The time of an Olympic truce

Back from three weeks of vacation, I realize that these are the ones where I have read the least in my life. Oh, my batting average is still good – reading is the only discipline of my existence – but I have not reached my usual ten books, because I have not stopped being disturbed by current events.

This idea, too, of having the internet and TV at the cottage. The forbidden fruit entered my Garden of Eden. I had barely dropped off my bags when my mother called me to tell me that Donald Trump had been shot. I connected all my devices to WiFi to see the former president of the United States raise his fist in the air, his ear bleeding and the flag at half-mast, understanding immediately that Biden’s campaign was doomed.

The irony in this is that this photo was taken by Evan Vucci, of the Associated Press, a photographer from a traditional media, therefore a “traitor” in Trump’s eyes. No manipulation, no artificial intelligence, Vucci was just there at the right time, at the right angle, with his experience, to capture a moment of history. So incredible that I still waited, out of caution, for confirmation from the Associated Press to validate (and digest) this photo that I would transform into a t-shirt, if I were a Trumpist.

Admittedly, what a character Donald Trump is, who has been in the American psyche since the 1980s. You have to know this psyche, and have a sense of spectacle, to get up and shout “fight!” like he did. Now that I have Netflix at the cottage, I watched the documentary in four parts Trump: An American Dream,made in 2018, which helped me understand this phenomenon better.

No matter what I thought of the man, I was relieved that he escaped the worst, because in a democracy, you don’t win elections through assassinations, otherwise you lose democracy.

Shortly after, Biden, under pressure, gave way to Kamala Harris as presidential candidate. The lone gunman’s bullet did not hit Donald Trump, but it certainly deflected the course of these delirious American elections that are far from over.

I wrote to my colleagues Richard Hétu and Yves Boisvert to tell them that I read their articles avidly, but also to offer them my encouragement, because they have not had any break this summer, like several other journalists covering the United States.

Come to think of it, the people who had the best holidays this year were probably our local politicians. The American psychodrama and the Olympics took over.

I think I needed this Olympic break, to take a breather and dream a little, since we know that the fall will be hot. We are lucky because there is no break in Gaza, the Middle East or Ukraine.

We have never seen Paris so joyful and beautiful, after months of hearing that these Games were going to be a disaster. Macron must be rubbing his hands. There are even Parisians who are cutting short their vacations in the South to return to the capital, a little ashamed of having fled this global event. I envy my colleagues who are experiencing this collective fever.

Dazzled by the opening ceremony, I watched it at least three times to grasp all the references and see Céline again in all her splendor, if not laugh until I cried with Philippe Katerine painted in blue, three-quarters naked. While we were obsessed with the allusions to The Lord’s Supper or the gods of Olympus, China offered a third reading by making Philippe Katerine the most popular Smurf in Asia. I hadn’t even thought about it, having only seen Dionysus.

After the legislative elections in which the New Popular Front coalition blocked the National Rally, there is as much relief as bitterness in France. The most disappointed want nothing to do with the Olympic truce, and others are not giving up the hunt for the “wokes”. These are the first gender-balanced Games in history, but all the attention is focused on the gender of two female boxers and the costumes of the beach volleyball players.

Despite everything, I don’t sulk about my pleasure and I still get caught out, crying when the athletes receive their medals in front of their moved parents, for sporting exploits that I never usually watch, and which nevertheless immobilized me for hours in front of my television, where Ozempic adverts were playing on a loop. Bread and games, they say, and although we had magnificent Games, bread remains too expensive for too many people (except in Paris, where the price of a baguette has been controlled for a few revolutions).

These Games are a small moment of grace that I take with a vengeance, because what I take away as most worrying about the summer of 2024 is an increase in disinformation and cyberbullying.

Opening ceremony director Thomas Jolly, along with his collaborators and a few LGBTQ+ artists, had to file complaints about death threats. Algerian boxer Imane Khelif has suffered the same fate since personalities such as writer JK Rowling and X-rated Elon Musk shared their anger with their millions of followers.

We may not have liked the Olympic ceremony, and question the rules of boxing in the era of gender questioning, but when we reach this level of violence, we are no longer in the debate. We are in propaganda, the herd effect and the confrontation to the death, regardless of the facts and the simple respect of human rights. What the algorithms of social networks encourage, by betting on our emotions, among which anger seems the most profitable.

The riots this week in several English cities illustrate how fake news can serve as a spark after a traumatic incident, and percolate into reality with brutality.

Unfortunately, hatred never respects truces.