Although I consider myself a Francophile I have to say that the Sarkozy government really seems to be out of control these days, of course the same is true here in Austria as well as in Germany.
We need common sense & neutral specialists in control. This world is clearly becoming far too complex for the electable caste.
Same here. However I'm a little worried about Hollande too, for completely different reasons though. But democracy these days always seems to be about picking the lesser evil. Quite a sad thought actually.
Btw: I'm not french, I'm just watching from a distance.
I know almost nothing about the German political system so I won't discuss that. But the French system has plenty of flaws, two of the biggest being that
1/ énarques aren't technical at all, don't actually know anything except how bureaucracy works, and yet they're in charge of everything
2/ super-selective schools have the side effect of letting people think they're geniuses because they topped a competition while in their teens
Myopic comments like this are really irritating. Who do you think votes the French government in? The Germans?
Democracies tend to gravitate around the center of what their people want. If the people consistently vote to one side, then the centre will move to that side. This is a cultural process of years - and yes, you're exhibiting exactly the forest-for-the-trees thinking I was talking about.
I can assure you I live in France I'm sick of this government, but what's worry me even more is that I find to some extent it represents quite well the current mind of thought of the majority of the population. Peoples are becoming more and more intolerant, rejecting every problem on illegal immigration,... I digress... Sorry, I'm tired.
France kinda has a history of things going bad, their rulers overreaching, and people then taking matters into their own heads,...
I somehow hope this time it can end less violently, but with how much (a lot of french) people hate macron, you never know...
The larger problem is, that it is spreading to other countries and EU itself (just think of how many times EU tried to stop/backdoor/outlaw encryption). Add a new upcoming crisis, recession in germany and the long-term problems brought with eu expansion, and things are about to get even worse.
I can't quite tell if you're a troll or merely have a really hard time understanding that France is actually in a very complex position here.
This entire thread is so depressingly misinformed about the country that I don't have the heart to correct people.
Namely people are quick to forget that France is in fact in a state of emergency and that conditions do change when that's pulled. It doesn't mean we should lie down and accept anything and everything, but forgetting what's actually going on makes everything worse.
There are serious issues with the current french government but they have nothing to do with "the left" or "the right", as if those things ever mattered. They have to do with how NIH and technologically impaired France is and that hasn't changed since the minitel.
At least, in France, in my opinion, it's becoming difficult to find favourable coverage of the government in the press, even in state-owned media. I find it neutral at best.
"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear."
-- Bertrand Russell
But if you think this is something, wait until Le Pen comes to power.
It's not just France either. Authoritarianism is rife in much of the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world, for that matter.
France is a particularly interesting case, however. As on the one hand they're the land of Voltaire, of the French Revolution, of the ideals of "liberté, égalité, fraternité", and on the other of authoritarianism, colonialism, and xenophobia.
France is not totalitarian, at least for now, but their political system is statist with a tendency for enacting authoritarian policies without regard for individual liberties.
I have been following a lot of French people on Twitter following the terrorist attacks and I didn't sense from them any caution or worries of giving the govt and security forces a carte blanche with the state of emergency and even for the upcoming constitutional referendum.
They seemed very naive and trust their government blindly to the point of trading their freedom for the illusion of safety and not learning the hard lesson endured by their American peers with the Patriot Act and the ensuing mass surveillance following the 9/11 attacks.
It's not. There is some talk of a Sixth Republic during the presidential campaigns, generally from far-right or far-left parties, but the two main moderate parties do not want to hear about it.
French political life is characterized by a complete lack of impetus for change.
I disagree, France is being completely rational here. There is a better mix of power that is possible now than in the 1970s, because of technology advancements. A lot has happened in the past 50 years.
Meh. Do you think the French are governed by a government with actual autonomy to go wherever the people wish to be led, or just pretend autonomy within a narrow range of bouncing a little to the left or right within the neoliberal framework?
This a very long article, the main theme is that different factions in France are in a kind of soft war with a clear faction on the loosing side. They are immigrants, the Elite and the older working class.
As a old Frenchman I would say two things that are self contradictory, first I think this guy makes a good diagnostic of the current situation, second: Things are not that simple, the last time France was a pleasant utopia was before WWII. After that it had continously been a mess:
De Gaulle made a coup to get the power in 1958, Paratroopers were sent to Paris[0], Corsica was briefly taken under military rules[0] and the IV republic died quietly without blood bath.
The 70" were nice but the 80" were horrible economically speaking. After that it was the rise of Europe, which closed plants but did not created jobs. Most of the economy is now controlled by the state (56%).
Since 2008 we have lost most of the freedom that citizens enjoy under democracy: Our parliament has no right, there are moral laws as in 1984, generalized spying on citizens and soldiers in arms are everywhere in public spaces.
France is such a shit show right now (source: I am French). All of that because the president is weak because of his poor result, but he's a narcissist who think he's smarter than anyone else and is unable to even form a majority with the traditional right party who shares most of his agenda.
And because he must always be the smartest in the room, the government has to be a bunch of idiots (this is almost a literal translation of quote from the prime minister, the exact quote being «Un gouvernement composé à moitié de débiles»).
When you govern a country with less than 30% of citizen's approval acting as if none of their opinions on the subject mattered, no shit people are unhappy and start doing stupid stuff…
I have had well-educated French acquaintences telling me for a decade that France is ripe for a new system of government; the 6th in its history.
Many current problems stem from the fact that post-war mechanisms written into the governmental system are abused by the president and elected leaders. E.g. presidential overruling of parlamental votes.
We need common sense & neutral specialists in control. This world is clearly becoming far too complex for the electable caste.
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