How many times will we have heard that there would be an after September 11, an after subprime crisis, an after Charlie… That after each trauma, we would make sure that the cataclysms - terrorism, crazy finance and now pandemic ... - provoke beneficial awareness. And that promised, juror, we would build a better world. So an after-coronavirus? "I bet yes, predicted this week the psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik, specialist in resilience. After each epidemic, there have often been social and cultural revolutions. "
The viral tsunami, which forces half of humanity to shut itself up, terrifies states and paralyzes the world economy, will one day eventually stop its deadly course. But how will we wake up from this nightmare? Pessimists bet on social convulsions, optimists dream of new solidarities and a little more wisdom.
“In the pain of the moment, we tend to think that nothing will be as before, but we must not wait for the system to change radically. After the 2015 attacks, there were more resources for the police and the justice system, but our political system continued to crumble, "observes historian Patrice Gueniffey, who has just edited a collective work on the" Revolutions of the Middle Ages to the present day ”(Ed. Perrin).
A whole range of values to review
However, one would have to be blind not to notice that something was wrong. The caregivers who fight in hospitals to save lives, the cashiers who point with anguish in the supermarkets, or the police who watch - without mask - with respect for confinement ... are at the bottom of the salary scale. And what about the teachers whose parents, exhausted, realize how essential their task is as hard as it is with their children. Obviously, a whole range of values needs to be reviewed.
When the world finally turns around, it will be up to politicians to play. Emmanuel Macron did not say, from March 12, that he "could draw all the consequences". That the country should be repaired "at all costs", by putting the package on the health sector and on public services. If the word were to be followed by deeds, it would be a complete software change for this Liberal president. Europe too has started to change feet by suspending the 3% deficit rule which has served as its mantra for more than twenty-five years.
For their part, sixty French parliamentarians launched this Saturday an online consultation for a month to prepare "the day after" the coronavirus crisis. The next will be prepared by consulting the citizens, they say to themselves. These elected officials invite to “use confinement to imagine what we want best”, on the site Lejourdapres.parlement-ouvert.fr
From left to right, everyone sees in this crisis the validation of their theses
But past the great fear, are we sure that the tenors will not return to their usual potions? It is clear that everyone sees in this test the validation of their theses. For the nationalists, from Marine Le Pen to Victor Orban in Hungary, salvation requires closing the borders. For the Melenchonists, the whole capitalist and European system is to be "identified". Green people, finally, list what the consumer society will finally have to give up in order to no longer mess up our environment.
“I have the impression that everyone is sticking their beliefs to this incredible crisis. The first thing to do is to let yourself be shaken. We must be humble, and put on the table everything that seemed obvious to us, ”analyzes the essayist Raphaël Glucksmann, Social Democrat member of the European Parliament.
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The scourge has brought to light the degree of unpreparedness of firmly established democracies. How did the world's first economies delegate the production of simple cloth masks or vital medicines to China and a few others? It is all this, and many other things, that will have to be reviewed. "This health crisis reinforces a little more the feeling of fatalism and helplessness that people already feel in the face of globalization or global warming," points out the historian Patrice Gueniffey. “The challenge, adds Glucksmann politician, is to regain our sovereignty, to regain control of our destiny. I don't know what the next world will look like. But everything will have to be rethought in the light of this crisis. "