My grandfather, Jean Irené Marrou, came to this country from France. I am glad he did because: France.
France is like that guy in the extended family who seems to have everything going for him but still manages to wreck his life and the lives of others.
Yes, France is the Hunter Biden of nations.
Over the weekend France voted in a coalition of leftist riffraff that will now proceed to wreck the country yet another time.
That’s why the current political setup there is called the Fifth Republic. They’ve tried it all before and screwed it up every time.
Even the New York Times admits the leftist coalition will be trouble: “Its supporters took to the streets of Paris on Sunday night to celebrate, although some in France were fearful of what the far left would bring: The largest party in the alliance, France Unbowed, is known for its incendiary far-left politics.”
When the Times calls anything “far-left” you know it’s bad. And that adjective “incendiary” is likely meant literally.
French president Emmanuel Macron, a man only slightly more competent than our current president, was surprised when the right-wing National Rally party came out on top in elections for the European Parliament last month. He decided to shock the nation into sanity by calling for snap elections.
He shocked himself instead. National Rally came in first in the percentage of vote. A left-wing group was second and Macron’s people were stuck in third. Oops.
Runoffs loomed in just a week. What to do, what to do? The establishment in France, as in other countries, hates anything right-wing but is comfortable with the left. That’s because the right-wing might cut back on government jobs and payoffs, while leftists only increase them, The chance that the left will wreck the country is something they planned to worry about later.
So Macron got in touch with his leftist pals. “Here’s the deal,” he said (in French, naturellement). “Because we have several dozen political parties there are always runoffs, and in most districts there are three people in the runoff. If we leave it like that the National Rally will win and we can’t have that. These idiots might stop illegal immigration and lower taxes. So instead we’ll have the number three person in most of these districts drop out and National Rally will be screwed.”
And so it was. Oh, National Rally still got the most votes, but thanks to the construction of French politics it was kept from an outright majority in their National Assembly. The lineup came out like this:
New Popular Front (leftist): 184 seats
Macron’s centrists: 166 seats
National Rally: 143 seats
So Macron made a deal with the devils he knew—Commies (9 seats), Greens (28), socialists (69 seats) and a recent leftist party called France Unbowed (78 seats)—to avoid the devil he didn’t. Now he will hope to stay a little less irrelevant than he would have with the right.
Bonne chance with that, chump. He’s already nervous enough that he’s asked the current prime minister to stay on the job for the time being “to assure the stability of the country.” The country’s finance minister is warning of a “financial crisis” and “economic decline” for France if the left does everything it plans. Of course taxes will go up—in a country that already grabs more than 50 percent of the Gross Domestic Product for the government.
Considering our experience in 2020, you might wonder if the fix was in to keep National Rally out of power. Well, if it happened, it didn’t happen the way it happens in this country—France doesn’t allow people to vote over weeks of time and doesn’t use computer-controlled voting machines. One statistic does stand out, though. The usual voter turnout in France is 38 percent of registered voters, but last weekend some 60% voted. Perhaps it was just the choices available that brought them out. We shall see.
But, as things go downhill in the coming months, keep in mind: chaos is the same word in both French and English.