The Greek situation and the debate on the burqa seem a priori irrelevant.
And yet, both refer to a serious disease affecting more and more the modern
State, and in particular the French government: unable to enforce the
standards it sets, or raise the revenue it needs to fulfill its missions,
lying to everyone, by producing not applicable texts, and by distributing
money largely imaginary.
And, like any liar, the State ends up lying to istelf: becoming a
mythomaniac State, not especially wanting to know if what it says is true.
Until reality catches up.
The Greek state, like other European countries, including France, spends
more than it earns, cheating on its income and expenditure, lying to its
creditors, its constituents and to itself, ending up believing it has the
means of its follies. Until someone told them that they were ruined and
called for the truth, in other words called for real money.
Similarly, in France, about the burqa: the state wants us to believe that it
intends to legislate to erase a certain custom. In reality it has decided to
do so to show its constituents that they are on the same page, knowing full
well that such a law will likely be declared unconstitutional and that, even
if it was not It would not be applied. As it is, for example, with the law
on polygamy, even a more serious offence to women’s right.
Similarly still on so many other subjects, such as, for example, primary
education, where we continue to pretend that all is well while France is
sinking each year further in the depths of international rankings.
So the State which can no longer afford to act on the real world, is merely
producing texts and spending money it does not have; busily lying to itself
and to others as it becomes a mythomaniac State. And, like all people
afflicted with this mental illness, it lies more and more: Legislative
inflation and public deficits are the forms it takes in politics, as verbal
delirium of a mythomaniac.
For a time it can do so in all impunity; in any case as long as the voters
have an interest in this flattering delusion, in which they participate.
Then, in politics as in private life, the truth eventually reassert itself.
First, because the liar is caught in a trap of his own words: the
mythomaniac, multiplying his lies, (that is to say, for the State, its laws
not implemented and expenses not funded ) forget the well-known Yiddish
proverb that “a good liar never gives details”.
Then because the mythomaniac State is caught in the trap of reality: at one
time, the citizen realizes that unsustainable promises were made, paying him
the money they had not, laws made that no one wanted to enforce. He realizes
then, that facing him, is a very sick patient, that must be treated as such.
That it serves no purpose to insult him, to curse him, to call him a liar. He
must only be made harmless.
And too bad for those whose lives depended on the mythomaniac.