Today's topic: Boy, I'm sooo ashamed to be French!

[Calcoran]

Damn, I'm just so mad!
Yesterday, France has given itself the choice between a raving madman (raving madman as in adolf hitler I mean) and a professional liar for presidential elections. And the worst part is: It didn't even do it consciously!

Anyhow ... sorry I had to bring this up, but I just had to vent somehow and somewhere ... (and Don's probably asking himself "somewhere, yes, but why <I>here</I>!")

[Phantom]

UUHHMMM, pardon?

[Calcoran]

Before anyone asks about the "not consciously" ... mind you, it wasn't the <I>worst</I> thing about it. Maybe even the best thing rather. I'd <I>really</I> hate to think that it's been a conscious choice.

Anyhow ... it all began with a moron deciding that the first round would take place during most people's vacations. Thought it would bring his opponents less votes. He was wrong.
Then, there was the fact that most if not all candidates were either morons, or thieves ... or both.
The next thing you know, you get 30% of abstaining ... <I>except</I> of course from the very people who vote for that madman, and who contrary to the other electors do not have the decency to abstain themslves.
End result: the madman didn't get more votes than usual (well, all right, he got 100,000 more which is not that much relatively), but the other candidates got so much less than what they used to get ... that we end up with him in the second round. Democracy is a wonderful thing. Now we have to vote for a liar and probably a thief to avoid a lunatic fascist &#@$*µ£%"ç§!?fhpizeahf ...

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

A friend of mine once commented that "the masses are asses..." I have never found much reason to disagreee with that comment, but believe me, it isn't limited to the French. En masse, we Brit's aren't exactly the smartest cookies in the tin.

Look on the bright side, 4 years of a lying thief is still better than four years of Adolf

[Calcoran]

The nice thing about France is that we'll have 5 years of it, not 4. Thanks god it already went down from 7 to 5!
Anyway, thanks for the kind words Daniel.

[Lee T]

yesterday's emotions:



Now it's up to us to prevent a nightmare, since 82% have voted for another candidate than the fascist one 82% will have to go vote again for another candidate in two weeks (even if they don't enjoy the other candidate, there is no choice when the choice is between democracy and dictatorship).

Another depressed guy.

[Phoenix]

I'm sure some people remember the last election in the U.S. The back and forth winner, and people still want yet another recount...before that we had 8 years Bill Clinton...boy was that fun...everyone I knew "voted for the other guy" both times.

Oh what fun...sorry about the French luck though...

[Dan Stack]

I've been reading of late that anti-Semitism has been making a something of a comeback in Europe. This hasn't made it into too much media here, just an occasional report that some protests/discussions of the Israeli handling of the Palestinian problem have turned into an anti-Semitic rants or riots - people shouting "death to Jews", etc. Is this indeed the case and if so is it the case case of a few nut-jobs gaining attention or is it becoming a serious problem?

No agenda in this post, an honest question.

[Calcoran]

Not sure what to answer to that ... often, when there were anti-israeli demonstrations, there usually was an anti-palestinian demonstration going on on the opposite side of the town.
The strange thing here is that LePen (the raving lunatic) is clearly racist, antisemitic and anti-arab (well, basically anti-anything that isn't "purely" French (hah, as if there were such a thing), blond haired, and blue eyed if possible). He's always complained about insecurity problems in France, saying it was all those foreigners' fault. Saying <I>he</I>'d do something about it if he had a say in the matter.
However, the few antisemitic acts or riots we saw lately were seen as a major evidence of insecurity in France. Which he quickly used to his benefit. Yeah, well, sure, the Arabs, of course! As if he hadn't himself lit fire to a few synagogues or desacrated(?) a few jewish sepultures in his youth. For all we know, he (well, his party, not he in person) may be behind some of those demonstrations turning suddenly into riots. Probably not, but still, I find it kinda scary how easily he benefacted from acts against his own "enemies".

[Cybrludite]

I can sympathize. I was very glad to be a resident of New Mexico (Where I was going to college) when my home state of Louisiana had the infamous run-off election between Edwin Edwards & David Duke. Duke, as most Americans know, was a former Grand High Muckety-Muck of the Klu Klux Klan and founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People. He claimed to have put all that behind him, which was a lie. I know for a fact that he had the same admin level access at stormfront-dot-org that he had at duke-dot-org. There's some talk that Duke's place in the run-off was arrainged by the Mafia or the Casino Lobby (Like there's a difference...) to get Edwards elected. "Fast Eddy", the most corrupt politician in Louisiana's history, was the only one who'd let that casinos in.

BUT

From this side of the pond, it seems that the French have much more to be embarrassed about than just Le Pen. With the attacks on Jews, that "Frightening Hoax" book on the best sellers' list, the reflexive siding with the PA against Israel, a certain diplomat in London not being recalled for rather undiplomatic statements, and a general thankless attitude despite our having saved you from the Germans twice last century has caused some of us to label France as the "Vichy Republic of Evil". A great many Americans are beginnning to feel the same way about France (And most of Europe, to be honest) as Ambassidor Daniel Bernard was quoted as feeling about Israel. At any rate, this isn't really the place to start a political flame-war. If anyone wants to discuss this, I'm available via e-mail (cybrludite@aol.com) & most IM services.

[Eric R.]

I remember the last time back in 88, I believe, when this same person did nearly the same thing. events largely went as they will this time, the various parties will unite to defeat him in the next election. Some here say the French are questioning a system which allows such a person to even get this far. The sad point is that as long as you truely believe in Representative Republican Democacy these toads will lift there ugly heads out of the muck. The good point is that the same system gives a people the tools by which to defeat them with

But I am a bit uneased on some points, when synagoes where burnt not more than a few weeks ago in the south of France where was the huge outpouring of shock and reaction this one little event has produced, which in all seriousness is one easily delt with?

[Doktor Evil]

Mes chers amis... one man's fascist can be another man's decent politician; and one man's socialist can be another man's communist overlord.

That wave of anti-semitism isn't that hard to explain... when you host Europe's largest Arab/Muslim community. The recent surge of anti-semitism in France can be directly linked to what's happening in Palestine. The French have nothing to do with that.

Anyways, I don't like to go to France anymore. Its the language barrier : I don't speak Arabic

Et finalement.... when I have my ex-girlfriend who was robbed by an Arab in France; my current one who was assaulted by an Arab there; my step-dad who got conned by one also, and my mom who got stuck into one of their riots, I know who I would have voted for.

I sure wish we had more politicians like him in Canada, because we badly need it.

[Doktor Evil]

Cyberludite, Americans are in NO place to start pointing fingers. If it weren't for US support the Palestinians wouldn't be massacred by the Israelis.

But you are dead-on right about the French's lack of gratefulness about us saving their asses twice. And to add injury to insult, many Frenchmen think that it was their resistance that have singlehandedly overthrown the Germans out and that D-Day would not have been possible without them

[Calcoran]

Cybrludite:
LOL! Now that's nice to know there are still things one can laugh about . Frankly, I think we're not speaking about the same thing. The French are probably seen as annoying in the US ... and maybe other countries as well. As are Europeans, English, and Americans as well. We are all annoying to someone else I guess. I'm not exactly proud of being an annoying country's citizen, but I'm certainly not ashamed of it . It's still pretty much another thing to see a clone of hitler coming withing reach of the French presidency. Say as you like, in wrong hands, France could do way worse than what you complained about.

Eric:
Not exactly. While unsettling, LePen never reached scores that got him to the second round for presidential elections for instance. Nor did it allow him to do much with his votes ... that's what's supposed to be called a sanction vote (electors showing they're unhappy with the other candidates but not giving powers to the one they voted for). Sanction vote my ass! The other candidates were annoyed, afraid maybe, for about a month or so but forgot about him and went on with their political little game of theirs.
What's really bad (IMO) is that this came as a complete surprise to almost everyone. All right, I talked about it with friends. I wondered "what if this so called sanction vote gets us someone we certainly don't want in the second round?". Serves me well. I never really believed it. Nobody believed it. And there we are.
Of course he won't be elected. This still makes me mad. It probably means a bad government for France, the very same Cybrludite complained about. It'll also probably mean difficult days for Europe ... not that many Americans care about that ...

[Lee T]

Originally posted by Cybrludite
the reflexive siding with the PA against Israel, a certain diplomat in London not being recalled for rather undiplomatic statements, and a general thankless attitude despite our having saved you from the Germans twice last century has caused some of us to label France as the "Vichy Republic of Evil"

Saying that is confusing three thing, politics, nationality and religion. The Israelian governent, the jews, and the Israelians are three very different thing. One can disagree with the Israelian [b]government[b] without:
- hating the israelian people
- hating the jews.
If most of our politics side with the Palestinian in nowadays affair it's becausse we very often prefer peacefull resolution while the israelian governement is just preparing this region of the world for another generation of war.

There has been some antisemitic acts in France lately, who did them is still unknown, maybe basic oldfashioned french whiter than thou racist, and/or maybe not very well integrated young arabs trying to find an identity by going overboard. Anyway, these acts do not represent the vast majority of the french people who simply don't care (because for most of the french there is a big difference between nationality and religion). And I do not think that these acts have anything to do with Le Pen passing the first turn of our elections.

LePen had 18%, this was barely better than what he did before (he used ot have between 15% and 16% in every election in the 80s and 90s), this score used to be considered marginal since the other political parties had higher scores.
The problem here is that the other political formation all had lower scores than usaul because the votes were spread on 3 "regular" right groups and 3 left groups, and 9 other little formation (not that little since some of them had more than 5% of the votes). This is the first time in our history that we have so many candidates (16), and this is one of the consequences.

LePen passing is not a success of the extremism, it's a failure of the regular political formation who didn't gathered enough vote on their names and who separated themselves in too many entities to be able do it.
There is no more extremist people in France now than before.
It's just that those people are here, at each election waiting for the others to be enough divided or passive to seize control.

I hope the french won't be divided and passive the next round and that this guy will get his ass kicked once more.

Whatever the end of this sad story is this will not be without consequences, let's hope it will be good ones (like people going to vote a bit more).