Is anyone else concerned about the mood of the French electorate?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I wasn’t, but I am now.
2014 is getting to look more like 1932 all the time.
When the supposed left-winger pursues profoundly messed-up right-wing policies that are causing a depression it’s inevitable that the electorate will turn to somebody new. Sorry for the Godwinization, but it’s not too different from the way Hitler came to power, although Bruning was officially a centrist and not a left-winger. But Hollande is now trying to govern much like Bruning did – impose austerity to keep the VSPs happy – and similar actions in a similar situation risk a similar outcome.
Yes and no. Hollande, like other supposed Socialist parties in Spain and Greece, has suffered because he hasn’t lived up to the ideals the party is supposed to represent. They all know austerity is for loser and the corrupt but they have done it anyway. And their standing has suffered as a result.
by far the most important line in that article:
I would assert that the mood of the electorate 2.5 years before the election is not an indicator of ANYTHING useful.
Didn’t Hollande just sell out to the austerity-mongers? analogous to not putting minimum wage on the 2014 ballot in the USA – which I hope we all are doing
What, France is going to start veering in our direction politically? Yeah, sounds bad for the French. Shit definitely doesn’t work, just look at us.
I’ll pay attention when France is relevant beyond their incessant ability to say “no” to everything.
Much more concerned that Scotland votes for independence and ends any chance of the Labour party ever coming to power again in a rump Britain.
Hollande’s got two and a half years to crank up French prosperity and tamp down anti-Muslim attitudes. In order to be re-elected.
Obama has two years and four months to crank up American prosperity and create sufficient peace in the world in order to satisfy his 2008 voters and the Nobel committee.
Does anyone sense that Marine La Pen’s future depends on the voters of Kansas and Kentucky and Georgia? Or that Hillary Clinton is in the same trap as Hollande? Austerity and Islamophobia play to only one political side in domestic elections. Sarkozy found that out. Will Hollande? Will Hillary?
I dunno.
Don’t we have enough on our hands with the mood of the American electorate?
Oh.
I guess not.
Why?
The American electorate has not been told to be concerned about the mood of the American electorate…concerned about themselves…by the GMC. (The Government Media Complex.)
And why have they not been told to be concerned?
Because the fix is not all the way in yet, that’s why. Negotiations among the fixers are still in progress.
Bet on it.
When they drop the other media shoe(s) on either the DemRats or RatPubs, then and only then will you know to which shoe store they are planning to send the American people their walking papers this time around and/or in 2016. Remember, everything remains negotiable in business, and the business of the U.S. is business. Bet on it. (See my P.S. below.)
AG
P.S. Ol’ Silent Cal Coolidge wasn’t always silent.
Bet on it.
P.P.S. You’re worried that France might go “fascist!!!???”
First of all…the French are too soft to be good fascists. Too enamored of their own comforts to get all rigorous on anybody’s ass. It’s one of their main strengths…a function of the divine French language as much as anything else as far as I am concerned. Too sexy to stay hard for days or weeks, let alone months and years. That’s torture, not love. Watch Germany instead. There’s a language to watch!!!
Bet on it.
Secondly…old-fashioned “fascism” is totally unnecessary now. Today it’s all about mind control. Technofascism. And you are living right at Technofascist Ground Zero right here amongst the good ol’ U.S. of A…the United Sheeple of America. God bless us one and all. WTFU. Can France be far behind? I doubt it.
Arthur Gilroy, do you know why most people here studiously ignore your posts? It’s not because of your content, but it’s because of how you construct them. Not only are they the ultimate in tl;dr what with so many single sentences separated by spaces but because all of those goddamn images. No one familiar with you is going to try to engage you in discussion because it’s just too much of a pain to try to process your posts. Not to mention that no one wants to encourage another image dump by actually talking to you.
Learn to love paragraphs if you like long posts and try to average one image per ten posts. Then things will go a lot better for you.
You structure your world your way. Deathtongue, and I will structure mine my way. A picture is worth a thousand words, and one sentence is a paragraph if it contains enough real information.
Would you like to know why I believe that so many people here “studiously ignore” my posts?
It’s because they do not wish to study. To think. To go beyond their little world of agreements. Studiously ignoring…skimming, to be more precise…is now the de facto internet mode of consumption on every level of this world, and we are all the worse for it. I am all about my own version of Gandhi’s “Experiments With Truth” on the web. Elsewhere as well as here. I am not about “popularity.” If I was I’d go the route of PewDiePie or some other lame YouTube fad, make myself some money and retire with a guilty conscience and a fat bank account.
But I’m not.
Deal wid it.
Or…don’t.
I don’t really care.
This is what I care about.
What’s that you say?
Pity the little MouseFinger!
Like it or lump it; it’s no skin off my teeth.
And…have a nice day.
For real.
As nice as you can possibly make it.
I am.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
He makes $4 million a year. Is that really a fad?
I suppose it all depends on how many years that continues.
Sweet God, now we’re teaching the trolls how to eat!
I am concerned that there is so much hatred and intolerance in a world dominated by religions that preach peace.
When the hatred and intolerance manifests itself as a political party then I find myself amazed that anyone supports it.
What the hell is wrong with people these days?
It’s jobs. Some areas of Europe have depression unemployment numbers. Their leaders just finished a meeting where the top issues were what to do about Russia or developing plans to destroy some arabs, dressed in black pjs, chopping off heads because the US would not give them $100 million.
On the brighter side. Could it really be that Scotland is about to become a sovereign state? I sure hope so.
No.
They’ll vote the way they’re told to vote, and that will be whatever way the US tells them to, or drive them to, or manipulate them to.
They’re foreigners.
They don’t have agency.
The French vote the way the US tells them to vote?
Maybe most furriners don’t have agency, but the French have that damn cheese-eatin’ surrender-monkey kind of agency.
Davis is on a roll here, if you have a chance, go back and peruse the two earlier comments that create the substrata of this observation
Thanks for this. Not sure about which two comments you mean, but I believe Tarheel Dem’s is one of them:
” Obama has two years and four months to crank up American prosperity and create sufficient peace in the world in order to satisfy his 2008 voters and the Nobel committee.
“Does anyone sense that Marine La Pen’s future depends on the voters of Kansas and Kentucky and Georgia? Or that Hillary Clinton is in the same trap as Hollande? Austerity and Islamophobia play to only one political side in domestic elections. Sarkozy found that out. Will Hollande? Will Hillary?”
I actually had read it, but it went right by me the first time, nor did I understand the connection to Davis X. It’s a keen observation.
In fact, I think my own comment that 2014 is looking more like 1932 all the time was (implicitly) along the same lines.
When I was in school, in the wake of WW2, everybody thought that fascism as an organized world movement was a thing of the past. As I got older and learned more I realized that this was not true. Fascism has had its ups and downs, but it kept right on going. After the war it had its strongholds in places like Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere in Europe; not to mention Argentina, Brazil and many other countries in Latin America.
It has made quite a comeback in these days of deregulation and excesses of global finance, the virtual extinction of the “Soviet bloc” and emergence of capitalist China.
I think I see what he means by “Hillary is in the same trap as Hollande”, although since she was hardly a socialist to begin with, she may see it as less of a trap than an opportunity.
So on the one hand, yes, Obama is one of the few world leaders whose actions over the next two years can make a difference around the world — “even” in France. But he is not exactly driving this bus. And congress sure isn’t helping.