What is the result of years of leftist, nanny-state rule? It has hurt the middle class, and eventually there are riots like we see now in France. French President Macron's woes should serve as a warning to America's rising Left.
Through a series of arrogant, tax-and-spend "social justice" laws, gas in France now costs $6.59 a gallon. I recently spent just $1.87 a gallon in Chattanooga, and that had about 50 cents of tax in it. "Greedy" Exxon, which drills for the oil, refines it into gasoline and brings it to the pump (i.e., provides it) makes 7 cents a gallon, which the feds also tax as profit. So who is really the greedy one?
With U.S. private market leadership, the cost of oil is now down to about $50 per barrel. I'd pay that just for the barrel.
Ron HartOver the weekend, 89,000 police officers were deployed by the embattled French government to combat 136,000 or so middle-class protesters - for the fourth consecutive week. An estimated 250,000 protesters took to the streets on Nov. 17. Like the French military in history, they tend to start off with a lot of bravado then quickly give up.
Cowardly Macron has added to his problems by sending his prime minister out to take the blame. But he did raise the French alert level from the usual "run" to now "hide."
The issues Macron has with the proletariat uprising are why Donald Trump won in America. The Democratic Party, while saying they are "for the working middle class," are in reality a group of pious, self-serving, coastal elites who have done little for the "little people" they purport to help. Tax and regulate a big company? It lays off workers and leaves town. Almost all leftist policies have the opposite intended effect. Arrogant and out of touch socialist-lite politicians have been on the rise in France as they now are in America. The result: damage to the average citizen.
Keep in mind, the climate change champion and Teen Beat Magazine cover-looking Macron is said by our own leftist media to be very popular. Who would know that Macron had a 23 percent favorability rating before all this and that the evil Donald Trump has almost double that? Not anyone watching CNN International or any news one might see on the color TV or in print.
We are different from France in so many ways. A Psychology Today study says Americans work long, 40-hour-plus weeks, when even a 35-hour work week gets pushback from the French. To be fair, for them it's about balance; there has to be equal time for work, play and mistresses.
Just the opposite of Trump, Macron married his schoolteacher, who is 24 years older than him. Trump's wife is 24 years younger. And Macron calls himself French?
That's probably the reason teachers in the U.S. prefer France's style of socialism. If you have sex with a student in America, you go to jail. If you do it in France, you get to marry the president.
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Trump traveled to France for Bastille Day parades, only to be publicly ridiculed by the arrogant Frenchman (although that is redundant) Macron. Trump was so taken by the patriotic parade that he suggested we do the same in the U.S. The idea met with anger from the left, who fear that just one proud, pro-American parade a year might reverse the 190 days of public school "education" our kids get per year.
If the French government continues to accede to the protesters, it could be an historic first: the first time France has surrendered to France.
Obama intervened in the last French election to back the liberal Macron. Trump fought to elect the more conservative Marine Le Pen. That seems about right. It would not be a proper French war if Americans were not brought in to do all the fighting.
Contact Ron Hart at Ron@Ronald Hart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.