Up Is Downism Arrives in France

To those who have e-mailed me asking the meaning of my "cryptic" (really?) expressions of frustration about the Sarkzealot and Roy show in France last weekend, let me just note the prominence of support for the "Back to Work" bully that derives from retirees, and the correlated prominence among the opposition to Sarko's so-called "New Direction" for France (as if Reaganism/Thatcherism represents something somehow "new" in any conceivable sense) of young people who will actually live in the "new future" and know better than to believe his ugly racist and market fundamentalist lies. For background, everybody should be reading the blog European Tribune, and for some interesting number crunching check out this article, from which I quote these choice bits:

Mme Royal, the Socialist candidate, dismissed by the Right as the candidate of the past, scored heavily among the young.... In an election restricted to French voters aged 18 to 59, Mme Royal would have won handsomely. M. Sarkozy owes his victory to... an overwhelming triumph among French voters in their sixties (61 per cent of the vote) and a jackpot among the over-seventies (68 per cent). [France's version of Amurrica's O'Reilly Factor demographic.]

The centre-right candidate promised to put France "back to work" and create a new, more dynamic future. His greatest appeal -- paradoxically [not really] -- was to people over retirement age. They were swayed not by his promises of a New France but his appeals to the "moral" values of an Old France, and especially his tough rhetoric on crime, immigration and national identity....

M. Sarkozy... picked up his largest scores -- up to 68 per cent of the vote -- in the former far-right bastions of Alsace and the Côte d'Azur.... [Where his "kinder, gentler" Le Penist racism is a no-brainer!]

According to an Ipsos poll, M. Sarkozy won among both men and women. Mme Royal did better (48 per cent) among women than men (46 per cent). The generational schisms revealed by the poll are striking. The "internet" generation of 18- to 24-year-olds voted 58 per cent for Mme Royal. The 25- to 34-year-olds voted 57 per cent for M. Sarkozy. The "May 1968" -- Mitterrand generation of 45- to 59-year-olds voted 55 per cent for Mme Royal. The 35 to 44 generation split 50-50.

Get ready France. Your country is about to be looted to a threadbare scarecrow by the already rich. The resulting failures of overstressed governance will be attributed to the very government that is being stripped of its capacity to function. You won't believe how quickly people will forget that once your civic institutions and social services actually worked to make things better for all. (This isn't, by the way, the palpably false claim that these institutions and services couldn't have been incomparably better, but just you wait to see how swift and how sweeping the devastation can be once the "free marketeers" get busy.) Racism and sexism (already so clearly at work in the election result) will be endlessly exacerbated under cover of a discourse of "dignity" and "freedom" that always only consolidates the position of incumbents. And at the end of the road: utter corruption, utter division, utter chaos, utter idiocy.

But, you're in luck! You will always have Paris. Not to mention the fact remains that you held out so long against the global Randroid dumbass train that it may be Sarko won't manage to consolidate enough of a hold to ever actually implement the market fundamentalist squawk for real, while the example of the rest of the world shrugging off in disgust the bloodyminded stickyfingered neoliberal/neoconservative asshole free marketeers, taking away their credit cards, taking away their guns, turning the channel when they start bloviating will provide enough of a spectacle that you'll see sense before this misfit crew has a chance to make you pay for real for letting them in.