Le prix de la médiocrité pompeuse
On the front page of this blog there is an inscription: It's not the rebels that create problems, it's the problems that create the rebels. It could be used as an extreme synthesis to describe France's current problems, but I think it is appropriate to add something more.
Because the disaster that is happening in France could have been avoided very easily, simply by not behaving like mediocre pompous in any sector.
For years and years now, the logic applied to problems in France begins like this: “since France is France, whatever we do is better than what you do, because it's French”.
It's that way of thinking that French cuisine is the best in the world, while French food sucks. So you arrive at a place on the highway and you have stupid toast brought to you, but you pay its weight in gold because, mind you, it's FRENCH toast.
I wouldn't even know where to start. In general, when we speak of "Banlieu", we speak of suburbs. At least, this is the translation that the Italian newspapers make, taking the text from the French ones: France has a problem of "peripheries", and their very blunt sociologists do nothing but confirm it.
Handsome.
However, technically 65% of Paris is "Banlieue".
Why do we talk about “peripheries”? Because a class of academic trombones rooted in the rich and exclusive center of Paris considers "periphery" any place in which a doghouse does not cost as much as the GDP of a developing country.
France doesn't have a problem with suburbs. He has a problem with the center. Center of the city, center of the country. Center of politics.
And not for nothing, the center is the place of riots. While elsewhere disaster occurs in the ghettos and suburbs, in France disaster occurs in the centre.
And while elsewhere the troubles involve the capital only at the end, in France they start from the capital. The problem of France is not the suburbs. The problem is the center.
Since intellectuals, journalists and politicians live in the centre, obviously the problem for them is the periphery. Which only works if we consider the entire country as a "periphery".
The French police are said to have become increasingly violent and with impunity. But this was the will of the government, i.e. of the centre. Why did it happen?
There were several factors, but one stands out above all:
the police as a substitute for welfare.
Suppose we live in central Paris. Paris alone makes 20% of France's GDP, even for an extremely centralized administrative structure. But I said, suppose we live there. And to be politicians.
If this is the case, you will end up thinking that outside the center of Paris, there are only "the suburbs", ignoring the fact that they are 65% of the population, and you will end up thinking that the rest of France is made up of countryside from the quaint landscapes, quaint people doing quaint things, and quaint French fishing villages fishing in French?
After all, you will think, they don't need welfare, they are better off than us. If we exclude those 4 negroes from the "suburbs", what need of welfare do these blonde peasant girls with freckles who go to milk the geese to produce pate' de fois gras?
So what will you say? You will say this:
- who needs welfare, if anything, it's us who live in the center of Paris, because the prices are high.
- in the countryside they don't need welfare because they are picturesque people who do picturesque things and live in picturesque happiness
- those four Negroes from the suburbs remain, whom the police can handle.
And in the end, what will you do?
You will concentrate all resources in the central political class, in the central government, helping the filthy rich of central Paris to resist their very harsh existential condition. The peasants don't need anything, and the Negroes from the suburbs have to come and wash the floors for me, and be thankful that we don't drive them home.
But the reality is different. Because those who you think are picturesque farmers who do picturesque things are actually people like the others, they are the majority of the population, and they want to do the same things that everyone does today, because milking geese is two balls like that.
And then you will notice that, as it were, outside Paris the provincials are starting to get pissed off and vote for Le Pen. You'll notice that you'll have farmers smashing everything in central Paris every year. And you won't care, because you'll think that of course, these picturesque peasants who do picturesque things will also have picturesque politicians who say picturesque things, right? And Marine Le Pen fits this description very well. So that's okay, who cares about the picturesque farmers, and if they exaggerate there is the police.
When the "Banlieues" start to give problems, your intellectuals will speak of "suburbs", giving you the impression that it is two or three areas of bad construction that are causing the problem. So you will think that, after all, the police are enough: you will have read that article where a pensioner caught stealing out of hunger met two good policemen who paid him a baguette. Just the police.
You, on the other hand, needed a reduction in taxes and a certain guarantee of income, because few people know what sacrifices you made to buy yourself a new yacht. You took the bread out of your mouth, you are.
After about 40 years of believing that 65% of Paris is "suburbs" and believing that outside Paris there are second-class citizens, i.e. picturesque citizens who say picturesque things, you have plundered the welfare state, in favor of the rich, to such point that a spark is enough to set fire to the powders.
What do you do?
Ask the police to fix the problem, and to punish those ungrateful shits ravage welfare again, with the proceeds lower taxes on billionaires again, and on top of that, make a police reform that effectively allows cops to do whatever the fuck they want. apparently, going unpunished. You will call it Sécurité Globale, and as if that weren't enough, since social networks are taken over by the Russians, then you make sure that the press silence also falls on the misdeeds of the police.
And when the picturesque people and the 4 negroes who are 65% of Paris come down to protest, what do you do? Call for the introduction of a new law, which allows the use of anti-terrorism laws. Which, launched by Macron himself, allow arrests and searches without the appeal of the judge.
The perfect recipe for disaster.
These things would make sense IF France really was 80% Central Paris, 19.9% quaint peasants doing quaint things, and 0.1% four Negroes from the suburbs.
The trouble is, that's definitely not the case.
So far, we are at the pompous. People who think they're settling things by getting rude provincials and four ungrateful niggers back into line.
Now we come to the mediocre. Let's talk about Marine le Pen. Marine le Pen is, in fact, an element of selection in reverse.
The last election convinced central politics in Paris of one thing:
"it doesn't matter what pile of phonies we propose: in the elections, the Le Pen danger will force the French to vote for any asshole that shows up".
Freed from the need to propose serious programs and politicians with a strong identity, French politicians have specialized in proposing candidates who:
- can build and lead a heterogeneous soup of parties that will eventually unite against Le Pen.
- may be mediocre enough not to reject either right-wing or left-wing parties, always in the name of the heterogeneous soup.
Et voilà, we have Emmanuel Macron, a former porn actor in Milf/Teacher films, now transformed into Granny, who governs for the sole reason that he is not Marine le Pen.
Of course, these protests will peter out. There is no ideological fuel for a revolution, also because revolutions are made by the middle class, which has disappeared in France.
But Macron remains a mediocre pompous, as the entire French establishment, intellectuals included, would by now be described.
You know what he's gonna do as soon as the riots are over?
A beautiful law against social networks and the Internet as a whole. So that the population is, if possible, even more uninformed: in degraded neighborhoods they will be informed by "Radio Degrado", and outside Paris they will be informed by Radio LePen.
What could possibly go wrong?