Results are in from the first round of voting in the special National Assembly legislative election in France that was held today. The far-right National Rally, which led in polls over the leftist New Popular Front, Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Together and the center-right Republicans leading up to the first round of elections Today came in first place. The final poll had the far-right National Rally (RN) winning, compared to 2022 where they were polling at third place. President Emmanuel Macron's Ensemble (ENS) has fallen to third place.
Mercury must be in some kind of permanent retrograde, as evidenced by what appears to be a global death wish. And, yes, Macron is a fool to think the this'll-teach-em approach will do anything but make clean-up nearly impossible. That's something desperate parents try, not what pinned down soldiers do.
Every day brings a tale that reinforces the absolute applicability of your Blog name, TC. Though, Another Absolute ****show might need to be the subtitle. Good grief.
Very helpful to have your French Connection to comment for us. Thank you!
My French-American husband and I have been following this particular sh*tshow, with commentary from my in-laws who live in France. All that you and your French Connection have said is true. Like here, there are many voters in France who are faced with impossible choices when it comes to the ballot box. For them, as it is with us here in the USA, it often comes down to voting for whom you despise the least. It's a sad situation.
Just read something that somebody put on T before Nov 2020. “For the record. I wouldn’t care if Joe Biden got caught snorting cocaine at a Motel 6, with three hookers, a midget, and a pirate. I’m still voting for him.” My sentiments exactly.
oh, Jeri...thanks for the chuckle. That was priceless. I quoted another commenter who said: "if Joe Biden was in a fucking coma he'd still be a better President than the orange monstrosity" and I agreed with her...but your quote is even better.
Will repeat ad nauseam whenever any opportunity arises. I do like the coma comment. So true. Chump is the unparalleled danger we face. Climate change may be worse, but together they would be sure-fire suicide for all mankind…
If your French friend thinks our shitshow is "more entertaining" than their own shitshow...well, clearly he isn't a woman who has been made a second class citizen in her own country; he isn't watching 50 years of social and regulatory progress slide down the tubes with the blessings of the Unsupreme Court...and he isn't watching our so-called "free and independent" press and other media shit all over a decent man who is a very good President, in favor of a lying blowhard who already has one failed presidency, has tried to retain his office by a coup, is a convicted felon, has been found guilty of rape, has several credible sexual assault accusations and is without a molecule of decency, character or anything else in his favor...merely for ratings and ever more profit.
He has a very dry sense of humor and does irony. What was meant is "you're more fucked up than we are," a sentiment with which I suspect you would agree.
I'm a woman who's been a second class citizen all her life -- "second class" as opposed to, e.g., third, sixth, or tenth because I'm white and reasonably solvent -- and I'm *riveted* by the ongoing shitshow. Maybe "entertaining" isn't the best word. Would "engrossing" be better? I'm wondering, though about the "50 years of social and regulatory progress" that you refer to because I seem to have missed most of it. I cast my first presidential vote a couple of months before Roe v. Wade was decided, true, but from Reagan's first inaugural in 1981 regulatory regress has been more common than progress. I remind myself from time to time that to have adult memories of life before Reagan, one has to have been born before 1965.
No wonder I sometimes feel like Cassandra . . . There was also a sense that things were improving, often too slowly, but at least progress was being made.
Perhaps 50 years of "regulatory" progress might have been a reach, but I was thinking of what the most recent Chevron decision effect would be on the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. We can definitely count on attempts to destroy 50 years of social progress by the reactionaries on the Court.
Orban. Modi. LePen. Trump. Not the world I grew up in. One EXPECTED Khrushchev, Honecker , Mao, Ho. Not to mention Amin and a bunch of lesser strongmen. But in so many places now that have been relatively benign until recently?
The only thing we have to fear is not fear itself. It is strongmen USING fear to make people lose all sanity.
Another point - it's a really bad idea to trash the left when you're trying to beat back the right. Hillary made this mistake after winning the nomination in 2016.
What on Earth is happening to the formerly "leading Countries" have they lost all their senses? Is it fear of the increasingly warming climate making them want daddy to fix their toy and make it better again? Or has the extreme heat made imbeciles of all?
My maternal grandmother had a book that traced our lineage to the Cathars in 1100 France. They ended up literally walking into fire when they could no longer resist the religious conquerors . Near the end they were given sanctuary by forward thinking Aristocrats but were overrun. The Cathars came from Armenia & Persia, a long route as the generations fled again & again from the falling of civilizations that zealots were determined to destroy for their own control. I am proud of the Cathars as they were righteous peace loving humans & they refused to submit.
after spending the better part of a decade trying to deal with French literary theory in graduate school, which followed MANY years of reading French Existentialist philosophers, my current take on French things is that the French are not serious people who take themselves too seriously. look at French history...wild enthusiasms resulting, finally, in very little. on the nicer side, there's an element of welcome hypomania in the behavior of French people which I find very attractive.
of course, those wild enthusiasms, coupled with that unserious thing have had some serious (even dire) CONSEQUENCES. think of the many shitshows in the above-mentioned French history. it's not encouraging that they knew Vietnam wasn't going to work out BEFORE we did. it's even less encouraging that we learned nothing from it.
I know that if I suddenly found myself French, the last place I'd wanna be is in POLITICS.
Merde.
Oui.
Mercury must be in some kind of permanent retrograde, as evidenced by what appears to be a global death wish. And, yes, Macron is a fool to think the this'll-teach-em approach will do anything but make clean-up nearly impossible. That's something desperate parents try, not what pinned down soldiers do.
Every day brings a tale that reinforces the absolute applicability of your Blog name, TC. Though, Another Absolute ****show might need to be the subtitle. Good grief.
Very helpful to have your French Connection to comment for us. Thank you!
"Un autre divertissant spectacle de merde"?
Vraiment!!
My French-American husband and I have been following this particular sh*tshow, with commentary from my in-laws who live in France. All that you and your French Connection have said is true. Like here, there are many voters in France who are faced with impossible choices when it comes to the ballot box. For them, as it is with us here in the USA, it often comes down to voting for whom you despise the least. It's a sad situation.
Just read something that somebody put on T before Nov 2020. “For the record. I wouldn’t care if Joe Biden got caught snorting cocaine at a Motel 6, with three hookers, a midget, and a pirate. I’m still voting for him.” My sentiments exactly.
oh, Jeri...thanks for the chuckle. That was priceless. I quoted another commenter who said: "if Joe Biden was in a fucking coma he'd still be a better President than the orange monstrosity" and I agreed with her...but your quote is even better.
Will repeat ad nauseam whenever any opportunity arises. I do like the coma comment. So true. Chump is the unparalleled danger we face. Climate change may be worse, but together they would be sure-fire suicide for all mankind…
If your French friend thinks our shitshow is "more entertaining" than their own shitshow...well, clearly he isn't a woman who has been made a second class citizen in her own country; he isn't watching 50 years of social and regulatory progress slide down the tubes with the blessings of the Unsupreme Court...and he isn't watching our so-called "free and independent" press and other media shit all over a decent man who is a very good President, in favor of a lying blowhard who already has one failed presidency, has tried to retain his office by a coup, is a convicted felon, has been found guilty of rape, has several credible sexual assault accusations and is without a molecule of decency, character or anything else in his favor...merely for ratings and ever more profit.
He has a very dry sense of humor and does irony. What was meant is "you're more fucked up than we are," a sentiment with which I suspect you would agree.
I'm a woman who's been a second class citizen all her life -- "second class" as opposed to, e.g., third, sixth, or tenth because I'm white and reasonably solvent -- and I'm *riveted* by the ongoing shitshow. Maybe "entertaining" isn't the best word. Would "engrossing" be better? I'm wondering, though about the "50 years of social and regulatory progress" that you refer to because I seem to have missed most of it. I cast my first presidential vote a couple of months before Roe v. Wade was decided, true, but from Reagan's first inaugural in 1981 regulatory regress has been more common than progress. I remind myself from time to time that to have adult memories of life before Reagan, one has to have been born before 1965.
It's a curse, to be old enough to remember when things were good, or at least "good" if you were white.
No wonder I sometimes feel like Cassandra . . . There was also a sense that things were improving, often too slowly, but at least progress was being made.
Yes indeed.
Perhaps 50 years of "regulatory" progress might have been a reach, but I was thinking of what the most recent Chevron decision effect would be on the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. We can definitely count on attempts to destroy 50 years of social progress by the reactionaries on the Court.
Orban. Modi. LePen. Trump. Not the world I grew up in. One EXPECTED Khrushchev, Honecker , Mao, Ho. Not to mention Amin and a bunch of lesser strongmen. But in so many places now that have been relatively benign until recently?
The only thing we have to fear is not fear itself. It is strongmen USING fear to make people lose all sanity.
“Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in their beloved Paris?”
Come to think of it, no.
Good one.
We may see Putin in our WH
We all know how well it went in Vichy France back in the day. Not looking forward to seeing a Pen France. Trump's
next BFF.
It feels as though we’re on a gyre spinning ever more out of control…
What In the world did Macron do to make people think that voting for a chump clone would be a good idea .
My daughter was in the middle of the Paris demonstrations last week. Glad she’s back across the Pond. Macron is an embarrassment.
Another point - it's a really bad idea to trash the left when you're trying to beat back the right. Hillary made this mistake after winning the nomination in 2016.
What on Earth is happening to the formerly "leading Countries" have they lost all their senses? Is it fear of the increasingly warming climate making them want daddy to fix their toy and make it better again? Or has the extreme heat made imbeciles of all?
Macron is just another dumb conservative a-hole trying to not let the meaner conservative a-holes take his thunder.
But is he worse than a chumpette
My maternal grandmother had a book that traced our lineage to the Cathars in 1100 France. They ended up literally walking into fire when they could no longer resist the religious conquerors . Near the end they were given sanctuary by forward thinking Aristocrats but were overrun. The Cathars came from Armenia & Persia, a long route as the generations fled again & again from the falling of civilizations that zealots were determined to destroy for their own control. I am proud of the Cathars as they were righteous peace loving humans & they refused to submit.
after spending the better part of a decade trying to deal with French literary theory in graduate school, which followed MANY years of reading French Existentialist philosophers, my current take on French things is that the French are not serious people who take themselves too seriously. look at French history...wild enthusiasms resulting, finally, in very little. on the nicer side, there's an element of welcome hypomania in the behavior of French people which I find very attractive.
of course, those wild enthusiasms, coupled with that unserious thing have had some serious (even dire) CONSEQUENCES. think of the many shitshows in the above-mentioned French history. it's not encouraging that they knew Vietnam wasn't going to work out BEFORE we did. it's even less encouraging that we learned nothing from it.
I know that if I suddenly found myself French, the last place I'd wanna be is in POLITICS.