sowing death; those infected with Coronavirus often entered America so as to avoid it, fleeing the pandemic that had already spread elsewhere.

After 9/11, there was a deployment of patriotism and American symbols. It was an obvious response to an attack on our nation motivated by hatred of our institutions and our way of life. The Coronavirus is seeing the deployment of those same symbols. The Upper West Side brownstone I live in, as well as several other buildings on my block, is festooned in American flags and red, white, and blue banners. This patriotism in some ways makes sense, since adherence to a larger cause, and a larger community, is comforting, and this same symbolism did offer solace after 9/11. But in the Coronavirus context, patriotism also makes little sense. The virus isn’t attacking us because we’re American, and America is far from the only nation affected. In fact, we aren’t even going to solve this crisis by retreating into America, isolating ourselves from the rest of the world. We need all scientists, all doctors, no matter their country, to be working towards a vaccine. In this case, the “compare and contrast” model may not only be obscuring the larger story, but it may also be actively preventing the situation from being resolved, forcing us to see things through a narrow, incorrect perspective.

Similarly, one of the indelible images from 9/11 was President George W. Bush sitting for a full seven minutes after he had been informed that a plane had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, continuing to read “The Pet Goat” to a classroom of second graders, as if nothing had happened. That federal, and specifically presidential, inertia is echoed by our current crisis: President Trump denying, for months, that America was affected, and stalling, even now, the federal response to the pandemic. But again, the comparison isn’t neat. Despite the egregiousness of Bush’s immediate response, there’s still a component of shock and disbelief. The delay was perhaps not so much callous as human, a simple attempt to process what was happening. Trump’s response, though, is entirely callous and self-motivated, prompted entirely by his own ego, his desire to brag about the continued success of the economy, his refusal to concede failure, and his desperation to clinch re-election.

All this to say that there are points of similarity between 9/11 and the current pandemic, especially in New York, which has been the most affected by both disasters. However, the “compare and contrast” model, while useful, has its limitations. The full scope of the Coronavirus, and its ultimate effect on our culture and society, has yet to be seen. Those effects will almost certainly prove to be unique, utterly distinct from anything we have experienced before. The comparison to 9/11 may help to tease some of them out, and may even be shaping our response to the current crisis, but hopefully they will not obscure some of the more unique facets of the current moment, either.