“Douce France, cher pays de mon enfance” – so goes the song [Sweet France, dear country of my infancy].
I did not live my childhood in France, but at times I feel as If I did, for I know her well.
I can daydream about a town or village in the “France profonde”, and think of the lines,
“On marche sur un mur de pierres, un petit pont est devant nous
Dessous passe une rivière, couleur de pluie, souffle d’antan”
[Walking on a stone wall, a small bridge ahead
Below a river, the color of rain, the breath of yesteryear]
And all this beyond and besides Paris, the cathedrals, the history, the people, the writers, the painters, the literature, the movies, the artists, “les philosophes” and “la Rive Gauche.”
Therefore, when I hear or read that Macron – the universally predicted next president of France – claims that “There is no such a thing as French culture,” I feel lost in the labyrinth of my fury, however helpless and irrelevant to the world at large, my fury may be.
Yet, the idea that “there is no French culture,” is plain evidence that we already live in-and-within the “new world order.”
For after the end of history, even semantics were put up for sale, and the meaning of words offered to the highest bidder. So, for example, Britain’s “New Labour” or Hollande’s “socialism” are no more “labour” or “socialist” than a dung beetle. New labour means new serfdom and Hollande’s socialism is bovine excretion. And, as we know, the “new world order” means the elimination of nations and of national languages, and the creation of one race of people looking like Egyptians in the paintings of the Pyramids. It is not an exaggeration, but the printed and published plan of Coudeneuve-Kalergy, the founder of the European Union.
But perhaps there is one even more striking lexical dyslexia, though as yet barely noticed. In France but not only, the true Fascists are now the Antifascists.
Apparently, the French people are neither astonished nor repelled by the wide extent of barren sterility of the present and recent regimes. Rather, they are seemingly bursting away, with resistless impetuosity, in their eagerness to defeat Macron’s “populist” opponent.
Untired by the uniformity of treason practiced on them, they are ready to extend it, under the direction of a new man, famous for being unknown, a protégé of the Talmudist Jacques Attali, and a Rothschild creature (nomen omen). An expert in international commercial and banking treaties, whose aim, acknowledged at large, is only to deceive, and whose consequences are only to defraud.
He is a partisan of the world-order of proud selfishness and ruthless exploitation, a serviceable butler of masonic power, a master of disaster capitalism, deriving pecuniary advantages from the calamity of others or even their death, as it was (is) clearly the case with the destruction of Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc.
And, of course, a darling of the financial cabal, for which a more fitting term is ‘financial dome.’
For in the financial dome there is a coincidence of interests between and among economy, finance, official and criminal enterprises, mob, crime, gangs, cliques, politicians, terrorists, warmongers, marauders and plunderers. Where ‘dome,’ a metaphor mediated from architecture, perfectly conveys the sense of a comprehensive protective environment. An environment that erases the very notion of crime, and makes it a property indistinguishable and consubstantial with the business of living.
From what we can infer from his program, or lack thereof, Macron, like his repugnant predecessor, promises the right to a dreamless sleep and unredeemed subordination, in exchange for obedience and the obligation to conform.
For the essence of neo-liberal capitalism is the generation of discontent and fear. And it is only natural that discontent preys on the heart in which fear confines it. The remedies being drugs (euphemistically called “recreational”), when not suicide.
On the “allegro ma non troppo” side of things – of Macron’s wife’s sons, one is older than her husband and the two others are coeval.
This, however, will no doubt gain him favor among women disappointed with expensive cosmetics that promise but fail to restore the bloom of fifteen to ladies of fifty or more.
The word is out, ladies, “age will not wither you, nor custom stale your infinite variety…” Be on the lookout. A prime minister or a president may be at hand, just around the corner.
And as with the American media during the recent presidential elections, the French media is kindling the heat of competition, berating Macron’s opponent and extolling the virtues of the new star in the French political Empyrean.
It is certain that the senses are more powerful as the reason is weaker; and he whose ears convey little to his mind, may sometimes listen with his eyes, till truth may gradually take possession of his heart.
If this be true… the sight of France simmering in an undeclared civil war between Frenchmen and the biblical swarm of migrants – with the occasional blood bath of civilians, courtesy of migrant terrorists – should prompt citizens at large to side with anyone who, at least, promises to do something about it.
And even accounting for the media’s relentless indoctrination, we may expect that the masses, after 30 years of worldwide Reagan-Thatcherism and neoliberal economics, could have understood its philosophy in action.
Namely that one desire easily gives way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first. Until the feudal dwellers of the above-mentioned ‘dome’ will have everything, live without work and leave what unavoidable and poorly-paid tasks there are to the serfs, or their equivalent, as in the following case.
By tradition, two Universities challenged each other every year in a rowing competition. University A had lost the two preceding races against University B. Whereupon, the Dean of A decided to apply, to the sportsmen of his team, such latest managerial techniques as would no doubt secure the success of his University.
To this effect, he dedicated a substantial budget to the project and secured the services of a Consultancy Firm, founded by some past alumni.
The two teams trained hard, and team A benefited from the re-organization and deployment of the new methods. But in the next race, team B won again, leaving team A three quarters of a mile behind.
Shocked by the result, the Dean of University A, his Consultants and A’s management team met in full to examine the causes of the failure.
They then appointed an investigative panel, composed of senior managers. The panel discovered that team A included one coxswain, five quality consultants and one oarsman, whereas team B consisted of one coxswain and eight oarsmen.
To ensure victory in the next race, University A‘s decision-making group, hired an outside firm of high-level experts, charged to analyze in depth the causes of the previous failures and correct them.
The new experts proposed a complete re-organization of boat A.
As a first step they created and published a “quality manual,” including procedures for the application of the instructions, performance-monitoring and feedback.
The new strategy aimed at a “strong synergy,” a theme-word the experts declared central for establishing the winning mindset.
The synergetic strategy would improve the productivity-output, thanks to key structural modifications. Concepts and words like ‘Zero Tolerance for Error’ and ‘Total Quality” were promoted and introduced in the parlance of team A. Reluctance to adopt the new terminology would indicate a propensity to error and loss in efficiency.
Now team A would comprise: one general director of rowing, one associate director of rowing, one rowing supervisor, one quality consultant, one management monitor, one information officer, one coxswain and one rower.
The rower was requested to produce an activity report after every twenty oar-strokes. Moreover, the strategy included an evaluation-and-feedback meeting after every mile.
The day of the race arrived. This time team A finished 2 miles behind the winning boat of team B – which persisted in operating with one coxswain and eight rowers.
The dean of University A and the consultants were profoundly affected by the outcome and took a decision, which, in the University Journal was described as “logical and courageous.”
Since he did not meet his objectives, the rower was fired. The college sold the boat and canceled the program, as well as the additional investments already budgeted for the re-organization.
With the money saved, the dean renovated and refurbished his office, the director of the consulting firm gave a generous bonus to managers and supervisors, increased the salaries of the directors and assigned to himself a special indemnity for “completion of mission.”
The anecdote may be amusing, but it stigmatizes the invasion of the professional and political world by engineering concepts and terminology originally applied to machines.
And although the philosophy was born in the US, the tale is a summary of the paradoxes and absurdities frequently found in the Western political and working world. They are often repeated, as if the consequences and the moral, implicit in the anecdote but extensible at large, were hidden, unreadable, inaudible or undetectable.
We can but think of the European Union, with its tens of thousands of highly paid employees, operating out of huge buildings in Brussels and Strasbourg, veritable temples of superfluity. A colossal extra expense for each European government, and an entity whose objective is seemingly waste and whose existence is anything but indispensable.
Returning to France, when the super-centric Macron says that “there is no such thing as French culture” he refers to a program already in action. Where the “Center” has and will assimilate the entire nation, which is historically marvelously complex, rich in original cultures, customs and traditions.
The “Center” has imposed its models, willed at first by the new industrial matrix, but now more and more the products of obscure and deadly operations of financial and social engineering.
Even so, the new “Center” is no longer satisfied with a “man who also consumes.” It cannot accept any ideology other than consumption. It’s a new Fascism, a hedonism without soul, a religion without Gods, a vacuum of humanistic values.
In the process, the old “paleo-industrial” bourgeoisie has been replaced by a new bourgeoisie, which includes almost inevitably the working classes of old. With the end result that the bourgeoisie is the new humanity, with a frightful interchangeability of meaning and substance.
The “lefts,” of the Western world have accepted the transformation, for the alternative was the exclusion from the playfield and its associated emoluments. But in so doing they have joined the new Fascism.
It is a ferocious ideology. We can call it “Center”, neo-liberal, neo-liberalism, neo-capitalism, but for the average man it means nothing – as if it were nameless. He perceives that ideology as the actual reality – therefore he does not recognize it for what it is, the uncontested will of a few imposed on the life of all others.
Which is why we are forced to live in a world where antagonism and hostility are the defining characteristics of human relations, where citizens are consumers, disheartened and caged in an unnatural captivity, where the market is the only possible democracy.
The foundation of the legitimacy of power is one of the great unresolved questions of capitalist society. According to its own ideology, the most able should always have unrestricted access to the positions of power. Liberal ideology implies a meritocracy and this, in turn, means that the best should win. Which is anything but true, as per the blog/dialog “Basket of Deplorables” – http://wp.me/p2e0kb-21R
The ideal vision of a society of free and equal citizens might have contained a germ of truth at some peculiar points in history. But as society ages – and this is particularly true of capitalist society – positions of power and the modalities by which they are exercised tend to become increasingly and eventually completely predetermined. Power is exercised through institutions, following predetermined procedures, and those responsible for its exercise are themselves no more than the servants of a grey and slimy apparatus. They impersonate an impersonal, bureaucratized and transcendent power – look at the EU and the ‘dome’ I referred to earlier.
In turn, the bureaucratization of power induces an institutional sclerosis. It is no longer people who have power, it’s the positions of power that have their people. Such a society leaves no room for outsiders, be they adventurers, fearless Don Quixotes or imaginarians thinking outside the box.
Success belongs to careerists, to those who have followed the paths and attended schools that equip them with the personality, quirks, manners and social skills fitting the functions that look for people to fill them.
And when someone, however feebly, attempts to say something different, the ‘dome’ declares war on him/her. We saw it with Trump – though by now it seems clear that he was a scam, a Disney production based on illusions and special effects. In imitation of many before him, he shoots missiles, launches drones, kills people and beats his chest like a cartoon gorilla. To the point that some are beginning to waver in their faith, and hold opinion with Pythagoras, that souls of animals infuse themselves into the trunks of men.
Marine LePen says something different and is of a very different mold than the likes of Trump. Fighting her with all their might are the “Centrists,” the new Fascists of the left and, of course the mainstream media, completely owned by we know who, organ and blow-horn of the ‘dome.’
She has some good ideas, on the absurdity of the European Union, the fraud of the Euro, the value of intelligent national pride, the contemptible servility to the US of the last French governments in joining the imposed chorus of Russophobia. But, as we know, good counsel is only thrown away upon those who are full of their own perfections.
The result of the French presidential elections will tell us how far and how deeply the ideology of dis-humanity has brainwashed the people of what is and still remains our “Douce France.”
https://www.google.fr/?gws_rd=ssl#q=douce+france (“Douce France” sung by Charles Trenet.
PS. This post was also published at “The Vineyard of the Saker” http://thesaker.is/douce-france/
and at
http://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/04/29/douce-france/
The anecdote about the rower comes in different versions. I utilized mostly the version reported in Dupagne’s excellent book, “La revanche du raneur”