"I think we'll be very, very, very hard here, it's never been so hard here," Scout Grant tells Shalom Asaig in a intimate, intimate conversation. She feels orphaned, scouted, feels like there is no leadership, she is helpless, she is hopeless, she is really scared.

Grant is not talking about the days of the Corona, she is talking about a cumulative experience of a whole decade where it was as difficult here as it has ever been. Of course, this is a somewhat strange statement, if not a worrying glitch in the reality tester, because if you look for a moment at the objective reality outside the conceptual imagination - it has never been so bad here.

 In the last decade, the gaps between rich and poor have narrowed according to the global Gini index, unemployment rates have fallen to a minimum, the economy has soared, Israel is not isolated in the world, fewer soldiers are killed in operations and wars - and as Shalom Asaig wisely reminded us - we are not afraid to move . 

Scout apparently meant another difficulty, and she does detail it: the lack of leadership. But even this feeling is a bit strange, or at least subjective: most Israeli citizens have chosen a certain leader time and time again, and except for the bronze milieu that starts in Rothschild and ends at the current trendy street food stand in the Carmel market, the world also agrees with the feeling of most Israeli citizens. That there is actually a leader in Israel. 

The helplessness in the face of the lack of leadership that bothers Scout Grant so much lies in the fact that she herself did not choose this leadership, and if she did not choose it - then leadership is not considered. It is a narcissistic, childish, pampered and mostly detached worldview. Scout Grant's false consciousness is a representative sample of a broader phenomenon - a closed bubble that resonates until it is convinced that nothing exists outside of it.

This bubble has mitigating circumstances: it does not meet those who do not like it, it does not hear those who do not like it, it does not know those who do not like it - except for the cartoonish and semi-racist representation that the bubble allows. Like a toddler, so too is the bubble convinced that it is the center of the universe. Grant actually expresses a lament of an entire social stratum for neither deciding nor deciding (the childish stage in the last sentence is a content-matched form).

Grant's opposition and its social environment are not only pampered, but also pampered - the voice of the bubble dominates academia, the courts, culture, the media, everywhere. But Scout and her friends want more, want everything, and fail to live in peace with the fact that Balfour remains the only stronghold not occupied by them, whose class advantage does not translate into a ballot advantage. 

And I remember the long-standing sense of opposition my parents experienced for many decades. Their voices were not heard in any public space, they were absent-minded, completely transparent, and yet they had the moderation and patience to accept the majority decision at the ballot box. Maybe it's because they had an ability that Grant and Silence have - recognition of the existence of the social other.