Dear subscribers,
Sometimes it is foreigners who speak the best of France.
A few days ago, the great German daily
Die Zeit
published, under the pen of its correspondent in Paris Annika Joeres, an investigation into the
“authoritarian absurdistan” that
our dear old country has become.
We can not say it better.
As underlined by the major investigation carried out by our club of the Five of Information - Judith Waintraub, Charles Jaigu, Vincent Jolly, Cyril Hofstein and François Delétraz -, the confinement imposed on us will have taken a sometimes delusional form based on two through very French: authoritarianism and bureaucracy.
Annika Joeres' article caused a stir on this side of the Rhine.
Screenshot
So we will have seen standards maniacs (there are 400,000 in France!) Jubilant at the idea of looking into the case of socks, briefs and mascara in order to define what is essential trade and non-essential trade.
From their brilliant minds sprouted the idea that hairdressers should be closed, but not sex shops;
that children under 3 wore essential clothing, but not their elders;
we pass and worse, etc.
The famous “French exception” is perhaps there: in this mania that the administration which governs us
“to piss off the French”
, to use the phrase of Georges Pompidou.
And the historian Bruno Fuligni to recall for example the story of this TGV controller asking a “client” to pay a 5.10 euro ticket for his traveling companions who were none other than ... snails wisely installed in a box.
Ubuesque, we tell you!
But if only it was effective.
Olivier Véran, Gérald Darmanin, Jean Castex and Bruno Le Maire.
Le Figaro photomontage - LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP;
Julien Mattia / Le Pictorium / Maxppp
Looking closely at the figures of our neighbors studied by Ghislain de Montalembert, one can only wonder.
Both on the medical merits of these health measures (without the slightest confinement, Sweden has in proportion less deaths than us), but also on its dramatic economic consequences.
And this is not the conclusion of the political scientist Chloé Morin, interviewed by Carl Meeus, which will reassure us: for her, the senior administration has quite simply taken power, abandoned by the politicians.
One last proof: yesterday, Jean Castex announced that the ski resorts would be open at Christmas, but not the ski lifts!
If that's not a great top official's find, it ...
Chance (or God?) Sometimes does things well.
It is this fall that Gallimard editions have chosen to publish in its prestigious collection of La Pléaide the main texts of George Orwell.
And how not to reread
1984
without feeling shivers down your spine?
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