Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ford Williams/U.S. Navy/AP

The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea, April 7, 2017.

When President Trump launched 59 tomahawk cruise missiles in April over evidence Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had again used chemical weapons on civilians, proponents of a deeper US involvement in Syria rejoiced.

Here was the sign they’d been waiting for, that Mr. Trump would go beyond former President Barack Obama’s narrowly focused effort to degrade and eventually defeat the so-called Islamic State.

The tomahawks announced – at least these advocates thought – a more expansive strategy combining the battle to destroy ISIS in Syria and neighboring Iraq with fights Mr. Obama never wanted to get into. Among them, a deeper role in Syria’s civil war on the side of the forces arrayed against Mr. Assad, and a specific effort to prevent Assad’s allies, above all Iran, from laying even deeper roots in Syria and the region.

Now the proponents of deeper Syria involvement are wondering if it was all wishful thinking.

As the Pentagon prepares to release in the coming weeks the revised strategy on ISIS and Syria that Trump ordered shortly after his inauguration, signs are multiplying that the strategy won’t deviate substantially from Obama’s. And that has some Syria analysts worried.

“Thus far the Trump administration has simply continued the strategy that it inherited from the Obama administration, and nothing indicates that’s about to change,” says Jennifer Cafarella, an expert on Syria and Islamist extremist organizations at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in Washington.

“The tomahawk strike was a tactical deviation, it was something Obama was not willing to do, but it now appears that it was an isolated action that did not portend a change in the overall policy towards Syria,” Ms. Cafarella says. “However, the same limited strategy is not going to address Syria’s deeper conflicts,” she adds, “and that means it’s not going to really destroy ISIS and keep it or some equivalent from coming back.”

The Trump administration’s principal goal remains to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria by ending the group’s hold on territory and wiping out as many of its leaders and fighters as possible. Beyond that, administration officials indicate the US aim is to calm the fighting in Syria’s other war – a civil war now in its seventh year – so that the country’s warring factions can find a political solution and Syria’s millions of internally displaced and far-flung refugees can eventually return home.

Root causes

At a White House press briefing last week previewing the president’s trip to Europe – including Trump’s first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin – national security adviser H.R. McMaster described US priorities in Syria as “the need to deescalate the Syrian civil war, to defeat ISIS there, and to end that disastrous humanitarian catastrophe.”

And in a statement Wednesday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the priority after ISIS’s “fraudulent caliphate” is dismantled should be on achieving “stability” so that Syrians can begin rebuilding their lives. Noting Trump planned to raise the Syrian conflict when he meets Mr. Putin Friday, Mr. Tillerson singled out Russia as having special responsibility in stabilizing Syria since it is the “guarantor” of the Assad regime.

The problem some Syria analysts see with this strategy is that it does nothing to address the root cause of a conflict that created the space for ISIS to come in and lay hold to large swaths of Syrian territory: the Assad regime and its despotic and murderous rule over Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority.

If anything, Pentagon officials are suggesting a “be our guest” approach to Assad regime troops – and allied forces including Iranian-led militias – seeking to seize territory abandoned by ISIS fighters as they continue to retreat from the Sunni-populated territory they held for more than two years.

Other Syria analysts warn that as US-backed Syrian opposition forces continue to advance with the assistance and guidance of about 1,000 US troops – for example in the battle to take back the city of Raqqa, the ISIS administrative capital – the US is becoming a de facto occupier in Syria.

Growing risk of clashes

And one serious risk some foresee of a sustained US presence in Syria is a growing likelihood of the US confronting – and clashing with – not just Assad government forces, but outside supporters including Iran.

That has begun to happen, for instance, in Syria’s southeastern desert, where US special forces and their anti-Assad allies repeatedly have exchanged fire with Iranian-backed militias near a strategically important border crossing at Tanf.

“The US is creating a zone of influence over an expanding chunk of Syrian territory as the forces it is backing take control of more and more land,” says Nicolas Heras, a fellow in Middle East security affairs at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “But if an advancing Assad feels he needs to dislodge the US,” he adds, “the Iranians will be there to help him do it.”

So far the US military says it has no interest in confronting Iran or in stopping Assad from retaking territory abandoned by ISIS fighters. Indeed, in a recent press conference, the spokesman for the US-led anti-ISIS coalition in Baghdad said any effort by Assad forces and their allies to take back territory still held by ISIS “would be welcomed” by the US-led coalition.

“We as a coalition are not in the land-grab business. We are in the killing-ISIS business,” said Army Col. Ryan Dillon. “That is what we want to do, and if the Syrian regime wants to” recapture of ISIS-held territory, “we absolutely have no problem with that.”

Still, Mr. Heras believes the US could end up in a clash with Iran if the Syrian forces that the US and Iran are each supporting end up battling for the same territory. If Iran were to kill US forces, even inadvertently, that could lead to a major confrontation between the two adversaries, he posits.

Moreover, a fight between the US and Iran could draw in the Russians, who otherwise have no interest in coming to blows with the US in Syria, Heras says.

A long presence in Syria

The US denials of “land-grab’ interests to the contrary, Mr. Heras says the US is already the dominant power influence over about a quarter of Syrian territory holding as much as 15 percent of the Syrian population – a chunk he expects will expand as US and US-backed forces advance.

“Over time and given the trends we see, as much as 40 percent of territory and 25 percent of the population could end up in a US zone of influence,” Heras says. “Obviously that’s significant.”

The real question, he says, is what does the US plan to do with the areas of Syria it more or less controls? Heras speculates the US will seek to keep small “forward-operating bases” in the territory controlled by US-backed forces for maintaining a counterterrorism mission and “for keeping tabs on the Iranians.” He expects the US military, already granted broad leeway by Trump to formulate Syria operations, will still be in Syria at the end of the president’s term in 2020.

But others say such a strategy will do little to achieve what the US insists is its main goal in Syria – destroying ISIS and keeping it (or some facsimile, perhaps Al Qaeda) from roaring back.

“Until policy changes, until the US formulates a strategy that includes taking on Assad in a way that politically empowers the local Sunni populations and allows them to believe they have a future in Syria, we are not going to definitively win the war against ISIS,” says ISW’s Cafarella. “The coalition may be winning every tactical battle,” she adds, “but we’re not going to win the war because we’re not addressing the reasons the population accepted ISIS in the first place.”

The US so far is showing no interest in repeating the kind of costly and heavy-footed political reconstruction projects it carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the zones US-backed forces have taken back from ISIS, the US military has focused on bringing in food and other emergency supplies while leaving the heavy lifting of reestablishing services and addressing political grievances to hastily formed local councils.

But Cafarella says the Trump administration is mistaken if it thinks such a limited strategy – one that paves the way for Assad to reassert his rule over Sunni-populated territory to boot – will deliver a decisive victory for the Pentagon’s “ISIS-killing business.”

“So far the US has been operating in Syria with blinders on, trying to ignore the civil war, but the civil war has found us,” she says. “Either we realize that and make addressing the political issues part of our strategy,” she adds, “or one way or another, ISIS comes back.”

It’s nearly 8 a.m. as a green public bus chugs along Francisco Fajardo Avenue toward Petare, a slum in eastern Caracas. Two women sit in the back, applying mascara and lipstick as the bus jerks through traffic. A young man plays with his cell phone, and another is munching on breakfast.

Suddenly, a voice from the front of the bus catches their attention. They look up.

“President Nicolás Maduro continues with his plan to rewrite the constitution without consulting Venezuelans,” a woman says, her head hovering behind a square cardboard cutout made to look like a television screen. Blue letters on top of the box read, “El Bus TV.” 

Bus TV is a live newscast on public buses that started here in Caracas, but has already spread to cities including Mérida, Valencia, and Barinas. Amid prolonged protests over Venezuela’s economic and political crises, and increasing authoritarianism, it targets listeners who may not have access to the internet or media beyond public television stations, which are under increasing pressure from the government. And it's just one of the ways that the country’s journalists are innovating in their commitment to get real news to Venezuelans.

Citizens know that news “isn’t matching the reality they are living,” says Marianela Balbi, executive director of the Press and Society Institute of Venezuela, an NGO that tracks and promotes press freedom. “There’s no news about the six-hour lines they are waiting in for food or the [...] inflation or the lack of medicine. So, many know the information they are getting is incomplete or superficial or coming from a single point of view.”

On Wednesday, for example, photos of blood-soaked opposition legislators in Venezuela’s National Assembly, who were reportedly beaten by masked government supporters, were splashed across social media networks and international news sites. But the attacks weren’t televised on national channels, and for the more than one-third of the population without internet access, they may as well have never happened.

It’s a familiar story in a country where freedom of the press has slowly eroded and self-censorship has increased over the past two decades. While security forces block anti-government demonstrators protesting widespread hunger and medical shortages, and calling for elections, national television channels can be required to air government programming. That was the case May 3, when Mr. Maduro was shown bouncing to a merengue rhythm while protesters were pelted by the National Guard with tear gas and water cannons.

Meanwhile, left with fewer independent news outlets, many Venezuelans are turning to social media to stay in the know. But rumors and false reports from perspectives on both sides of the political spectrum have further fed confusion.

The public demonstrations have served as a rallying call for many Venezuelan journalists, however. As violence ratchets up and the government doubles down, local reporters see a serious need to keep the population informed and engaged in what is going on here. It’s led to innovative approaches to telling the news in order to overcome censorship and misinformation.

“About three months ago, when the violence and the protests went up, there became a clear need to keep the population informed,” says Ms. Balbi. “These journalists decided they can’t sit still. And that’s what you want in a democratic society: distinct sources of coverage so that the population can make informed decisions.”

News on the move

Former President Hugo Chávez had a fraught relationship with the media, closing down scores of independent radio and television stations. More recently, shortages of printing paper have meant more newspapers moving online or printing fewer pages of coverage. And Maduro has carried the same torch: Over the past three months alone there have been more than 428 violations of press freedom, according to the NGO Press and Society Institute of Venezuela (IPYS).

But as the challenges mount, so do some journalists’ creativity. 

The process at Bus TV, for example, is incredibly simple: A producer steps onto the bus and asks the driver for permission to present the news. Two journalists hold the makeshift TV, while the host reads the four-minute news bulletin covering current events. They not only talk about the protests, but shortages or other daily hardships many here are experiencing. Each day the newscast is different, and although government sources are rarely made available for interviews, the reporters work to incorporate public statements from officials in order to make the newscast as balanced and professional as possible.

The idea came to reporter Claudia Lizardo in late April. The capital was overwhelmed by protests, but when she got on the bus she realized no one was talking about it. “I felt like I was in a parallel reality,” she says. “It seemed like nothing [out of the ordinary] was happening in the country.” She feared it was a matter of lack of information – or even misinformation. So she gathered a group of friends and launched Bus TV.

“This is not a protest, but it’s a form of resistance,” says Laura Castilllo, a journalist working with Bus TV. “It’s a way to counteract censorship.”

The response has been quite positive, with riders engaging with the reporters, asking questions, and treating them with kindness.

Today, the bus passengers applaud once the live “broadcast” ends, and the team jumps off, ready to read the news on the next bus that comes by. In an hour, they’ve given six newscasts.

“Good morning! This is Bus TV!” Ms. Castillo says, while climbing onto yet another bus. “In Venezuela, at least one member of each family sacrifices one meal per day in order to feed their children.”

A passenger, Mariela, nods her head. She says she was already aware of most of the information on Bus TV today, but hopes the project continues because many in her working-class neighborhood of Catia aren’t as well-informed. “You should also do this on the subway,” Mariela calls out to the team once the newscast is complete. 

Fake news

More than 400 radio, television, and print outlets are biased in favor of the government, according to IPYS. The Venezuelan state owns many of them, and others receive government funding, influencing their editorial line. Together, they give the government an unprecedented platform for its messaging, according to Marcelino Bisbal, a media expert and professor at Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas.

“When Chávez passed away, there was already an important [government] media platform,” Dr. Bisbal says. “But, three years later, that platform has grown scandalously.”

Given the erosion of the independent media landscape, WhatsApp, Facebook Live, Periscope, and other live-transmission social media tools have become increasing popular ways to share information. But reliable and balanced information is increasingly difficult to come by.

“They have become channels to spread a great amount of fake news,” says Bisbal. “And the chaos surrounding the protests has served as a breeding ground for rumors” on both ends of the news spectrum.

In May, for example, rumors that jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez had died reached such a pitch that the government released a “proof of life” video shot with prison bars behind him. Even US Sen. Marco Rubio had tweeted that Mr. Lopez was rushed to the hospital “in very serious condition.”

But a new initiative that started in April, called “The Public Information Service,” is working to counteract widespread misinformation. A group of journalists record news bulletins as voice memos and share them through messaging apps like Telegram and Whatsapp. They only share news that they have been able to corroborate through multiple sources. 

“This is our individual contribution to combating misinformation,” says Yaya Andueza, one of the founders. “We can help lower the levels of anxiety that false news creates in the population.”

Balbi says she has faith their efforts will make a difference. “People need reliable information, even simply for public safety reasons,” she says, referring to the protests and the basic need to know whether there are clashes in a neighborhood one is traveling to, for example.

“Venezuela has a strong democratic culture, something that will be hard to repress,” she says. “A situation where democracy is at risk is serious, and that’s why Venezuelans are fighting.”

Naseem Zeitoon/Reuters

Staff work inside the headquarters of Al Jazeera Network, in Doha, Qatar June 8, 2017.

Amid all the talk of Qatar’s alleged support for terrorism, at the core of the Gulf Arab countries’ ongoing blockade of the oil- and gas-rich emirate is one major source of contention: Al Jazeera.

A central demand of the Gulf states lead by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – relayed by mediator Kuwait and allegedly leaked by Qatar – is for the Gulf country to “close Al Jazeera network and its affiliates.” Other key demands: downgrading ties with Iran and closing a Turkish military base in Doha.

Why the intense focus on the pan-Arab TV network?

Funded and launched through loans and grants from the Qatari government, even those who are not critics say it is at times hard to determine where Doha-based Al Jazeera ends and Qatar's interests begin. However, network officials say they have had complete editorial freedom over the past two decades.

Despite its more recent, brief foray into the American cable news market, Al Jazeera’s reputation in the West is still colored by the aftermath of 9/11, when the network’s inclusive coverage was seen as providing a platform for leaders of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, particularly Osama bin Laden.

But Al Jazeera was and is controversial in the Arab world for a much different reason. When launched in 1996, the network was seen as a revolutionary force bucking a largely conservative and autocratic status quo.

In an era in which state-run media dominated the Arab world, Al Jazeera for the first time broadcast differing views and opinions, and raised political awareness.

Today, with the long-term stability of many Gulf regimes far from secure, experts say states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are exerting all their diplomatic and economic might to bring an end to Al Jazeera in a vain bid to close its Pandora’s box of democratic and liberal social values.

The other opinion

When Al Jazeera formed in 1996, the media landscape in the Arab world was bleak.

State-run TV stations that broadcast propaganda and the regimes’ version of events were the only accessible news. Opposition parties, unionists, analysts, and even average citizens who dared to contradict the official party line on everything from the Palestinians to bread prices were banned.

“Arab TV did not even have live interviews – state TV could trust their anchors, but they couldn’t even trust interviewees to carry the party line,” says Daoud Kuttab, a veteran Palestinian journalist and executive board member of the International Press Institute, a Vienna-based organization that advocates for press freedom.

The monopoly on information served autocratic Arab regimes, none more so than Gulf Arab countries, which used state-run newspapers, broadcasters, and clerics to dictate positions on social issues, discourage dissent, and cement the leaders’ image as benevolent rulers.

But when staffers of the recently shuttered BBC Arabic Television launched Al Jazeera, the old rules of Arab media were thrown out.

Opposition politicians were allowed to speak. Everyday citizens, and their economic and political struggles, were highlighted. Analysts say it shook the Gulf states to their core.

“These regimes are not elected, they fear anything that relaxes their grip on power, and they have the media under tight control – Al Jazeera blew that all away,” says Hugh Miles, editor of Arab Digest.org and author of “Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World.”

“It is a direct existential threat to their system.”

Program presenters and their guests openly discussed democracy, human rights, corruption, and citizens’ rights – what many call a “political awakening” in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Under its motto, “the opinion and the other opinion,” Al Jazeera expanded its approach to international affairs, exposing the Arab public for the first time to competing views on issues across the world. For every Osama bin Laden video tape, there was a rival Northern Alliance fighter. It interviewed Hamas spokesmen and Israeli generals. For every fiery cleric there was a secularist, or even an atheist.

“We never knew there was an opposition in Libya, we didn’t know there were Kurds in Syria or heard from Shiites – all these minority and opposition groups that were gagged were given a voice,” Mr. Kuttab says.

Platform for Islamists

By including a diverse array of voices, the network highlighted the contradictions in Gulf states’ foreign policy – often tied to their major ally, the US, and unpopular with Arab publics – such as toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iraq war.

The station’s willingness to bring in different voices led Arab governments to label the station alternatively as a tool of the CIA, a Mossad creation, a propaganda arm for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, or an Al Qaeda mouthpiece.

Al Jazeera’s focus on the political opposition also gave a substantial platform to Islamists, who for decades had been marginalized and pressured by Arab regimes.

The station gave particular space for the Muslim Brotherhood, which called for political openings in the region. The Brotherhood was identified by Gulf regimes as the greatest threat to their Arab allies and the only true opposition force that could one day challenge their rule at home.

These fears would only grow following the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, during which Al Jazeera was criticized for devoting a substantial amount of positive coverage to the post-revolution Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and to the Islamists in Tunisia and Libya – putting Qatar at odds with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

“Officials in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would prefer that clerics from groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood not have any Arab media outlet which can serve as their platform to deliver messages to citizens not only of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but also the greater Arab world,” Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of the DC-based Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk consultancy, says via email.

Social commentary

Although Al Jazeera host and benefactor Qatar follows a conservative interpretation of Sunni Islam, Al Jazeera has provided airtime for diverse views, encouraging debates on theological and practical daily issues.

The airing of differing views on Islam has been a blow to Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, which rely on their control of the religious establishment to cement their legitimacy – using an army of paid clerics to sell their policies and praise their leadership.

Friday sermons in Saudi Arabia have been used to promote its catastrophic war in Yemen, stir up sectarian hatred of Iran, and to ensure fealty to kings and princes.

“Al Jazeera makes these regimes look stupid, it undoes all their work by getting on sheikhs that are more individually minded and democratically inclined,” says Mr. Miles, the editor and author.

“They are attacking their religious legitimacy, which is extremely sensitive.”

Al Jazeera has addressed social issues and taboos often discussed in heated debates at home but never broadcast on-air: honor killings, the plight of migrant workers, suicide bombings, sexual harassment.

“We opened a huge debate and exposed a lot of contradictions in the well-established orthodoxy of traditional organizations, including political and religious groups,” says Wadah Khanfar, former director general of Al Jazeera from 2003 to 2011.

“Al Jazeera not only confronted governments, but religious authorities and social structures to address the issue of women’s place in society, our relationship with the West, and other matters which are preventing our society from progressing to democratic states.”

Uprising

Gulf states have seen Al Jazeera’s potency by its aggressive coverage of, and according to many analysts, catalyzing of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, which included smaller-scale but threatening protests that hit Gulf states Bahrain, Oman, and parts of Saudi Arabia.

“What we are seeing today is a realization by these governments that if these voices continue, they are going to see more crowds, more public insisting of rights,” Mr. Khanfar says.

It has yet to be seen if the Gulf Arabs’ campaign can succeed in censoring Al Jazeera or shutting it down altogether. Previous attempts to launch competing networks, such as Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya, have failed to rival Al Jazeera’s reach. Meanwhile, a generation of social media activists and citizen journalists, taking their cue from Al Jazeera, continue to work through sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

“The factors which made Al Jazeera so popular among Arabs years ago will not disappear,” says the Gulf State Analytics’ Mr. Cafiero, “raising questions about how much Riyadh and Abu Dhabi could even achieve politically from successfully pressuring Doha.”

Google/AP/File

This image provided by Google shows a very early version of Google's prototype self-driving car.

Imagine that you’re driving through a residential area when your brakes fail. Directly in your path is a group of five jaywalkers. The only place to swerve is onto the sidewalk, where a pedestrian is waiting for the signal to change.

Who do you run over, the five jaywalkers or the one law-abiding citizen?

Such stark choices are rare, if they occur at all, and, in a world of human drivers they would be made in milliseconds. But in a future where cars drive themselves, the choices will be coded in the operating systems of millions of cars, highlighting a paradox of a technology that is expected to save countless lives: The cars may also have to be programmed to run people over.

“There is a common misconception that because it’s an automatic system it’s automatically infallible, and will simply brake in time when a critical situation develops,” says Leon Sütfeld, the lead author of a paper on the ethics of autonomous vehicles published Wednesday in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. “This unfortunately just isn’t realistic. A self-driving car is subject to the same laws of physics as a manually driven car.”

Writing code for autonomous vehicles will require us to take our moral intuitions – those nebulous and often contradictory feelings that color our perceptions of human behavior – and package them into precise instructions for millions of cars we set loose on our roads. That raises what philosophers call Big Questions: Can you quantify morality? Whose set of morals do we use?

Globally there are an estimated 1.25 million traffic fatalities each year, with 40,000 in the United States. And in the US, 94 percent of traffic deaths are attributable to human error. Elimination of human error on our roads would be a boon to public safety.

But before the public is comfortable having software take the wheel, consumers and regulators will need assurances that the cars are programmed with the moral responsibility that comes with a drivers license. This risk-management programming is not just for the one-in-a-million Trolley Problem event where a crash is unavoidable, but for the routine operation of the vehicle.

“I just don’t see a lot of these forced-choice scenarios occurring in actual traffic,” says Noah Goodall, a researcher at Virginia’s Department of Transportation who specializes in the ethics of autonomous vehicles. “The idea with this kind of work is to figure out how people assign values to different objects.”

In an effort to measure those values, Mr. Sütfeld, a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück, Germany, and his colleagues asked 105 participants to don head-mounted virtual-reality displays that placed them in the driver’s seat of a virtual car traveling down a two-lane road. A variety of obstacles, including adults, children, dogs, goats, trash cans, and hay bales, were placed in the lanes, and drivers had to pick which obstacle to strike and which one to spare.

The participants were given either one second or four seconds to decide. The one-second trials showed little consistency, suggesting that participants didn’t have enough time to deliberately choose what to strike. But when the time constraints were eased, a pattern emerged. In the four-second trials, drivers were more likely to spare the lives humans over animals, children over adults, pedestrians over motorists, and dogs over livestock and wild animals.

These consistent choices, say the researchers, could be used to develop a one-dimensional “value-of-life” scale that could be used to determine whose safety autonomous vehicles should prioritize. Such a scale has an advantage over more sophisticated models, such as those that rely on neural networks, in that it is straightforward and transparent to the public, potentially leading to a quicker acceptance of driverless vehicles.

But a strict hierarchy may not be enough to capture the moral complexity of balancing risks while driving.

“If human well-being is always a priority, does that mean a self-driving car may not avoid a dog that runs into the street, if there is an ever so little chance of mild injury to a human in the process?” asks Sütfeld. “We would argue that there needs to be a system that is able to make reasonable decisions even in complex situations, and categorical rules often fail this requirement.”

Iyad Rahwan, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who researches the ethics of self-driving cars, cautions that no formula will be truly satisfying for everyone.

“There is too much focus on identifying the correct answer to the rare ethical dilemmas that a car might face,” says Professor Rahwan. “I think there is no right answer in an ethical dilemma, almost by definition. Instead, we need to come up with a balance of risks that is acceptable. We need a social contract that constitutes an acceptable solution to an ethical dilemma that is unsolvable in any objective sense.”

Courtesy of Christoph Gerigk/Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

‘Hydra and Kali Discovered by Four Divers,' by Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst’s first major exhibition in 10 years begins not in the gallery but on the page, with the tale of a shipwreck supposedly discovered off the coast of East Africa.

The ship’s contents are said to be the treasures of Cif Amotan II, a freed slave from Antioch, who spent his final days collecting artifacts of distant cultures. The freedman’s plunders were recovered by divers and brought to Venice – or so the story goes.

In the lobby of the Punta della Dogana, visitors see “footage” of divers excavating the treasures.

“A number of the sculptures are exhibited prior to undergoing restoration, heavily encrusted in corals and other marine life, at times rendering their forms virtually unrecognizable,” the exhibition guidebook explains.

Indeed barnacles, sea fans, and myriad coral stud and enshroud bronze deities, triumphant warriors, and even an occasional Walt Disney character.

Noelle Swan/The Christian Science Monitor

Damien Hirst's sculpture of Mowgli and Baloo from the Disney film "The Jungle Book" is on display at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy, May 9, 2017.

The result is a menagerie that bridges land and sea, antiquity and modern life, the familiar and the foreign. In one particularly striking display, distant cultures mingle, as the Hindu goddess Kali faces off with Hydra, the many-headed serpent of Greek mythology. 

In total, the “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable” exhibition fills two of Venice’s palatial museums, with 189 sculptures ranging from delicate Roman coinage to a decapitated bronze demon rising three stories through the Palazzo Grassi courtyard.

Noelle Swan/The Christian Science Monitor

At 18 meters high, Damien Hirst's "Demon with Bowl" rises three stories through the courtyard of the Pallazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy, May 9, 2017.

Mr. Hirst created each piece in triplicate, a “coral” edition, a “treasure” edition, and a “copy” edition, in keeping with the mythos. Many have reportedly sold, with prices beginning at $500,000.

In decades past, the British artist has drawn both acclaim and condemnation. His diamond-crusted infant skull infuriated parenting groups and his kaleidoscopic images made of butterflies enraged animal welfare activists. This show has also sparked controversy, with some raising concerns of cultural and artistic appropriation.

But for many Hirst fans, the borrowing and melding of cultures – and the debate that it invites – is simply part of the show.

Eric Gay/AP

Sen. Ted Cruz (R) of Texas debates with Gary Marsh over health care during a town hall meeting Thursday in Austin, Texas.

Louisiana’s Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy kicked off the July 4 recess with a town hall in Baton Rouge that, at times, veered into confrontation over the GOP health-care bill that’s now stalled in the Senate.  

The congenial senator, a physician, tried to dissipate chants and interruptions by reminding folks to be “civil.” A constituent shot back: “I’m civil. I don’t think it’s civil to kill people,” according to a report by The Hill newspaper.

There’s nothing quite as personal as health care to arouse the passions of voters. In the summer of 2009, angry tea party protesters swarmed town halls of Democrats working on health-care legislation. Now the tables are turned – to the point where some Republicans are simply not holding these meetings with the public, or finding a way to screen questions or restrict access.

Town halls are an American democratic tradition, a quintessential way for constituents to be heard by and to hear from their representatives. It’s possible to keep the passion, but turn down the heat so that these valuable face-to-face meetings can flourish.

Both lawmakers and constituents have legitimate concerns when hot-button issues like health care generate public pandemonium. 

The shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R) of Louisiana and others at a GOP charity baseball practice last month shook up members of Congress, who voiced concern about security at public gatherings, including town halls. That’s in addition to being shouted down while trying to answer questions.

But many constituents, too, are frightened – genuinely worried about losing health coverage. They are organizing precisely because of their concerns, exercising their right to voice their views. 

Meanwhile, those who might support their lawmaker or the GOP legislation feel as if they’re being squelched as organized opponents dominate town halls.

Both constituents and politicians need to adjust to make town halls more productive. 

The guide to town halls offered by the grass-roots group Indivisible, which is organizing against the GOP health-carelegislation, urges folks to “be polite” and “look friendly or neutral.” Norms that govern conversation outside town halls ought to be just as valid inside them. 

While some lawmakers are turning to telephone town halls or registering people, they need to consider the kinds of restrictions they use. 

Town halls are actually not a common tool for senators, many of whom have vast distances to cover and have other ways of interacting with constituents. A telephone town hall may be a more effective way for them to reach large numbers of people – but that can also frustrate citizens, especially if it’s clear that questions are being screened.

Similarly, representatives might register people at in-person town halls in order to make sure that they are actual constituents. But blocking them by other criteria or simply limiting them invites a backlash.

“In the tradition of town halls, we should not control the numbers but use public spaces that will accommodate the level of interest and the level of passion,” says Carolyn Lukensmeyer, executive director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse in Washington. 

At times like these, that argues for school auditoriums over cramped function rooms.

Ms. Lukensmeyer suggests that town halls be moderated by respected community figures so that all voices are heard, including the lawmaker’s. 

And she puts forward this radical idea: Republicans and Democrats who serve on the same committee should do town halls in each other’s districts so that they get a different perspective on issues. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D) of Maryland and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R) of Utah actually did that in 2014. 

Town halls are central to American democracy. Let the voices be heard – all of them.