Riots in France over fuel tax rises

[Hirota]

I'm relying on English articles and google translate for that whole "leftists in france" spiel. But isn't it true Benoît Hamon declined to join the march for fear of marching side-by-side with the far right? And I understand Mélenchon dragged his feet over anything other than tentative support until late in developments?

Not that I'm sure it would be a good thing for Mélenchon to get involved. There's enough claims of Russian meddling already.

Mélenchon doesn't care about Russian meddling. He's more of a scorched earth kind of guy, vis-à-vis Macron. He even attacked the judiciary, claiming that the president was using it against him... Which is not cute.
And he dragged his feet only for a short while, he was far too willing, some might say, to ride the protests. His other député Ruffin is basically the only mainstream politician who's not only a part of the movement, but actively calling for sedition.

Anyway, Hamon... Hamon... Thank GOD, Hamon isn't the left.

Thank you for the answers. I'm not particularly clued up to the specifics of French Politics, so I appreciate your viewpoint on the matter.

[Trumptonium1]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

The French police will be on strike and protesting together with the gilets jaunes this weekend, as the "gilets blues" also want better working conditions. This is already after last week the police were filmed taking their helmets off in solidarity with protesters.

Macron will have to put the military on the street, or, have Paris descend into literal anarchy over this weekend.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/18/exh ... -this-week
https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/stat ... 6631527425

Man supported by 18% of the population puts military on the street to quash rebellion. The headlines write themselves. Surely he's finished now.

[Thermodolia]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

The French police will be on strike and protesting together with the gilets jaunes this weekend, as the "gilets blues" also want better working conditions. This is already after last week the police were filmed taking their helmets off in solidarity with protesters.

Macron will have to put the military on the street, or, have Paris descend into literal anarchy over this weekend.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/18/exh ... -this-week
https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/stat ... 6631527425

Man supported by 18% of the population puts military on the street to quash rebellion. The headlines write themselves. Surely he's finished now.

23% not 18%.
https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads ... e-2018.pdf

[Evil Dictators Happyland]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

The French police will be on strike and protesting together with the gilets jaunes this weekend, as the "gilets blues" also want better working conditions. This is already after last week the police were filmed taking their helmets off in solidarity with protesters.

Macron will have to put the military on the street, or, have Paris descend into literal anarchy over this weekend.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/18/exh ... -this-week
https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/stat ... 6631527425

Man supported by 18% of the population puts military on the street to quash rebellion. The headlines write themselves. Surely he's finished now.

23% not 18%.
https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads ... e-2018.pdf

The point still stands, tbh.

[Bienenhalde]

Maybe it is time to send out some solar-powered tanks to crush this insurrection.

[Thermodolia]

23% not 18%.
https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads ... e-2018.pdf

The point still stands, tbh.

Not saying it doesn’t but polls do change and those who post about Macron’s approval rating should acknowledge that

[Trumptonium1]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

The French police will be on strike and protesting together with the gilets jaunes this weekend, as the "gilets blues" also want better working conditions. This is already after last week the police were filmed taking their helmets off in solidarity with protesters.

Macron will have to put the military on the street, or, have Paris descend into literal anarchy over this weekend.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/18/exh ... -this-week
https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/stat ... 6631527425

Man supported by 18% of the population puts military on the street to quash rebellion. The headlines write themselves. Surely he's finished now.

23% not 18%.
https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads ... e-2018.pdf

18%.

[Trumptonium1]

Oh I just realised there's an entire wikipedia article dedicated to his approval ratings

God he sunk so low.

[Gallia-]

America is a soulless fucking trainwreck with zero identity, just a big fat commerce hub.

And yet it lectures the world about being a model. Invaded plenty of countries, killed millions to forcefully export its model lifestyle.
Claims it's a model while it can barely get 50% of its people to vote and it can't keep them alive. So, if that can claim it is a model, then so can we, and so can Spain. Problem solved.

America has kept a stable democratic government for the past 250 years. France is soon to be on its sixth attempt. I'm sure it will stick sometime.

Though how you can consider a relatively unstable and tumultuous state like France to be a model for anything, except maybe a model display that Republicanism simply isn't the natural state of the French (as is the case of Koreans, whose natural state is despotism, it may also be true for the French), is a bit mind boggling. Generally, model states are those that are stable and long-lasting without major structural changes or constitutional replacements. France, seemingly, can't go more than 70 years without collapsing into chaos and needing a wholly new constitutional makeover.

Perhaps they should consider a return of the monarchy and abandoning the continual attempts to adopt republicanism this time around. Forget the Sixth Republic. Bring back Bonapartism, or actual feudalism, or something. Otherwise we'll probably be seeing a 7th Republic before the end of this century.

France only doesn't do what we do because France is no longer strong enough to.

Irrelevant, we're a model. Like Japan is, seeing as how their people... Aren't seeing their life expectancy decrease.

Japan has had a stable government for the past 150 years. Their system has changed, of course, but only due to outside pressure. The same people who were in charge during the Meiji Period and the Interbellum are the people who are currently calling themselves the "LDP" today. OTOH, France is no more a model than Korea or Russia. It tries to be stable for a while, and inevitably collapses and comes crashing down after a couple decades, like clockwork, because it never truly represents what people want. Or perhaps Frenchmen are just naturally predisposed to chaotic histrionics. Or they're just not natural democrats and need to be controlled. It isn't clear what the truth is, but France's longest and most stable government was a feudal monarchy, followed by a republic that was continually hounded by communists, integralists, and Nazis until it disintegrated.

OTOH, Japan didn't disintegrate at all, even after being nuked twice by America. It just rebuilt its land.

If France were a model of anything, it's an object lesson of what happens when people who can't keep to one goal or idea over a long period of time are incapable of making a system that can accommodate this flux, unlike the United States which has built a democracy that has inherent flux that allows it to change and warp over time, or Japan which is fairly rigid in ideals but flexible in implementation of these ideals. It's more like Korea, which switches a government through violent military coup d'etat, or Russia, which switches through violent revolution or overthrow or bloody Kremlin political turf wars.

Except Russia is capable of maintaining a fairly stable hold on its geography over extremely long periods because it realizes it isn't naturally democratic, rather it's naturally feudal. France, seemingly, doesn't, so it tries to fit the feudal peg in the democratic hole, and falls apart.

[Thermodolia]

23% not 18%.
https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads ... e-2018.pdf

18%.

Which is as of November 29th. The one I posted is from December 15

[Bienenhalde]

And yet it lectures the world about being a model. Invaded plenty of countries, killed millions to forcefully export its model lifestyle.
Claims it's a model while it can barely get 50% of its people to vote and it can't keep them alive. So, if that can claim it is a model, then so can we, and so can Spain. Problem solved.

America has kept a stable democratic government for the past 250 years. France is soon to be on its sixth attempt. I'm sure it will stick sometime.

Well, to me that goes to show that even when it is stable, liberal democracy is not the best form of government. That is why I support monarchy, collectivism, strong religious values, and cultural nationalism.

[Ifreann]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

The French police will be on strike and protesting together with the gilets jaunes this weekend, as the "gilets blues" also want better working conditions. This is already after last week the police were filmed taking their helmets off in solidarity with protesters.

Macron will have to put the military on the street, or, have Paris descend into literal anarchy over this weekend.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/18/exh ... -this-week
https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/stat ... 6631527425

Man supported by 18% of the population puts military on the street to quash rebellion. The headlines write themselves. Surely he's finished now.

Never before has "Allez les bleus" referred to the police.

[Gallia-]

America has kept a stable democratic government for the past 250 years. France is soon to be on its sixth attempt. I'm sure it will stick sometime.

Well, to me that goes to show that even when it is stable, liberal democracy is not the best form of government. That is why I support monarchy, collectivism, strong religious values, and cultural nationalism.

To me it tells me that France is incapable of making a system of government that fits their peoples' expectations.

Whether its democratic or feudal or whatever else you can conjure up is irrelevant. The French just, for whatever reason, can't figure out what their own people want. Russia has figured out how to make it work by having a small, elite clique of people who, through "communist alchemy" or court politics, select heirs and have the Tsar/Premier/General Secretary/President groom them for replacement while the Big Man essentially serves as a neo-feudal emperor of the realm. America has figured out how to make it work by building in sufficient flux and pulling a bunch of legalese mumbo-jumbo like "living document" out of thin air/its ass that it can accommodate anything and everything in its system because it is allowed to change. Japan has figured out how to make it work by building a cult of Yamato Spirit that is ideologically rigid but systematically flexible, because the only thing that matters is the Japanese Race and whether they're represented by the Emperor or the Prime Minister or the IJN/IJA has no real bearing on that.

France hasn't figured it out yet. They're on their fifth attempt, soon to be sixth, and I guess if they keep trying to "make republicanism work" instead of going about it the proper/difficult path and forging something uniquely French, they will be on their 7th attempt before the century is over.

France is in a halfway house between the neo-feudalism of Russia, where a bunch of mega-elites control everything, and the flexibility of America, where the people have ultimate control of everything. It hasn't figured out that you can't do both, and you must either surrender control to the people in a manner that allows them to express their discontent without needing to resort to massive riots/lowkey civil wars, or you need to suppress the people so hard that they can't express their political views without getting a Gendarme's baton to the head. The longest living republic in France [Third] would have disintegrated before it was 100 years old, and the longest living French government was a sprawling feudal monarchy that ebbed and flowed almost as much as the Republican governments. So perhaps the idea of a contiguous "France" is just too far-fetched and it needs to be pared down to a multitude of Frances, Burgundies, and Brittanies that can exist without collapsing every couple of decades.

e: OTOH, perhaps "constant burning down the countryside every time you're unhappy" is the uniquely French model. So it will continue indefinitely, and this is what French consider to be "normal and ordinary". A bit weird, but I suppose this is, in practice, no different than any other neo-feudal system. The Big Men fall and the peasants pick up the pieces and redistribute the wealth, and allow other Big Men to rule over them, until they get unhappy, and those Big Men fall again. France just has a shorter timeframe for the inevitable collapse of the state than the Russians or Chinese.

[Olerand]

And yet it lectures the world about being a model. Invaded plenty of countries, killed millions to forcefully export its model lifestyle.
Claims it's a model while it can barely get 50% of its people to vote and it can't keep them alive. So, if that can claim it is a model, then so can we, and so can Spain. Problem solved.

America has kept a stable democratic government for the past 250 years. France is soon to be on its sixth attempt. I'm sure it will stick sometime.

Though how you can consider a relatively unstable and tumultuous state like France to be a model for anything, except maybe a model display that Republicanism simply isn't the natural state of the French (as is the case of Koreans, whose natural state is despotism, it may also be true for the French), is a bit mind boggling. Generally, model states are those that are stable and long-lasting without major structural changes or constitutional replacements. France, seemingly, can't go more than 70 years without collapsing into chaos and needing a wholly new constitutional makeover.

Perhaps they should consider a return of the monarchy and abandoning the continual attempts to adopt republicanism this time around. Forget the Sixth Republic. Bring back Bonapartism, or actual feudalism, or something. Otherwise we'll probably be seeing a 7th Republic before the end of this century.

Irrelevant, we're a model. Like Japan is, seeing as how their people... Aren't seeing their life expectancy decrease.

Japan has had a stable government for the past 150 years. Their system has changed, of course, but only due to outside pressure. The same people who were in charge during the Meiji Period and the Interbellum are the people who are currently calling themselves the "LDP" today. OTOH, France is no more a model than Korea or Russia. It tries to be stable for a while, and inevitably collapses and comes crashing down after a couple decades, like clockwork, because it never truly represents what people want. Or perhaps Frenchmen are just naturally predisposed to chaotic histrionics. Or they're just not natural democrats and need to be controlled. It isn't clear what the truth is, but France's longest and most stable government was a feudal monarchy, followed by a republic that was continually hounded by communists, integralists, and Nazis until it disintegrated.

OTOH, Japan didn't disintegrate at all, even after being nuked twice by America. It just rebuilt its land.

If France were a model of anything, it's an object lesson of what happens when people who can't keep to one goal or idea over a long period of time are incapable of making a system that can accommodate this flux, unlike the United States which has built a democracy that has inherent flux that allows it to change and warp over time, or Japan which is fairly rigid in ideals but flexible in implementation of these ideals. It's more like Korea, which switches a government through violent military coup d'etat, or Russia, which switches through violent revolution or overthrow or bloody Kremlin political turf wars.

Except Russia is capable of maintaining a fairly stable hold on its geography over extremely long periods because it realizes it isn't naturally democratic, rather it's naturally feudal. France, seemingly, doesn't, so it tries to fit the feudal peg in the democratic hole, and falls apart.

... This is all supposed to be a negative for France?

Yes, we've changed Constitutions numerous times, and what of it? Time changes, society changes, our country changes, and we change. The institutions of the Third Republic were necessary for their era, but would have been catastrophic for ours, as the Fourth Republic showed. And that's fine. That's great in fact, it's a sign of a healthy country and society that can accept and adapt to historical and institutional change.

Our Constitution is us, it is a living, breathing document that we have formulated and that we will utilize until the time comes where it is no longer necessary. I hope that when we need it, we will have a Sixth Republic, and a Seventh. And I'm sure those Constitutions will guarantee us rights we have not yet imagined. This is healthy, this is normal. A Constitution is not a rock we shackle ourselves to and drown with.

Considering the American alternative... Where people, unironically, ferociously debate what some slave-owning wig-wearers would have to say about the issues of the 21st century, issues they could not have theorized in their wildest dreams...

I understand that in a country where history starts in the late 18th century, such a myopic view is... commonplace. But our history is 1,500 years old. We can hardly keep true to our (equally enshrined in myth as a demigod of sorts, I guess, though we don't believe in such fairy-tales either) "Founding Father" Clovis I... What with the change in our... Habitat, let's say. We can't even keep true to the First Republic. Because we grow, with time, as all things do, and we change, as all things should. That's what's normal, really.

And as I said... You... Still fight over healthcare and die younger. So, we have every right to be a model, even more so with your example, so thank you for presenting that.

[Sicaris]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

The French police will be on strike and protesting together with the gilets jaunes this weekend, as the "gilets blues" also want better working conditions. This is already after last week the police were filmed taking their helmets off in solidarity with protesters.

Macron will have to put the military on the street, or, have Paris descend into literal anarchy over this weekend.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/18/exh ... -this-week
https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/stat ... 6631527425

Man supported by 18% of the population puts military on the street to quash rebellion. The headlines write themselves. Surely he's finished now.

[Darussalam]

France should adopt a robust, stable model that incorporates its cultural features and behaviors of its own people.

A king is crowned as the incarnation of the People, and every ten years coinciding with the inevitable recession he will be sacrificed atop the Altar of Reason in the name of the French People.

[Olerand]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

The French police will be on strike and protesting together with the gilets jaunes this weekend, as the "gilets blues" also want better working conditions. This is already after last week the police were filmed taking their helmets off in solidarity with protesters.

Macron will have to put the military on the street, or, have Paris descend into literal anarchy over this weekend.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/18/exh ... -this-week
https://twitter.com/alliancepolice/stat ... 6631527425

Man supported by 18% of the population puts military on the street to quash rebellion. The headlines write themselves. Surely he's finished now.

The police are protesting separately. And the military was on the street already, France is still under threat of terrorist attack, clearly. As for the underlined...

Oh I just realised there's an entire wikipedia article dedicated to his approval ratings

God he sunk so low.

As all French presidents after Mitterrand have, and should. He might sink even further, and most likely all presidents after him will too. French society is changing in this way, and there's been much debate about this in the intelligentsia.

We're also, the stereotype is true, a very critical people who are never happy. We don't blindly follow some autocrat-wannabe because he promises to be mean to those tanner than us. C'est la vie.

[Gallia-]

Yes, we've changed Constitutions numerous times, and what of it?

It makes for a state that falls apart at the slightest provocations, rather than makes a system that can quietly adapt to them, or adapt a people to a system.

Time changes, society changes, our country changes, and we change.

Frenchmen haven't changed is the point. Neither has its society. If that thesis is right, it means France's society and country are founded on "tear it all down" when it suffers something a more typically "Western"/stable society like the British/Japanese/Germans/Nordics would hammer out in a debate. Very inefficient, since it takes time to make new offices again (because the old ones have been burned to the ground), and then they tend to be populated by the same class of elite cliques who inevitably must be deposed by the people again.

It's seems to be a dressed up version of feudalism where the elites try to quell the peasants to prevent a revolt, and their success is measured by how long they can keep the peasants from revolting, but it earnestly believes it's a republic. It's very strange. Perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that the security services are so weak and hamstrung by regulation that they cannot keep the peasants in line with battle tanks and machine guns. Then again, you literally could say that about the Soviet Union, and while they were certainly a model of something, it wasn't a free society.

France gave the English the term "secret police", after all, so it's not exactly a model free society either, at least in its past. OTOH, with France being close to its 6th Republic and they still haven't "got it right" i.e. long-term stability there are a bunch of questions like that. Is France really different? Is it really a republic? Or has it just been a successive series of neo-feudal Ancien Regimes that keep getting toppled by people?

Maybe France just puts less of a emphasis on "institutions" than English/German/Nordic societies, though, but I would consider that leaning more towards feudalism than republicanism.

The institutions of the Third Republic were necessary for their era, but would have been catastrophic for ours, as the Fourth Republic showed. And that's fine. That's great in fact, it's a sign of a healthy country and society that can accept and adapt to change.

France doesn't adapt to change, though. It can't make a system that can accommodate change. Either Frenchmen can't think ahead that far ahead (can anyone?) or they can't break down situations to their basic fundamental matters because they're too busy burning the countryside IDK. A system that can accommodate change is the American one: i.e. one republic stretching from 250 years. You can continue to try to make a link between the 1st Republic and the 5th Republic, but it doesn't really exist, except in geography. France also lacks the blood lineage of the Japanese, too, which is how JPN stopped burning its own countryside. The only thing that it shares with modern France is "it occupied about the same geographical space" TBH.

I guess this is what Spengler meant by races springing forth from geographies.

This is healthy, this is normal. A Constitution is not a rock we shackle ourselves to and drown with.

The United States is the largest economy in the world. It is growing in wealth continuously. It went from a backwater agrarian dirt hole to the largest industrial state in the world in a century. It clearly is not drowning. France, OTOH, may drown in the future when its entire system stops working. Look at what happened to Soviet Russia when it collapsed into its constituent republics. That could also happen to France in the future if it regresses back to Burgundy/Brittany/Francia/Normandy or whatever the old pre-France duchies were.

Considering the American alternative... Where people, unironically, ferociously debate what some slave-owning wig-wearers would have to say about the issues of the 21st century, issues they could not have theorized in their wildest dreams...

The wig wearing slave owners were sufficiently intelligent that they made their statements, views, and systems broad enough in scope to deal with the issues of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. France, seemingly, cannot make systems that are broad, or at least not get at the abstract details of such things to make them immutable to time. It can only create ephemeral constructs that need to be torn down and rebuilt as they become useless because they were never designed for any long-term survival.

It's extremely alien to someone who comes from an Anglo Civilization, where the starter culture has existed (more or less) intact for ~800 years. Perhaps less alien to a JPN where the key component is the people rather than the system.

I understand that in a country where history starts in the late 18th century, such a myopic view is... commonplace. But our history is 1,500 years old.

No, it isn't. France's history is about the same age as America's, for all the history that actually matters (the 16th vs 17th centuries, respectively). England's history is much older than either, since the English Parliament goes back to the 1200s. Everything before that was a different nation and a different system, with only coincidental sharing of geography. It would be as if to claim that the modern Anglo-Saxon is a "Briton" while ignoring the Celts/Picts which were eventually absorbed by the A-S people into their nation (barring a few weirdo Celtic nationalists in Wales/Cornwall/Scotland) through enforced apartheid a thousand or more years ago.

We can hardly keep true to our (equally enshrined in myth as a demigod of sorts, I guess, though we don't believe in such fairy-tales either) "Founding Father" Clovis I... What with the change in our... Habitat, let's say.

Like I said, this must be what Spengler meant by "race" having "roots in landscapes" and "landscapes exerting secret forces" on Men. I'm not a mystical person though, so I think it's more basic than that, but it's an interesting statement since O.S. made a similar statement after WW1. He was German, not French, though. So while the system changes, and the people change in language/looks/ideas, the idea of "French" remains over time. That is an interesting solution, but I'm not sure I can fully understand it properly, only by analogy. In the USA, people are "their ancestors" but they are also "American", with the idea of "American" and "ancestor" existing simultaneously.

I'm also not sure it's as old as it claims to be, but it would be interesting to see a well researched history of "French identity over time" TBH. Like how the "Christian" identity tacked on the "Old Testament" to assert some fictitious link to the past, I suspect similar things occurred to the "French" identity to support a fictitious past link to the Franks and whatnot.

And as I said... You... Still fight over healthcare and die younger.

This is good, though. It means less money spent on subsidizing old people. Dying at 65-70 is the ideal because because it saves the most money and ensures pensions last forever, which means that the limited time spent on meeting with governance can go to more important/pressing matters. There are only 24 hours in a day, after all, and trying to address everything and all problems is impossible. It is best to have a system that can ensure as few problems need to be addressed for as long as possible.

Americans, after all, are not aliens to the "French Solution" of "burn it all down". We practically invented it. We just don't like to do it often, because we prefer robust institutions that work over a long period of time, and violence is lame.

That said, I suspect the difference is mostly down to time preference. Frenchmen, for whatever reason, think of the present here and now, and English/Germans/Nordics/Americans, again for whatever reason, think of the future then and there. Dying earlier isn't bad because 1) no one wants to live to suffer dementia; 2) dying earlier means more money can be spent on young children or working adults instead of olds at the ends of their lives; 3) there are always going to be fewer old people than young people until the American demographics shift into the red which won't happen for maybe another century, at least.

So, we have every right to be a model, even more so with your example, so thank you for presenting that.

It is a model that seems unsustainable, though, since every time it meets an obstacle it needs to be rebuilt. At some point it seems like the amount of effort and time expended in tearing down the system will make any changes you introduce into the new system obsolete by the time they're implemented. Whether that's a realistic problem or not is hard to say, though. OTOH, I suppose you could say the amount of time spent scrutinizing the particularly pen strokes and curvatures of the individual letters written by wig-wearing slave owners is equally prone to reform gridlock, though. In fact, you did say that, but I suspect that wig-wearing slave owners' words require less time and effort to analyze than it does for people on the street to rebuild their shopfronts and burned out buildings, or pick up the parachutes of the commandos, or whatever needs to be done when this round of French Revolution Redux is over.

OTOH, unless you have a really constrained energy/matter storage (like a ship at sea), it may be that "violent revolt" is practical within the same constraints of "legalese alchemy" regardless of the actual state of the constraints, since the margin of error for measuring the current stockpiles of energy and matter are so high that they make it unlikely the mathematically superior system would function in absence of some magical, perfect information sense of the availability of energy/matter. Since we don't know how much energy or matter is available in the world, but we know it's very big, it may not be a big deal for a very long time, if ever.

In which case, France do France I guess? It is still quite strange to me that people would prefer violence to peaceful debate and compromise, though, since AFAIK Macron has not shot any protestors with machine guns or anything so egregious.

[Olerand]

Yes, we've changed Constitutions numerous times, and what of it?

It makes for a state that falls apart at the slightest provocations, rather than makes a system that can quietly adapt to them, or adapt a people to a system.

Time changes, society changes, our country changes, and we change.

Frenchmen haven't changed is the point. Neither has its society. If that thesis is right, it means France's society and country are founded on "tear it all down" when it suffers something a more typically "Western"/stable society like the British/Japanese/Germans/Nordics would hammer out in a debate. Very inefficient, since it takes time to make new offices again (because the old ones have been burned to the ground), and then they tend to be populated by the same class of elite cliques who inevitably must be deposed by the people again.

It's seems to be a dressed up version of feudalism where the elites try to quell the peasants to prevent a revolt, and their success is measured by how long they can keep the peasants from revolting, but it earnestly believes it's a republic. It's very strange. Perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that the security services are so weak and hamstrung by regulation that they cannot keep the peasants in line with battle tanks and machine guns. Then again, you literally could say that about the Soviet Union, and while they were certainly a model of something, it wasn't a free society.

France gave the English the term "secret police", after all, so it's not exactly a model free society either, at least in its past. OTOH, with France being close to its 6th Republic and they still haven't "got it right" i.e. long-term stability there are a bunch of questions like that. Is France really different? Is it really a republic? Or has it just been a successive series of neo-feudal Ancien Regimes that keep getting toppled by people?

Maybe France just puts less of a emphasis on "institutions" than English/German/Nordic societies, though, but I would consider that leaning more towards feudalism than republicanism.

The institutions of the Third Republic were necessary for their era, but would have been catastrophic for ours, as the Fourth Republic showed. And that's fine. That's great in fact, it's a sign of a healthy country and society that can accept and adapt to change.

France doesn't adapt to change, though. It can't make a system that can accommodate change. Either Frenchmen can't think ahead that far ahead (can anyone?) or they can't break down situations to their basic fundamental matters because they're too busy burning the countryside IDK. A system that can accommodate change is the American one: i.e. one republic stretching from 250 years. You can continue to try to make a link between the 1st Republic and the 5th Republic, but it doesn't really exist, except in geography. France also lacks the blood lineage of the Japanese, too, which is how JPN stopped burning its own countryside. The only thing that it shares with modern France is "it occupied about the same geographical space" TBH.

I guess this is what Spengler meant by races springing forth from geographies.

This is healthy, this is normal. A Constitution is not a rock we shackle ourselves to and drown with.

The United States is the largest economy in the world. It is growing in wealth continuously. It went from a backwater agrarian dirt hole to the largest industrial state in the world in a century. It clearly is not drowning. France, OTOH, may drown in the future when its entire system stops working. Look at what happened to Soviet Russia when it collapsed into its constituent republics. That could also happen to France in the future if it regresses back to Burgundy/Brittany/Francia/Normandy or whatever the old pre-France duchies were.

Considering the American alternative... Where people, unironically, ferociously debate what some slave-owning wig-wearers would have to say about the issues of the 21st century, issues they could not have theorized in their wildest dreams...

The wig wearing slave owners were sufficiently intelligent that they made their statements, views, and systems broad enough in scope to deal with the issues of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. France, seemingly, cannot make systems that are broad, or at least not get at the abstract details of such things to make them immutable to time. It can only create ephemeral constructs that need to be torn down and rebuilt as they become useless because they were never designed for any long-term survival.

It's extremely alien to someone who comes from an Anglo Civilization, where the starter culture has existed (more or less) intact for ~800 years. Perhaps less alien to a JPN where the key component is the people rather than the system.

I understand that in a country where history starts in the late 18th century, such a myopic view is... commonplace. But our history is 1,500 years old.

No, it isn't. France's history is about the same age as America's, for all the history that actually matters (the 16th vs 17th centuries, respectively). England's history is much older than either, since the English Parliament goes back to the 1200s. Everything before that was a different nation and a different system, with only coincidental sharing of geography. It would be as if to claim that the modern Anglo-Saxon is a "Briton" while ignoring the Celts/Picts which were eventually absorbed by the A-S people into their nation (barring a few weirdo Celtic nationalists in Wales/Cornwall/Scotland) through enforced apartheid a thousand or more years ago.

We can hardly keep true to our (equally enshrined in myth as a demigod of sorts, I guess, though we don't believe in such fairy-tales either) "Founding Father" Clovis I... What with the change in our... Habitat, let's say.

Like I said, this must be what Spengler meant by "race" having "roots in landscapes" and "landscapes exerting secret forces" on Men. I'm not a mystical person though, so I think it's more basic than that, but it's an interesting statement since O.S. made a similar statement after WW1. He was German, not French, though. So while the system changes, and the people change in language/looks/ideas, the idea of "French" remains over time. That is an interesting solution, but I'm not sure I can fully understand it properly, only by analogy. In the USA, people are "their ancestors" but they are also "American", with the idea of "American" and "ancestor" existing simultaneously.

I'm also not sure it's as old as it claims to be, but it would be interesting to see a well researched history of "French identity over time" TBH. Like how the "Christian" identity tacked on the "Old Testament" to assert some fictitious link to the past, I suspect similar things occurred to the "French" identity to support a fictitious past link to the Franks and whatnot.

And as I said... You... Still fight over healthcare and die younger.

This is good, though. It means less money spent on subsidizing old people. Dying at 65-70 is the ideal because because it saves the most money and ensures pensions last forever, which means that the limited time spent on meeting with governance can go to more important/pressing matters. There are only 24 hours in a day, after all, and trying to address everything and all problems is impossible. It is best to have a system that can ensure as few problems need to be addressed for as long as possible.

Americans, after all, are not aliens to the "French Solution" of "burn it all down". We practically invented it. We just don't like to do it often, because we prefer robust institutions that work over a long period of time, and violence is lame.

So, we have every right to be a model, even more so with your example, so thank you for presenting that.

It is a model that seems unsustainable, though, since every time it meets an obstacle it needs to be rebuilt. At some point it seems like the amount of effort and time expended in tearing down the system will make any changes you introduce into the new system obsolete by the time they're implemented. Whether that's a realistic problem or not is hard to say, though. OTOH, I suppose you could say the amount of time spent scrutinizing the particularly pen strokes and curvatures of the individual letters written by wig-wearing slave owners is equally prone to reform gridlock, though. In fact, you did say that, but I suspect that wig-wearing slave owners' words require less time and effort to analyze than it does for people on the street to rebuild their shopfronts and burned out buildings, or pick up the parachutes of the commandos, or whatever needs to be done when this round of French Revolution Redux is over.

OTOH, unless you have a really constrained energy/matter storage (like a ship at sea), it may be that "violent revolt" is practical within the same constraints of "legalese alchemy" regardless of the actual state of the constraints, since the margin of error for measuring the current stockpiles of energy and matter are so high that they make it unlikely the mathematically superior system would function in absence of some magical, perfect information sense of the availability of energy/matter. Since we don't know how much energy or matter is available in the world, but we know it's very big, it may not be a big deal for a very long time, if ever.

In which case, France do France I guess?

Well considering our States have survived coup attempts and protest movements the likes of which America has never and will never see... I knew you weren't an expert on French history, but let's not propagate lies now.

The British don't have a Constitution. Germany has existed for less than 150 years and they've had many Constitutions. Japan didn't have a Constitution until a little more than 100 years ago and now they have another. Same with the Nordics, Sweden's Constitution took on its current form in 1974, Denmark is on its Fourth Constitution, which was adopted in 1953 (France: 1958). Norway is the only exception, with their Constitution having held so far since 1814, though the latest major Amendement is from 2014, hardly comparable to America's sclerotic papers.
America is, as always, the exception with its chain and ball Constitution, not the norm. Thankfully for Europe.

And yes we've given English many words, most words in fact. We like to help improve our neighbors, and the English language definitely had a need for this...

Your description of French history is... unique. Wrong, but unique, so I shan't address it.

Yes, we change. I know shocking. But as I have shown, everyone else does too. Well, everyone except for one, who for some reason thinks itself the norm, on everything, while it is the exception, on everything.

Great for your economy, you're still dying earlier.

Yes, the slave-owners were demigods, we know. But they're dead, and so is their society. A healthy society would have moved on, and not have a powerful judicial movement trying to claw it back to the 18th century.

Again, your knowledge of our history is... You think we were born in 1789, but we spent quite some time governed after that period by the types of government we had for a millennia prior, which you fault us for, but then deny historically. I understand that you might want to rewrite our history, but let's not.

Yes, it's wonderful to have your people die. Again, I guess we're a model for those who don't think so... Oh well!

Our model will change with time, as everyone else does too. It's what's good about a healthy, vibrant society.

[Olerand]

In a very, very funny development, the government backpedaled and then backpedaled on backpedaling on the measures promised to the gilets jaunes in November (such measures as the doubling of the credit for changing cars and the extension of the energy chèque, which helps pay for electricity and heating).

[Phoenicaea]

after the burn, take the statue of liberty back if they don t give you Trump back for the guillotine.

[Western Vale Confederacy]

In a very, very funny development, the government backpedaled and then backpedaled on backpedaling on the measures promised to the gilets jaunes in November (such measures as the doubling of the credit for changing cars and the extension of the energy chèque, which helps pay for electricity and heating).

...What?

[Kaggeceria]

If the police used tear gas to stop a violent riot and save lives, then yes, its justified.

So the ends justify the means, eh?

Yes. Making rioters highly uncomfortable for a brief amount of time with gas is certainly worth it if the riot can be stopped.

[Olerand]

In a very, very funny development, the government backpedaled and then backpedaled on backpedaling on the measures promised to the gilets jaunes in November (such measures as the doubling of the credit for changing cars and the extension of the energy chèque, which helps pay for electricity and heating).

...What?

In November, prior to the new announcements by Macron in December, the government had already proposed some measures to the gilets jaunes. Today, it announced to the AFP that they are no longer planned, as the new measures have made them redundant; a few hours later, the prime minister announced that no, in fact, they're backpedaling on their backpedal.

[Novus America]

...What?

In November, prior to the new announcements by Macron in December, the government had already proposed some measures to the gilets jaunes. Today, it announced to the AFP that they are no longer planned, as the new measures have made them redundant; a few hours later, the prime minister announced that no, in fact, they're backpedaling on their backpedal.

Which is of course the worst way to deal with angry people. Because the people cannot be sure what the government actually intends to do, any attempt to placate the public will just be written off as deception and lies.

If you want your promises to make people happy, people actually have to believe you will actually follow through. A promise rests on the credibility of the person making the promise.