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Macron ou Le Pen? A Little Experiment for People Who Can’t Understand Either One
If your French, like mine, is spotty-to-nonexistent, I invite you to take a little test. Listen to the victory speeches that both Macron and Le Pen delivered this very evening. Watch their body language. Look at their eyes. Gauge their energy levels and the sounds of their voices. Ignore what they say — again, if your French is as spotty as mine, that’ll be easy — to respond to each at the most basic human level: Who makes you feel more alive? Who looks more like a leader?
My answer? Easy. Le Pen–by a lot. I’d been assuming until now that all the polls showing Le Pen would lose the second and final round of voting, which will take place early next month, have been correct. Now I’m not so sure. Le Pen, it seems to me, simply connects.
Le Pen–that’s my answer. Yours?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkQXXfs5_Lo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkGfVEIXK0Q
Published in General
It seems to be a different sort of nationalism – not one country vs. another, but a national identity vs. an internal element. It’s not Germany vs. France, but elements in Germany and France et al against a demographic alteration many citizens believe was arranged without their consent, and without regard to their national culture.
I remember as a child I enjoyed sitting in a circle or square drawn on the ground (I’m serious). Its kind of freaky that cats do too. You should try it with a square as well as a circle.
And a pentagram, of course.
Well, never underestimate the desire of the French to glom on to fatuous pseudo-intellectuals.
Foucault
Derrida
Lacan
Baudrillard
I wasn’t nearly clever enough to think of that.
Hmmm. Where have I seen this before?
Those evil cats doubtless voted for Le Pen. Putin put them up to it.
That’s rather extreme. It would be safer to say that only some of Putin’s friends are our friends as well.
The Patriotic Populist channel on youtube has both speeches dubbed in English.
Just to make it simple here they are.
FN Marine Le Pen Gives 1st Round Victory Speech To Her Supporters
French Establishment Candidate Emmanuel Macron Holds 1st Round Victory Event
Can’t stand political rhetoric anymore. I’ve heard too much over my many years, now that the west is completely insane, it’s even worse and the content is as grating as the blather.
I think this is part of the current mood in the West. There are a lot of people who feel like their nations and their cultures are being transformed against their will, by people who “know better”. When basics like lightbulbs and tea kettles are being changed by a far off government, something is wrong.
To me, we are seeing chickens, flapping around since the 70’s, coming home to roost. The more the voice of the people who are frustrated are ignored, the more outre’ their candidates will be. My guess is, like most revolutions, said candidates will not do what those voters want. Things will churn and there will be more revolutions.
It would be nice if the people who “know better” would have taken heed before we got to here. It would be nice if the people who “know better” would pay attention to what is going on and make a sea change, instead of looking at the frustrated people and calling them crazy and other names.
Macron is another pajama boy type that has taken over the left across the world.
I hope Le Pen wins and in a landslide. Go Le Pen!
If France supports Macron, the guy who doesn’t believe french people exist and thinks murdering french people is just a fact of life and they all just need to get over it, they will have validated my observation that France is a dead society hawking admission to watch a ghoul urinate on the corpse of their dead society. It oozes out of everything in that country. Its basically an amusement park for east coast liberals where the worst aspects of post modern art comes to life.
I am absolutely serious about this:
Trump needs to come up with a plan to evacuate anything out of France that is of world historic significance. The SEALS just need to go secure everything in the Louvre at least, before ISIS declares it all haram, and the french just meekly lay down like the grandpa who is just waiting for the end. They aren’t responsible world actors, or stewards.
Agree, and I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong. A people have a right to assert what they view as their identity and stand against (in a democratic way) against the forces that wish to change that identity. Perhaps Le Pen’s message expands a bit on that identity, as did Trump’s, but it is impossible in a limited field to send the perfect nuanced message. The test for Le Pen, as Trump, is how they govern and whether the institutions that uphold democracy and civil rights are upheld. I don’t know how the constitution and government of France works, but I imagine that all the rhetoric of comparing to fascism is nonsense. Does anyone still think Trump is going to grab the reins of the US constitution and be a dictator? Well, there are the NeverTrumpers, but they are incorrigible.
You know this could be how they view Americans voting for individuals who uphold the right to bear arms, right? Wrt the whole ‘murdering Americans is just a fact of life’ thing.
That is mixing apples and rocks. The 2nd Amendment expresses a fundamental right of citizens. There is no fundamental right of citizens to have immigrants of vastly different cultures move into your nation.
Yes. Immigration is a privilege subject to the wishes of the home country. It is not a right.
Isn’t “this” all about sovereignty?
In the runoff election, what matters is how many voters who preferred other candidates will split between Macron and Le Pen. The two seem to represent a stark contrast. So, as in the US election, there will be a lot of voters choosing the most hopeful of two final candidates they dislike.
It boils down to the top concerns of those voters who chose other candidates. Will Fillon’s voters mostly go to Le Pen, for example?
Unlikely:
This is not without precedent in Europe. The last time had rather disasterous consequences.
The French believe they have an fundamental right to a State that does not recognise race or religion.
Yes – you believe that their insisting on this fundamental right is going to result in armageddon, but then they believe that you insisting on your fundamental right (to bear arms) results in America’s relatively high homicide rate.
That’s all I’m saying.
Being French speaking, I do not see much a difference in the delivery, both are –as are all French politician speeches, kind of pompous and full of empty words. You have to understand that Marine, -like Trump have a simple message: make France great again. Macron has a more difficult task of explaining that changes are good and to be optimistic in a society that is scared of the outside world, deeply pessimistic (see Pew survey on Optimism & Pessimism):
It is also probably the most anti-market society on earth (the far left got 20% by among other thing introducing a top rate of 100% for revenues over 400,000 euro, ditch NATO and align with Cuba and Venezuela).
Making an argument for free(er) market and an open economy has become difficult even in the US. Imagine in France where “dirigisme” is almost a religion.
Yep, Le Pen by a mile. What a disaster for France. Yet, I suppose they deserve it for being such wet turds for so long. Come to think of it, Macron sort of personifies the French in my mind (I’ve only been there once). My guess is that he wins by at least 10%. Given Le Pens idiotic economics and detestable Putin-love and frightening nationalism, I think that would be slightly better for the US, France and Europe. I say this even though I thoroughly despise the EU and the violence that Islam is bringing to the French people. Let them eat cake, I suppose.
Not recognizing race or religion is something I value too. In fact, it is a right. In no way, shape or form, do I think that right has any bearing on what I am talking about. IN fact, that is a classic tactic in order to paint anyone who disagrees with unrestricted immigration as racist, or some other “-ist” in order to delegitimize their speech.
Importing white Christians into France, none of whom have any intention of adopting the ways of the French, or becoming French, is just as bad as doing it with the Purple people who worship the Flying Pasta Monster, who also don’t want to adopt French culture.
This is without precedent. Never that I recall has an elected political class deliberately distengrated its native culture with mass immigration of dissimilar peoples. Jews and gypsies were not persecuted in Germany for having been invited en masse by political programs for multiculturalism and electoral advantage.
Claire has convinced me that Le Pen is unpalatable (though better or worse than Macron, I can’t say). But comparisons of current immigration complaints to 20th-century persecutions are absurd.
Actually, in this case, you don’t have to love it at all. It has a very high creepy factor! Borders on child abuse/pedophilia. Apparently the ‘relationship’ began when Macron was 15 (yes fifteen) and she was his high school teacher…married with three children. Macron’s parents did not press charges against her, but did send him off to boarding school to put some distance between him and her. But that didn’t work and things continued.
So…if Milo is beyond the pale for what he said about sex with minors, surely she should be doubly damned for what she has actually done!
Macron, for his part, has apparently spent 25 years getting lead around by, and making decisions with his (CoC)
I’m flabbergasted.
Well I guess they have the school teacher fetishist vote tied up, and that is no small thing. (It could be the key to victory.)
Milo is the equivalent of Macron – in that he was talking about having sex with adult men while he was a minor. iow, as the victim, not the perpetrator. Though he said he wasn’t a victim, but then changed his mind, but…anyway. Not a good day for freedom of speech.
??
There are immigrants in France because the French needed labor after the war and there were a lot of people who spoke French (qua French Empire) who supplied that need from outside of France.
Ignoring that in favour of some conspiracy of multiculturalism (which does not exist in France) doesn’t make sense.
Their justification were as fantasy-based, leading one to believe that they were excuses rather than reasons.
Why is it okay, then, that Trump is 24 years older than Melania? (Off topic, yes, but still.)