The great crises reveal to themselves the societies they experience. This surreal epidemic has the additional singularity of depriving its prey of a recognizable enemy, which one can stare at, judge, hate. A war without armies, soldiers or borders, which obliges us to measure ourselves against reality without cunning and without any margin for illusion; to prioritize the real priorities, to give credit to the experts, the real ones this time, and to suspend for a time our ideological wars by finding unexpected impulses of solidarity. This ordeal is in the process of raising the status of truth, which has been roughed up lately.
Read also: Coronavirus: the United States struck at the heart
The crisis has not spared the politicians who make the truth an optional or instrumental use. See President Bolsonaro who denies the danger of the coronavirus and invites the Brazilians to ignore the confinement instructions of his own government, before seeing his bravado removed by Twitter. Or Boris Johnson who discovers
This article is for subscribers only. You still have 84% to discover.
Subscribe: € 1 the first month
cancellable at any time
Enter your emailAlready subscribed? Log in