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.
Over the weekend, 89,000 police officers were deployed by the embattled French government to combat 136,000 or so middle-class protestors — for the fourth consecutive week. An estimated 250,000 protestors took to the streets on November 17th. Like the French military in history, they tend to start off with a lot of bravado then quickly give up.
They are called “yellow vest” protestors because they wear the yellow vest the French government mandates that they carry in their cars. The actual root of the problem is that the government really should not be telling the French what to wear. Such self-aggrandizing, nanny-states policies never help the average person. They just grow government and taxes and reduce freedoms.
Cowardly President 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 President Macron of France has with the proletariat uprising are why Donald Trump won in America. The Democrat 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. These protests in France are good.
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% 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 he. 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.
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 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.
When Disneyland Paris shot off fireworks in celebration of Bastille Day this year, five minutes into the show France instinctively surrendered. If the French government continues to accede to the protestors, 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.
Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.
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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Macron: Liar, liar, France on fire