Take a child’s balloon, one of those balloons that can still be found at the fair or at the carousels there. A round, oval, or animal-shaped balloon. It is beautiful, it is gleaming. Yet a pin is enough to make it flabby forever.
Take a soccer ball, well inflated, one of those balls that billions of people have seen recently. A priori, it is indestructible. A pin can do nothing against its outer layer, which also withstands all the kicks of the world. On the other hand, if you use a knife, or if you find the valve through which it was inflated, it soon becomes just an unimportant piece of rubber.
But, if the ball is fully inflated, as are some foam beach balls, or balls used in the gym, no one can destroy it, it resists everything.
A priori, nothing sets apart these three types of balloons/balls yet. They are, at first sight, identical, even if their usage is very different. Sometimes even the most fragile types of balloons happen to be the most glittering, attractive and coveted. And it is only by trying to pierce these balls that we understand their vulnerability.
We will have, I hope, understood the metaphor: a company, a nation, a state, a head of state, any human being, can create an illusion, make others believe in his strength, usefulness and sustainability, until a test of truth comes to reveal the reality of its composition, layers and ability to resist the blows of a pin, nicks of a knife, and the opening of the unscrewing of a valve with a screwdriver.
It is very difficult to predict or guess, on the outside looking in, the thickness of the layers of an entity or a person. And we are sometimes very surprised. There have been seemingly indestructible companies that disappeared in an instant. Others that appeared seemingly fragile have overcame all types of adversities. We have seen, (we see every day), people collapse when their reputation is undermined, for good or bad reasons. In contrast, we have also seen companies or people counter such attacks and bounce back to triumph. Even if, for a time, they appear in great danger. These people, or these entities, are strong; they have the layers and will, a purpose that is beyond their mere existence, an ability to understand the reason they are attacked and to deflect the blade that seeks to cut them.
And, similarly, it is not those who are apparently the strongest who resist torture, or the temptation to betray, or corruption.
As the pin reveals the nature of the ball, the crisis reveals the nature of the organization or the human being that it threatens.
Speaking only of heads of state, their reactions to attacks are very different. Some, like President Trump, are absolutely solid: despite the innumerable stab cuts that he receives every day, he replies and counter-attacks on all fronts, until perhaps one day, the adversaries will either get tired, or they may find the vulnerable point, the defect in the armour, which would lead to his resignation. Others prefer silence, convinced that their own layers are such that pins or knives will break on them. Furthermore, there are others, and they are the best—they seek with elegance, frankness and candour to recognize their mistakes, put them in perspective, and explain how they will grow from these mistakes and become a more effective leader for the nation that elected them.
This is obviously a useful lesson for the crises of the day.
Unless the metaphor of the ball or balloon and the pin is not enough, and if we are, as I have foreshadowed here several times, in a transition between a soft “dégagisme” and a hard “dégagisme,” in which the people are no longer satisfied with weakening the system that leads them, but instead they would like to end it. The pins are then only pretexts to get rid of a ball that we do not want anymore.
The only answer is, in this case, to recreate the desire of this ball, to show its value, strength, layers and utility: In public life, as in private life, there is no substitute for the desire and the project, the desire of the project.
j@attali.com