John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Emmanuel Macron faces critical address to nation amid France's 'yellow vest' protests”
Macron has proved himself pretty much hopeless, and not just concerning events around gilets jaunes.
They are the icing on the cake, as it were.
He does very much represent the people who put him where he is, but they are a minority, inner-circle, privileged group.
French establishment types were desperate to find a figure to stop the fiery Marine Le Pen, and they found this guy. From day one, he has proved ineffective, uninspiring, and very arrogant.
He follows another, truly terrible French President, Hollande, perhaps the worst president France ever had. Babar with attitude. Enough To make de Gaulle roll in his grave.
Any ordinary people living under such governments are bound to be dissatisfied and frustrated.
It definitely is not just a matter of Right versus Left. And I’m not sure the term “globalism” belongs here either, unless you understand that word in a way different than the way I understand it.
It is just today’s version of the privileged abusing those without privilege in society, of “a straw too many breaking the camel’s back.” And just because you wrap up an issue, such as big new fuel taxes, in exalted-sounding terms like environmentalism makes absolutely no difference.
When you make great numbers of ordinary, hard-working citizens feel that they are being treated unfairly, you create a problem.
It is government’s obligation, no matter what its philosophy, to make those being governed feel they are governed fairly. In other words, we see the same basic pattern here that has driven every great revolution and revolt of the past.
And there are so many real problems in need of attention, but are ignored by government recently in France. And there is a great deal of dishonesty and insincerity coming from this government, just as there was from the last one.
I just cannot blame people for rising up against such a political situation.
They feel they are not represented with Macron representing only the interests and attitudes of the country's elites.
And you know what? They are right.
___________________
Response to a comment saying, “Macron is a UN talking puppet, just like Trudeau and Merkel. Their sole goal is to further the UN one world government agenda, to destroy the old-world order and replace it with the new”:
This is not accurate.
Macron is a puppet, but not of the UN, which has become a phony bête noire for the Alt-right.
The UN has been largely eviscerated by American governments in recent decades.
____________________
There is another possibility here.
I don't embrace it, but I very much recognize it as a possibility.
We've seen how Trump has directly interfered in French internal affairs with his obnoxious tweets.
So much so, the French government has just asked publicly that they be stopped.
It is not impossible that there are CIA efforts at work here on the streets of Paris.
Genuine local grievances are always exploited in such efforts. It is just the way the security services do things.
I'm pretty sure the American establishment is very unhappy with Macron. Trump certainly is.
The reason for their unhappiness is Macron's advocacy for a European army, independent of NATO.
I regard it as one of Macron's few really worthwhile ideas, but I know the good folks at the CIA and the Pentagon very much do not. It smells a bit too much of de Gaulle, whom they hated. It has long been rumored that at least one of the several attempted assassinations of de Gaulle had CIA involvement.
Of course, his "partner" in the suggestion for a true European army, Ms. Merkel, is now out as a political force for other reasons.
Macron is disliked, too, because he rejected Trump's arm-twisting effort to have European countries pay a whole lot more money for NATO, and ditto Ms. Merkel.
I don't know, but these are the kinds of dirty operations at work in various parts of our contemporary world, just not usually Europe.
