Dissolve to clarify. Here is one of the maxims of our time. We live in the eternal return of the blockade, a loop caused by political leaders, who delegate the responsibility of breaking the deck to citizens. They want us to do their job. And then they place us as spectators of their exaggerated dramatizations so that we contemplate a scene that takes place between blocking and acceleration. Everything happens very quickly, always on the edge of the abyss: leaderships that are born and exhausted in a flash, unexpected announcements, coups d’état, intrigues, breakups, recompositions… to stay in the same place.
Pedro Sánchez did it last year and in March Pere Aragonès. He has done it premiere British, Rishi Sunak, to end his agonizing mandate in another accelerated and endless parade of ephemeral occupants of Downing Street. Feijóo calls for elections again (every man for himself!) and now Macron calls them. Turning politics into an alienating and accelerated succession of events to prevent the system from collapsing is a way of causing that “dynamic stability” that the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa talks about. Part of alienation consists of losing our own voice and judgment about what is happening, and the increasing difficulty of taking a step back to evaluate the facts. Acceleration makes our mind stop moving.
Look at Macron, the master of dramatization. While the free world watches, eating popcorn, the decomposition of the right (something not exclusive to France) the president has had the idea to dissolve to clarify. This also happens more often: we rationalize the decision of an overwhelmed leader who has lost control of the situation and unpredictably touched it as part of a brilliant strategy. Some describe him as a poker player, with that absurd sports epic that we like so much. Of course, the leader constructs his own narrative, with a meaning that he repeats over and over again to fit it into reality. For example, for Macron to “clarify” is to unmask the extremes.
It is touching to see him repeat the same idea like a parrot: the center c’est moi and here I am, besieged in the citadel by the radicals. As if we were unaware that his wet dream is to return to the eternal image of the solitary Napoleon, combatant in an electoral war against Le Pen that he describes as “a battle of values.” But it turns out that socialists, rebels, greens and communists have signed an agreement that speaks of unconditional support for Ukraine and Palestine and condemns “the terrorist massacres of Hamas.” They talk about repealing the pension reform and focusing on European integration. Such an agreement, blessed by former president François Hollande and the head of the European list, the socialist Raphaël Glucksmann, cannot be sent to the other end of the political table just to place you comfortably in the center. After the results of the European elections, the left has united to agree under the socialist leadership while the right becomes radicalized. Contrary to the narrative that Macron sells, France is not a center besieged by extremes. And be careful with liquid platforms, even if they can make you president. As the French commentator Abel Mestre has said, perhaps the clarification requested by Macron is a bomb ready to explode, and it will take down the president and his political side, whoever it may be.
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