Tribune. We are not in a military war against Russia, with a risk for our soldiers, but we are in a moral, political and economic war against the power which committed the crime of aggression against Ukraine on February 24. Without being at war, we are no longer in the state of peace before. The electoral period in France therefore runs parallel to the unfolding of this disaster at the gates of Europe, to the rhythm of the destruction and terrible crimes committed by the aggressor, and the formidable Ukrainian resistance that he encounters. This extremely serious conflict, its shadow cast by worrying threats to a collective future that goes beyond France, is giving rise to numerous geopolitical debates on the screens. In France, we then live in two spheres of conflict, simultaneous but foreign to each other, the first devoted to domestic politics, and the second to the international tragedy in progress.
When we are locked in the electoral debate of internal politics, we return to the time of peace before this war. The peace ! Absolute dream of the populations under the bombs, and living environment of a total platitude when it settles in the long term, therefore in normality. Peace as an invisible framework is associated with all the elements of physical comfort: running water, electricity, elevators, authorized red lights, cup of coffee, car starting with the choke, swept sidewalks, emptied garbage cans, mains drainage, busy markets and supermarkets, roofs, doors and windows well in place… And also, around the human body, in a thousand bouquets of which the flowers would be the screens, unheard-of possibilities of communication.
The silence of the world is destroyed
We no longer imagine, in France, to what extent the state of peace conditions the silence of the night, the quality of sleep, the inner calm of thought and the wanderings of daydreams, this form of intimate freedom when the body is silent, clean and nourished, not terrified. The state of peace is without story, it stabilizes the urban landscape where the passer-by walks quietly, without having to consider the risk of the next step. This is exactly what this war against the cities and countryside of Ukraine is exploding and destroying. The silence of the world is destroyed, everything screams.
The eye of the drones makes us see what a massacred city is. In Mariupol, the ground is bristling with shards of steel, concrete debris, planted missiles, glass, materials that are enemies of human skin, much worse things. The windows are off-center, the balconies twisted and the carcasses of the tall buildings gutted vomit childish stuffed animals. It is all the matter of things which becomes hostile to the human body. In this sinister setting, a criminal siege has cut off water, electricity, food, heating, all communication between relatives and all the news of the world, which plunges the survivor into the abyss of a particular perdition, that of the absence of any social bond, well of loneliness and anguish.
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