Having topped the first round of French presidential elections, Manny Macron delivered a rousing oration stressing his patriotic, as opposed to nationalist, credentials.
No one pointed out that Manny’s pathos sounded, well, pathetic because he spoke against the backdrop of the EU flag. If you can stand a piece of avuncular advice, Manny, try le tricolore next time. That’ll offset the message better, believe me.
Actually playing lickspittle to Angie is the only discernible conviction Macron possesses. Angie acknowledged this by being effusive in her congratulations:
“It’s good that Emmanuel Macron was successful with his course for a strong EU and social market economy. All the best for the next two weeks.”
I must ask Angie to explain to me over a stein of Bier what a ‘social market economy’ is. If it’s what I think it is, a socialist economy stopping just short of wholesale nationalisation, then I can understand her enthusiasm for Manny.
He describes his policies as liberal and pro-EU, oblivious of the glaring oxymoron. Perhaps, not being excessively bright, Manny doesn’t realise that the EU is a protectionist bloc, which is as far from economic liberalism as it’s possible to get without turning the EU into the EUSSR.
Or else he’s bright enough to realise that people have been so thoroughly lobotomised by decades of meaningless twaddle, that they no longer understand what political terms mean.
The other day, for example, I was talking to my French tennis partner, who explained in simple terms that even a rosbif can understand that Fillon is right-wing and Le Pen is extreme right-wing.
‘Does this mean she’s like Fillon, only more so?” I asked. “Exactement,” was the reply. “Well, in that case, could you name a single policy of hers that’s an extreme version of Fillon’s?”
He didn’t even try, but his expression reflected the universal French conviction that les anglo-saxons can never grasp the intricacies of the subtle Gallic mind.
In fact, Marine and Manny represent two branches of socialism, national and international. This emphasises their chromatic unity, for brown is only a hue of red. For Marine’s economic ideas are indistinguishable from Mélenchon’s, meaning they’re to the left of Mao’s.
Macron is also a clear-cut socialist, who, by way of subterfuge, makes some vaguely libertarian noises about cutting the corporate tax and giving companies more leeway in loosening the stranglehold of the 35-hour work week.
At the same time he promises a €50 billion additional ‘investment’ (meaning government spending) into welfare and renewable energy, without bothering to specify where the money is going to come from – especially if British billions dry out – and how wind farms are going to replace nuclear power stations, which at present supply 85 per cent of France’s energy needs.
At a guess there will have to be further raids on wealth producers, driving most of them out of the country. If this time around there are 72,000 registered French voters in London, next time there will be twice as many.
This development is hinted at by Manny’s slogan “France should give everyone an equal chance”. I must again put on my translator’s hat: that means the government’s cut in the country’s wealth will exceed today’s 60-odd per cent.
Higher taxation will be augmented by Angie’s generosity, who knows how to turn impoverished countries into German protectorates.
The lesson was taught by Prussia in the nineteenth century by the expedient of the EU’s trial run, the Zollverein. Ostensibly only a customs union, the Zollverein was designed to use bribery, threats and (as in the case of Schleswig-Holstein) violence to bring all sovereign German principalities under Prussia’s sway.
To celebrate the success of that project, newly muscular Prussia gave France a chronic Stockholm syndrome by humiliating her in the 1870-1871 war. This time around no rape is necessary, what with Manny gagging for it.
The relationship between Germany and France is purely consensual. And under Manny’s presidency it’ll become passionate, with France in the female role.
There’s little doubt he’ll win the second round, what with all other major parties throwing their support in his corner – or so says conventional wisdom. Of course conventional wisdom may be wrong, as witnessed by US President Hillary Clinton.
Frankly, I don’t care one way or the other: choosing between the rock and the hard place has never been my favourite pastime. In the short run, I suppose Britain would be better off if Le Pen won the second round.
Unlike Macron, she isn’t on record as a Britain hater, and she’s likely to bloody the EU’s nose even if she doesn’t pull France out. That would strengthen Mrs May’s hand in what she calls negotiations, which seems to mean negotiating the best terms of surrender to the EU without officially being its member.
On the other hand, Marine’s campaign is financed by Putin, and the KGB doesn’t loosen its purse strings without other strings being attached. What they are I have no idea, but I know exactly what kind they are: lethally dangerous to the West.
How a formerly respectable country can face the choice between two such unsavoury characters escapes me. But then again, this is an inevitable consequence of modern democracy run riot, which unfailingly vindicates de Maistre’s remark that every nation gets the government it deserves.
When people ascend to government by arithmetic, rather than, say, birth, wisdom or even common sense, they’ll reflect mob sentiments at their basest. Vox populi may be vox dei, but in politics it’s definitely not the voice of prudence, morality and sagacity.
A tossup between a fool and a knave has become the most widespread choice in Western politics, the important nonentity the dominant type of politician. Manny, promising an equal chance for all, and Marine, undertaking to “put France back in order” are stark examples of this unfortunate situation.
An excellent point.
Macron is but a substitute for socialist Hollande, his antiestablishment rhetoric is bogus, his vague liberal noises disingenuous, the business as usual. Houellebecq was right. The day of reckoning will come at the general election in 2022.
I ,like so many, prefer to keep it simple. How would the British electorate react to a man, of his ambition, who married his Drama Teacher, 24 years his elder,…….and a Party leader who chooses to drop her surname from her “brand” because it’s so toxic to many?
We certainly need new terms to replace ‘right’ & ‘left’ in politics; and even more so with ‘extreme-right’ as in the defining of Le Pen.
Our longest serving P.M. in Australia over the 1950-60’s, the extreme right P.M. Bob Menzies insisted the term ‘Conservatism’ was not used in his ‘Liberal Party’, despite it probably being the most conservative party we have had. Now our current P.M. is termed very right of centre despite the fact he first was in politics by being anti-monarchy, which is an extreme left position!
Just as ‘Democratic’ is meaningless, so too now left and right with current usage globally. Do we instead label politicians ‘Socialists’, ‘true Communists’, ‘Dictators’ while those slightly right of centre “people pleasers’?
” ,like so many, prefer to keep it simple. How would the British electorate react to a man, of his ambition, who married his Drama Teacher, 24 years his elder,…”
24 years older and the two began a “relationship” when the boy was 15 years old. She was also married at the time. In the United States that constitutes statutory rape and adultery.