My goodness, what on earth has happened to Glenn Greenwald?

He’s been writing a series of rational, TDS-free articles recently, including this one

The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump The COVID-driven centralization of economic power and information control in the hands of a few corporate monopolies poses enduring threats to political freedom.

Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.

[snip]

The U.S. Founders most certainly did not envision or desire absolute economic egalitarianism, but many, probably most, feared — long before lobbyists and candidate dependence on corporate SuperPACs — that economic inequality could become so severe, wealth concentrated in the hands of so few, that it would contaminate the political realm, where those vast wealth disparities would be replicated, rendering political rights and legal equality illusory. 

But the premises of pre-Trump debates over how grave a problem this is have been rendered utterly obsolete by the new realities of the COVID era. A combination of sustained lockdowns, massive state-mandated transfers of wealth to corporate elites in the name of legislative “COVID relief,” and a radically increased dependence on online activities has rendered corporate behemoths close to unchallengeable in terms of both economic and political power.

READ the whole thing

And related: Britain’s COVID response was rife with corruption and cronyism. It’s a discussion of a NYT article on how British politicians rewarded their friends and cash contributors, but certainly, the US has seen the same thing.

In fact, there are any number of institutions and corporations with a huge interest in keeping the panic going: the media,mega-retailers, teachers unions, politicians who want to pay off their backers, and those who want to centralize power and control in government.