“Listen to me well, Mr. Macron,” she said. “I work but I no longer have the means to live. My life was better before. I work and I have a diploma. I work every day. I have children, and I can’t even pay for their vacations. We’re just not making it.”
“You say you are lightening up taxes on the one hand, but on the other you are loading us up,” she added. “And we are just not making it.”
Mr. Macron, given to pretentious language, if not condescension, responded fluently but with abstractions and little empathy, describing a series of government programs and plans he insisted confidently were going to make life better.
“No, no,” the president said. “First of all what you are saying isn’t strictly speaking true. And then, when you pay your phone bill and your gas bill, it’s not the state that’s setting the rates. You can blame the state for everything, this or that is going up, but, it’s not all the state’s fault.”
“Yes, but I can’t change the tires on my car,” the woman responded. “I can’t afford the inspection. I can’t even maintain my car. We’re really in the hole. This is not the life I dreamed of.”
Later, Mr. Macron made a speech in this rural village, promising more attention from the state, a “reinvention” of state services. The crowd listened politely but the applause was light.
“That was absolutely nothing, nothing, it’s the usual promises,” said Thierry Krevisan, a salesman who had stood for hours in the hot sun waiting for the president to show up. “It’s always the same speech.”
Source : Nytimes
