His speech at the economic meetings in Aix on July 7 was prophetic. Édouard Philippe, indifferent, had expressed his fears about the risks of "potentially devastating anger".
He takes shots. Cash. But hardly to find the opening. As the boxer he is amateur, Edward Philippe seems pushed into the ropes by the street. The moratorium on the carbon tax and the freeze on increases in gas and electricity only lasted a few hours. Very quickly, the President of the Republic again dropped ballast. Now giving the impression of sailing on sight after promising to stay the course.
This anger, Edward Philippe had announced. He had even prophesied at the Economic Meeting of Aix on July 7 in the presence of the German writer Peter Sloterdijk. A lucid speech passed unnoticed. France was preparing to win the World Cup football. The unions had failed to derail the reform of the SNCF. The ordinances of the Labor Code had been adopted in spite of the demonstrations and the call to sweep over Paris launched by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and insubordinate France. Outside the song of the cicadas invited to idleness
Summer opened his arms. The time was still optimistic. In an essay published in 2017, Félicité Herzog spoke of the happiness of this new France. Finally ready to reform and stop moping. To end the French bashing. And rightly so. After all, she writes: "What would the world be today without France? It would be an alphabet to which a letter would be lacking, a sequel that would lack a world first. It is a flame, a light in a world that twists and tears. Perhaps forgetting that fire was brewing under the ashes. That Edward Philippe was aware of it.
"A potentially devastating anger"
"It is not impossible that the coming world is a world of anger. It is central, had emphasized Edward Philippe from the beginning of his speech . We are all aware that our societies are traversed by an anger that is not dull but often sound. It translates into a sluggish, a will to break the democratic systems that would be neither right nor effective. It is potentially devastating. "
Without a tie, relaxed, his tone seemed almost off the mark when he spoke of "the urgency of winning this race against the clock in the face of anger" . To counter it, Édouard Philippe bet on another anger "cold, constructive" . That of Marc Bloch and a number of French "refusing in 1940 to be humiliated spectators of a world that changes, in this case in dramatic circumstances, those of defeat. The second side of anger is a powerful force for individual and collective action. We must win this race against time. Do not let the devastating anger take precedence over the other. "
As if to avert the perils announced, it was to Ulysses that the Prime Minister appealed to conclude his intervention. Tenacious and cunning, the hero of The Odyssey had been tied to his mast to resist the sirens. Those of the demagogy seem to have bewitched a part of the French.