“Here’s some of what happened while the world was distracted by the coronavirus: Hungary banned the public depiction of homosexuality. China shut Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy newspaper. Brazil’s government extolled dictatorship. And Belarus hijacked a passenger plane to arrest a journalist. COVID-19 has absorbed the world’s energies and isolated countries from one another, which may have accelerated the creep of authoritarianism and extremism across the globe, some researchers and activists believe. ‘COVID is a dictator’s dream opportunity,’ said Theary Seng, a Cambodian-American human rights lawyer who has been indicted on charges including treason in the ostensibly democratic southeast Asian nation, where Prime Minister Hun Sen has been in power for more than three decades.”

“Human Rights Watch accuses Cambodia’s government of using the pandemic as cover to imprison political opponents without due process. Scores have been indicted and face mass trials. When it comes to government opposition, ‘the fear of COVID, on its own and as a political weapon, has substantially restricted mobility for a gathering or movement to take shape,’ Seng said. The biggest global public health emergency in a century has handed power to government authorities and restricted life for billions of people. Luke Cooper, a London School of Economics researcher and author of the book ‘Authoritarian Contagion,’ said the vast economic, health and social resources poured into fighting the pandemic mean ‘the state is back as a force to manage society and to deliver public goods.’ Restrictions on civil liberties or political opponents have been stepped up during the pandemic on several continents” the AP reports.

The notable exception to this of course was Trump in 2020. For a President who screamed bloody murder over a “caravan” of people looking for work picking vegetables or washing dishes and who wanted to declare Antifa a terrorist organization to hype up an imaginary national security threat from a bunch of cosplayers, when you step back, it was kind of surprising that he just wanted to pretend the Coronavirus did not exist or would magically disappear. Really can’t think of any explanation for his failure to capitalize on the pandemic to sustain his regime than simple laziness and cowardice. He didn’t want to put the work into crushing his enemies and tried to play it “safe”.