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Jonathn Cook writes:
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<div class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class=""><font face="Times New Roman" class="">…But again the object of our attention is not as much ours as we may believe. While we focus on graphs, while we twitch the curtains to see if neighbors
are going for </font><a href="https://twitter.com/consent_factory/status/1244186217408856064" class=""><span class="s2">a second run</span></a><font face="Times New Roman" class=""> or whether families are out in the garden </font><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/29/stephen-kinnock-targeted-by-police-for-visiting-father-neil" class=""><span class="s2">celebrating
a birthday</span></a><font face="Times New Roman" class=""> distant from an elderly parent, we are much less likely to be thinking about how well the crisis is being handled. The detail, the mundane is again crowding out the important, the big picture.</font></i></span></div>
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<p class="p1"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 14px;"><i class=""><font face="Times New Roman" class="">Our current fear is an enemy to our developing and maintaining a critical perspective. The more we are frightened by graphs, by deaths, the more we are
likely to submit to whatever we are told will keep us safe.</font></i></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 14px;"><i class=""><font face="Times New Roman" class="">Undercover of the public’s fear, and of justified concerns about the state of the economy and future employment, countries like the US are transferring
huge sums of public money to the biggest corporations. Politicians controlled by big business and media owned by big business are pushing through this </font><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/25/senate-corporate-bailout-package-robbery-progress-warn-critics" class=""><span class="s2">corporate
robbery</span></a><font face="Times New Roman" class=""> without scrutiny – and for reasons that should be self-explanatory.</font></i></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 14px;"><i class=""><font face="Times New Roman" class="">They know our attention is too overwhelmed by the virus for us to assess intentionally mystifying arguments about the supposed economic benefits, about
yet more illusory trickle-down. </font></i></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 14px;"><i class=""><font face="Times New Roman" class="">There are many other dramatic changes being introduced, almost too many and too rapidly for us to follow them properly. </font><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/spain-government-set-to-order-nationwide-coronavirus-lockdown" class=""><span class="s2">Bans
on movement</span></a><font face="Times New Roman" class="">. </font><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/middleeast/israel-coronavirus-cellphone-tracking.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage" class=""><span class="s2">Intensified
surveillance</span></a><font face="Times New Roman" class="">. </font><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/twitter-to-remove-harmful-fake-news-about-coronavirus" class=""><span class="s2">Censorship</span></a><font face="Times New Roman" class="">.</font></i></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 14px;"><i class=""><font face="Times New Roman" class="">The transfer of </font><a href="https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/19/woman-bundled-ground-police-breaking-lockdown-paris-12423747/?fbclid=IwAR2Fgfx3vO7erYFzdBfWwoppe4g5c_yKUdxYNS2DMxaklIGEjD1BWlyyWM4" class=""><span class="s2">draconian
powers</span></a><font face="Times New Roman" class=""> to the police, and preparations for the </font><a href="https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-more-than-10-000-armed-forces-staff-put-on-standby-11958144" class=""><span class="s2">deployment of soldiers</span></a><font face="Times New Roman" class=""> on
the streets. </font><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/21/doj-coronavirus-emergency-powers-140023" class=""><span class="s2">Detention without trial</span></a><font face="Times New Roman" class="">. </font><a href="https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-california-prepared-enact-martial-215237009.html" class=""><span class="s2">Martial
law</span></a><font face="Times New Roman" class="">. Measures that might have terrified us when Trump was our main worry, or Brexit, or Russia, may now seem a price worth paying for a “return to normality”.</font></i></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 14px;"><i class=""><font face="Times New Roman" class="">Paradoxically, a craving for the old-normal may mean we are prepared to submit to a new normal that could permanently deny us any chance of returning to
the old-normal.</font></i></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 14px;"><i class=""><font face="Times New Roman" class="">The point is not just that things are far more provisional than most of us are ready to contemplate; it’s that our window on what we think of as “the real
world”, as “normal”, is almost entirely manufactured for us.</font></i></span></p>
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