NATACHA POLONY Director Editorial of Marianne.net

Open letter to a President who plays with fire

“The greatness of a statesman is to take the measure of events, but also to beware of using an idea, in this case the necessary defines of merit and effort, for a politician's purpose”.
     By Natacha Polony

Mr. President, you are an alchemist. You have mastered the art of changing lead gold. After nine weeks of a crisis like the country had not known for a long time, you, Mr. President, should be entirely absorbed in the search for a political response that will bring together the divided French and will restore the link of confidence not damaged by these manifestations, but by decades of confiscation of representative democracy. Well no. You prefer to trample on the beautiful promises made during your vows, on the "words that could hurt", and throw a little more oil on the fire, just to see if we could not cause the final explosion. And in doing so, you mess up an essential discourse on the meaning of the effort and the surpassing of oneself; you abase a reflection on the beauty of the gestures which ennoble the human being. President Philosopher, you finally put down everything to your measure, that of a politician.

So, before an assembly of master bakers, you evoke the meaning of the effort. Great and beautiful cause. Our society is dying not to value merit and self-sacrifice. Our society is lost in the cult of ease, of immediacy. There was so much to say about artisans, men who get up in the middle of the night to feed their peers and give the best of themselves. You could have developed this major distinction between working and working, the first evoking torture when the other raises us to the essential. You could have launched yourself into a critique of our economic organization entirely based on consumption, that is to say, the excitement of impulses and the fantasy of filling the void of our lives with possession. It would have been possible, by the same way, to address these people whom our society crushes under the constrained expenses, become little by little essential not to be totally dissocialized. It would have been possible to draw another horizon, to restore their dignity to all those who perform a noble task and flourish in the precision of a gesture and the perpetuation of know-how.

What troubles do you want to talk about?

You have found it more urgent to declare: "The troubles that our society is going through are also sometimes due to the fact that far too many of our fellow citizens think that we can obtain without this effort being made, that sometimes we have too often forgotten that 'Besides the rights of everyone in the Republic ... there are homework. But what troubles do you want to talk about, Mr. President? Imagine for a second that such a discourse could appear otherwise than as a lesson given to those who claim their distress since the month of November? And do you think it is appropriate to appeal to the French weakened by several weeks of demonstrations, these traders and craftsmen some of whom may file for bankruptcy, while they pay your refusal to bring as many political responses to this crisis?

It is enough to have discussed a few minutes with some of these citizens who, from November 17, shouted their anger on roundabouts, to have been able to note that a large number were from these artisans, traders and small employees who get up early and do not count their hours. The first demands of this movement were to be able to live decently from his work. This is what prompted this movement to be classified by some commentators in the category of dubious declensions of the current Poujadiste. Many of the first yellow vests were single women with children, women who are the first victims of forced part-time and the first victims of misery. Nothing to do with any eulogy of assistantship.

What is Amazon or Airbnb, which ruins our traders and hoteliers?

Go further. Since your election campaign, you boast the "start-up nation", mobility, the fluid economy. Nothing is more immobile than a baker. Nothing more durable than artisanal know-how. Nothing is further from your model than this sense of humility in the service of others. Start-ups are companies created by young people who sometimes make millions on a simple idea. Those that have succeeded and are models of your modern world rely on the work and the goods produced by others to make money on the simple putting in relation. What is Amazon or Airbnb, which ruins our traders and hoteliers? Let's not even talk about these business bankers who are making millions by organizing transactions between multinationals.

Are interpersonal skills what you consider the "sense of effort"? Financial capitalism, whose mechanisms you fiercely defend, is the very type of economic organization that contravenes merit and rewards the ability to make money with money, even to ruin the most fragile producers. A kind of cordée without effort, the first of which are not, far from it, the most deserving.

The greatness of a statesman is to beware of exploiting an idea

You will still be insulting yourself against malicious media that would come up with a "little phrase". But words make sense. And they are spoken in context. The greatness of a statesman is to take the measure of events, but also to beware of using an idea, in this case the necessary defines of merit and effort, for a politician's purpose. The situation we are living in is flammable. Responsibility demands that everything be done to appease, to avoid confronting one another, because extremists of all stripes are on the lookout for the weaknesses of the Republic. So force your nature and do not give them that kind of gift.

Saisi