"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise"

Wow, seems on point.

Wow

"kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us."