World News: Little Story of Emptiness and Excellence

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Category: World News - Europe

Published on Wednesday, 04 March 2020 17:13

Written by Olivier Longhi

The poverty of French political discourse raises questions about the capacity of our society to renew itself and to emerge from a facility that borders on passivity and institutionalized mediocrity and evolve into a thriving multicultural mecca.

A few days before the first round of the municipal elections which promise to be violent and cruel for La République En Marche (LREM), one thing is clear: there is no longer a right-left divide in France as it still prevailed five years ago.

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Some will argue, and they will be partially right, that the responsibility lies with Emmanuel Macron, he who by a speech imbued with pragmatism has shattered ideological differences which have already tended for several years to run out of steam in order to lose them in fine their meaning and especially their relevance.

But the President of the Republic is not solely responsible for this ideological vacuum which weighs on a country long accustomed to fracturing around models of thought which opposed globally progressive and conservative, social democratic left and republican liberal right attached to the 'order.

Comfort and Doxa

If it were therefore necessary to look historically for other culprits, one could cite scrimmage, the denial of the actors of May 68, for many today engulfed in bourgeois comfort, the Mitterrandian left who sacrificed in 1983 the hope of social progress on the altar of liberal austerity, the republican right which let instill in it the extremist poison carried by the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, ... The examples are not lacking unfortunately and their plethoric aspect which borders on the observation does not fill this void which cuts the nation off from all political creativity.

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Because that's where the rub: the absence of new currents of thought capable of reinventing a French society tidy with the comfort of globalization, trembling in front of an exotic coronavirus, almost resigned to the presidential doxa, shocked by the use of 49.3 but not enough to claim the primacy of democracy over the legitimated authoritarianism of a Constitution which has become incompatible with our modernity. It is therefore appropriate today to question, not on the action of President Macron who ultimately occupies an intellectual and ideological space left vacant and abandoned, but on what could be the principles of a new society.

To date, nothing seems to appear in a poor and mediocre political landscape where superficiality acts as ideological content. Yet in this guilty inertia, some, rightly or wrongly, think that the environmentalist and ecological outcome would be a lasting solution.

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But cannot a discourse, as relevant and founded as it is, replace a dense and whole corpus, constructed and thought out, capable, once united, of constituting a model on which to base the foundations of a new society? The challenge is certainly there.

Obsolescence and Cynicism

Imagine and think of a society that the defunct ideologies have long structured, like irremovable matrices, now obsolete. Let us not hesitate to affirm it, the ambient speech and held by the President of the Republic offers, not a model, but a substitute by default vis-a-vis the incapacity of our society to be renewed. There is, moreover, something disturbing in this situation, namely that our societal model would henceforth be short of ideas, thus auguring a wait-and-see and passivity as rampant as dangerous because tacitly agree with the principle that the the minimum will always be easier to achieve than the excellence which calls for reflection which has become rare.

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Françis Blanche, acerbic and delightfully cynical actor of another time had launched this aphorism full of meaning today and which perfectly suits our resigned society: "Better to aim for excellence and miss it than to aim for mediocrity and achieve it ! "It would be easy to meditate for hours on this most greedy quote to comment on it and make it the finest of exegeses, but it should be admitted in conclusion, we have reached our target: mediocrity.

Bio: Olivier Longhi has extensive experience in European history. A seasoned journalist with fifteen years of experience, he is currently professor of history and geography in the Toulouse region of France. He has held a variety of publishing positions, including Head of Agency and Chief of Publishing. A journalist, recognized blogger, editor and editorial project manager, he has trained and managed editorial teams, worked as a journalist for various local radio stations, a press and publishing consultant, and a communications consultant.