The poisonous saying would have come from abroad, as always, a little from Italy, a little from Spain, but especially from perfidious Albion: the French are grumblers. They do not know how lucky they are to live in a country that is both sunny and with shady spots, where you can go downhill skiing in the morning and water skiing in the afternoon. It is really a habit, second nature, they would do better to go and see elsewhere how it is, how lucky they are. But when they go and see elsewhere, it does not work either, they are spoken to badly, and in a language that they do not understand, that they refused to learn properly at school.
It’s cultural for them, almost genetic, from daycare, before they can even walk, it starts, it’s in the programs, from kindergarten to university they are taught to complain about anything, because there’s no more Nutella, because the old people stop them from looking at screens all day, they complain about Parcoursup, about the coach of the French team. They complain like they breathe. We can hear them from afar, like foghorns, ranting, snorting, whining because it’s always Germany that wins, because it’s the referee’s fault, they complain about bikes because there are too many of them, about buses because there aren’t any more. It takes them in the morning and never leaves them all day, with family, with colleagues, with friends. Between girlfriends a little less, it’s true, but it’s starting to balance out, you’ll see that they’ll soon complain about parity. And it’s like that in all social classes, among the wealthy, among the toothless, all “sensitivities”, democrats or reactionaries.
The complainers invented a complaining machine for that more than two centuries ago, politics, they are crazy about it, referendums, legislative elections, cantonal elections, this and that, they complain about the money it costs, but they can’t do without it anymore. More recently, while they complained for a century about the members of the International Olympic Committee who refused them the Olympic Games, now that they are here, in Paris, instead of going whoopee whoopee, they complain because it causes traffic jams, because the seats in the stadiums, at the Grand Palais, at the Concorde, are too expensive, because we have to stand for hours in front of the closed Tuileries waiting for the cauldron to rise into the Paris sky, and it doesn’t rise, under the pretext that it’s raining, that it’s windy, you had to plan ahead, after all.
Grumbling fits
And even in the provinces, there are some who are fed up, who complain because there is nothing but sport in the newspapers, on the radio, on the Internet, and on TV it is on all the channels, except TF1, which also complains. Because it is no longer only individuals who emit these guttural protests, but also legal entities, so that we no longer know very well where these fits of grumbling come from.
And here in this atmosphere of national hypertension, a phenomenon appears, an ill wind of râlophobia blowing over France. It would be good form to complain about the complainers. They are generally those who are on the right side of the handle, the nice organizers, the resurrected singers, the medal-winning champions, the trunk-makers and our kissing president, they are the leaders, the heralds of râlophobia, who, under their airs of ambassadors of happiness, of proselytizers of the healthy mind in a healthy body, collect the stakes. Those who would like, in fact, to no longer hear us complain.
To them I say: yes, we complain and we will continue to complain. Râlophobia will not pass. We will remain vigilant, we will be the voice of the jealous, the envious, those frustrated by gold, silver and bronze. We will be the consolation of the defeated, the eternally dissatisfied, the chronically anxious, the writers who exaggerate.
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