Weather Forecast

Cloudy with a chance of injustice | Non-Fiction | French Soup

Last week, I got to take part in the annual authors edition of the French daily Libération, in which authors contribute every section of the newspaper, from headlines to sports. I was given the relatively modest task of writing the weather report.

Image by Scott Barbour / Staff

The weather tomorrow will be clear and warm with a slight southern wind, or it might be overcast and stormy with a chance of hail, and in fact it could turn out to be…any other combination of temperatures, barometric pressure, and precipitation. Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute, and admit that whatever weather we get tomorrow, it won’t really matter. Not in our condition. Not now, with our society torn apart, with the old and imperfect democracy into which we were born being challenged around the clock.

I remember my mother leafing through the morning newspaper when I was a boy. I remember her somewhat indifferently scanning the headlines and quickly flipping to the back page, where the weather forecast appeared. It was a different era. Everything happened a lot more slowly back then. The news was how we found out what was happening—not entertainment, or a hobby, or the precursor to an anxiety attack. Maybe that’s why, for my mother, queen of the news, the weather was a respectable way to share practical information, delivered without any intent to inflame or incite or play victim. But what was popular in the seventies doesn’t land so well these days. In an age when current events function as an emotional trigger, meteorology reports don’t come close to doing the job.

We can’t get excited about the weather anymore because, deep down, we know that no matter how wet our clothes get, at the end of that soggy day there won’t be anyone we can blame, or attack, or settle the score with. That’s why no thunderstorm in the world is powerful enough to rattle or infuriate us the way a random quote from a man with orange hair and a fake tan on the other side of the world can.

When you think about Trump, Putin, or Le Pen, about the radicalism and factionalism flooding the world—from fascists calling to deport foreigners, to violent climate-change activists throwing soup on major works of art—suddenly the thought of getting caught in the rain without an umbrella seems far less existentially dire than finding yourself on the street without a good sign to hold up at an emergency rally against whichever injustice awaits us in the morning paper. And, unlike rain, injustice seems to be pouring down on us almost constantly. So, please, don’t leave home without a strident opinion and suitable protest gear. There’s a flood coming.

Translated by Jessica Cohen