The campaign for the legislative elections that has shaken France for twenty days leaves it drained and damaged. In the previous weeks, the din of the European elections – disrupted in particular by the inconsequential exploitation of the Israel-Hamas war – had already been exhausting. By calling general elections by surprise, while the country was on edge, the President of the Republic ignored the concern he should have had for the state of the nation. Beyond even the political situation that all this is leading to, it is this error of judgment for which he is primarily responsible.
Overflow, agitation, nervous breakdown. France has been plunged into a borderline psychological state that will leave its mark. In “life”, the spirit of quarrel has insinuated itself everywhere. Our society has bristled with symbolic barriers. A foul climate is setting in – class mistrust, social contempt, trivialization of anti-Semitism on the far left, liberation of racist speech on the far right. And many citizens are asking themselves: what are we witnessing?
In the end, we didn’t discuss anything. Or so badly.
In public conversation, easy slogans and demonstrations of virtue – which have always been part of the debate – have this time taken over. The media arena is more intimidating than ever. At every turn of a sentence, the threat of bad buzz encourages us to say nothing more than the expected banalities. One indignation chases another, one controversy replaces the previous one… We are caught up in a wringing machine that we take for public debate. In the end, nothing has been said or so little. Nothing has been debated or so badly. A few intellectuals have tried to gain perspective; they were barely audible, lost in the crowd. If we could, in the past, tie ourselves to a few great voices in troubled times, today there is only storm. We lack calm, and we lack curiosity. No one listens to each other and no one can stand each other anymore.
And yet – and yet! – we will have to continue to make France. Particularly with this part of the citizens of the middle and working classes who voted RN without being far right, and who thought that this time, they were finally on the side of the winners.
The other day, I was talking with the philosopher Marcel Gauchet. I told him about the melancholy that gripped me as a journalist, as a citizen, and as a mother. “I have children. I am worried about them. I am worried about the country.” To which Gauchet – who sees higher than me – replied: “You are right to link the two: your children and the country. In a nation, for things to go better for its children, things must also go better for those of others.”
I believe that we are at the heart of what is no longer working. The great misfortune of our time is that people no longer consider their fate as a personal destiny. Everyone hopes to pull through “on an individual scale”. And everyone is convinced – especially among the winners metropolises – that what is good for him is good for the whole country, without having the honesty to look twice.
Society remains the only way
In 1987, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared: “There is no such thing as society! There are individual men and women and families.” To think that she was delighted. Our era certainly did not invent selfishness. But it has established hyperindividualism as a way of being in the world. The organic bonds that linked citizens in society have been broken. And politics (or what is left of it) can no longer build on these shattered nations.
Yet society remains the only way. Recognizing that one’s destiny also depends on improving the destiny of others. This should be the concern of every citizen regardless of their social class, where they live, their color or religion. It is still necessary sometimes to cross paths with others, and when you do, to have the feeling of being part of the same City. To feel in fraternity.
As for politics, it must urgently stop proposing as its sole fuel the mobilization of all against all. School, medical deserts, immigration, housing, protectionism, security… On each subject, we must reopen the files. Compare the diagnoses. Address everyone. Debate. Decide in the direction of the general interest without being afraid of offending the sociology of our own electorate. Didn’t General de Gaulle offend his own by announcing in 1958 that he was going to negotiate with the FLN and make peace in Algeria? Think about the common good. Think about the general interest. It is not just a matter of good feeling or greatness of soul. It is also the only condition for a nation to have meaning. Sometimes, the situation seems hopeless, and we would prefer to cut everything down to cultivate our garden. This is the risk of great discouragement. Let us not give in to it. There are always auroras.
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