Powerline: Here in America we have Civil War re-enactors, and it seems France has 1968 Paris Riot re-enactors. The only thing missing is Charles de Gaulle. Emmanuel Macron isn’t even fit to be de Gaulle’s stand-in poodle. I notice his public approval ratings are around 18 percent. No wonder Trump smiles when they stand together at G-20 meetings.
I’ve been wanting for months to write up a retrospective look at the French crisis of 1968, which most Americans do not much think about because of our own traumas of 1968. But the events in France that year have had a long half-life, the residue of which is still discernible in French intellectual and political life today.
You may be familiar with the story of the first meeting between Henry Kissinger and China’s premier Chou En Lai in advance of Nixon’s historic first visit to China in 1972, when Kissinger asked, “What do you think of the French Revolution?” To which Chou is reported to have replied: “It is too soon to tell.” This remark set off everyone saying the Chinese Take the Long View, and are so far-sighted that they think in terms of centuries rather than decades, let alone election cycles and quarterly profit reports. This is why they’re going to beat us! Except it emerged later that Chou had in mind the French Revolution of 1968. And just so.
I’ll have to put off a more complete consideration of France 68 for another time, but for now let us bask in the warm, fossil-fuel-powered glow of watching the climatistas having a panic attack about what the French protests mean for their beloved dream of a carbon tax here in the U.S. It is said that the French middle and working classes, donning their yellow vests, are protesting an increase in fuel taxes designed to reduce gasoline and diesel consumption to save the planet. France already taxes fuel at a rate of somewhere around $3 a gallon, so what’s another 25 cents a gallon? Well, if you live in a nation that is the highest-taxed among the OECD countries (which means its tax system is much more regressive than ours—heh) at some point maybe you get tired of it and say non).
In a move of impeccable timing, a group of House Democrats and quisling Republicans have introduced a bill to impose a carbon tax here in the U.S., and the climatistas are falling all over themselves to say “Pay no attention to those riots over fuel taxes in France! MORE
Isn’t it curious how quickly the media jumped on the bandwagon to demonize the Yellow Jacket movement, but the muslims can burn down whole neighborhoods, and all we hear is crickets?
Antifa has infiltrated the yellow vests and they are the ones doing the burning and vandalism not the regular Frenchman. The press is painting the people as the violent ones. Same everywhere antifa goes. Damn the press. They are instigators and activists.
@Tony R
You know you can’t show members of a protected class in bad light, you have to look the other way especially when giving a certain group a dedicated area to protest, loot and burn.
its 6.57 per gallonright now the new tax added another .25 cents to 6.82 per gallon its
“Traumas of 1968”? Hell, it was one of the best years of my life. Of course, that has nothing to do with world events going on.
You don’t get to 18% approval just because of a gas tax. People hate him because they’re fed up seeing their country sold out to a Globalist agenda. It ain’t about the one little thing, but the string of usurpations and abuses.
It’s almost as if they want riots here and chaos under trumps watch?
Seeing they don’t pay for their own fuel but have government credit cards no skin off their nose plus they get to handle the money.
I have 0.00% pity. Socialists rioting over the effects of socialism. Suck it, frogs. You got exactly what you asked for.
As the great philosopher Napoleon Dynamite sagely said.
“Idiots!”
“Let them eat Euros”…
Macron is living proof that Pygmies should never enter politics.
(Apologies to any pygmies that may be online tonight.)