French Politics

Yep, that's my impression, too.

May I point out that if the state had cared more about Notre Dame than the people, the church wouldn't have been in such a state of disrepair in the first place?

Also, a lot of people and entities which donate aren't even FRENCH!!! So they wouldn't have paid taxes in France anyway.

And let's not act as if famous old buildings don't benefit the people living around it....for starters every food vendor who sets up shop in front of it.

It's just flawed logic all around.

I ask in all honesty: Is there anything that Macron could do that would in any way, shape or form be received positively by the Yellow Vests?

The only thing I can think of that they would approve of would be his resignation. But even that wouldn't solve anything; he'd inevitably either be replaced by someone they'd hate just as much, or he'd be replaced by a Le Pen or Mélenchon type president. In the latter case, about a third of them would be happy for a while the rest would be even angrier. Then the shine would wear off and all of them would be just as angry as they are now.

Even if he did raise taxes for the rich it probably wouldn't stop them protesting.

The whole movement is really nothing but a whole mass of general anger and resentment at the French government and all of its institutions. Mixed with a lot of ugly stuff like anti-semitism.

This latest protest just highlights everything wrong with this movement.

Edited by M84 on Apr 22nd 2019 at 9:57:11 PM

Which neither means he shouldn't do those things or excuses him of doing shit in the past.

I haven't seen anything from the Yellow Vests that makes me sympathetic to the movement, but that doesn't make Macron a victim.

For this much resentment and anger to have built up, he must've done a lot of shitty stuff, this doesn't just happens overnight.

This is arguably something that's been building up before Macron even won.

Yeah, there was a lot of dissatisfaction with Hollande too. My guess, that I'd need to do more research into, is that Macron's promise for a better France turning out to be a rather standard Centre-Centre Right Presidency was the last straw.

Which tbf was more or less what Macron promised from the get-go. It's not like Macron pretended to be a leftist or something.

Yeah, Macron did pretty much exactly what he said he would do. There was nothing surprising about it.

M'eh, I'm not too sure about that bit.

I dug up a bit to check and something some people are legitimately upset about is how macron fell into the same pitfalls he denounced. He talked a big game about taking measures that would follow a Vision, a project, as he liked to call it, and not just take last-minute whimsical decision just to meet the budget, and he did exactly that by cutting corners on the APL (I have no idea how to call most of those things in English so pardon me for using the French terms).

Not gonna pretend I have a clear idea of what I'm talking about since I'm mostly parroting what a friend stated some time ago, but apparently another of his big promises was removing the habitation tax, but in the end there's still a good chunk of the population that pays it on arbitrary grounds.

I'm not big myself on politics, but even people elected him for what he promised are disappointed by his performance and have been so for quite a time.

Then again, that's not what the average yellow vest would point out to you. And I do agree that about nothing macron could do right now would appease them. And that none of the likely alternatives of lepen or melenchon sounds any better than him. But that just makes the situation even more crappy.

Edited by Yumil on Apr 23rd 2019 at 12:22:12 PM

Mélenchon at least has some proposals that don't consist in transferring more money from the poor to the rich.

What's the bad part about him again? Foreign policy?

He's been pretty pathetic those last years as the opposition, imo. He comes across as just being against everything the government does as a matter of principle of disagreeing with macron rather than getting anything done.(which is another big talking point macron got elected on beacause everyone was tired of that attitude). I also remember him defending hollande to hilarious lengths at the start of its mandate when he still had public support.

He was a lot more convincing during the election, but so was macron.

Edited by Yumil on Apr 23rd 2019 at 12:05:09 PM

Mélenchon was doing alright at positioning himself as a sort of unofficial head of the opposition — better than Le Pen, I'd say — until this happened. Afterwards it's been pretty hard to take him seriously.

Oh yeah! I didn't mentionned that but the whole party, not just melenchon, handled this incident so poorly it's hard to take them seriously. If the same thing happens around election time, he's sinking harder than Marine lepen did during the last presidential debate.

Edited by Yumil on Apr 23rd 2019 at 1:21:14 PM

To me it is less a matter of taking them seriously and more a matter of them looking dangerously out of touch. Delusions of grandeur are never a good thing in politics.

Honestly, Macron's rivals just systematically disqualified themselves.

Edited by Swanpride on Apr 23rd 2019 at 4:49:12 AM

Macron is Luigi in Mario party.

Now that you mention it, I am pretty sad that parody news didn't say at the time: "Macron wins the election by doing nothing"

You know, comparing somebody to Luigi isn't actually that insulting. Because Luigi is awesome.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 27th 2019 at 2:19:45 PM

I wasn't insulting macron. Not on that, at least. If anything, he's been very good at winning the election. All of his opponents more or less self-destructed while he was standing here posing as the reasonable man. Some people think the timing of the Fillon leaks are a bit too convenient in that regard, but marine lepen can only blame her own party for believing their own interpretations of macron too much and thinking it would be easy to get him riled up during the presidential debate. Instead, she made a meme of herself.

Edited by Yumil on Apr 27th 2019 at 3:10:00 PM

Well, he certainly expertly outmanoeuvred he in the debate, until SHE was the one looking completely unhinged (partly falling victim to the same kind of sexism people in her party tend to support). It was kind of satisfying.

The thing is, Macron got into power simply because his opponents were a clown car and there was no reasonable alternative (Hamon, unfortunately, was captain of a sinking ship). Just because he was elected on a "UMPS" platform didn't address any of the problems that people had with that group.

"Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing" doesn't mean that Macron has anything to inspire people with.

It is May Day today, and naturally there are clashes in Paris from what I can tell.

Now not only are Yellow Vests on the street, but Labor Unions and the Black Block.

Naturally.

Are we really talking about the same Macron whose entire election campaign was a promise to reform the country and to push back against the nationalist populist movements and strengthen the European cooperation?

You can argue that he failed to uphold those promises, but claiming that there was nothing inspiring about him sounds like you let your personal bias affect your judgement.

You can also argue that Trump's election and Brexit helped Macron's campaign as people got to see what Le Pen's populism could bring.

Macron was a pretty good campaigner. He talked to a lot of people and patiently listened to him, he obliterated Le Penn in the debate, and by going fully pro-EU he gave people what they wanted. what they still want. I think a lot of people have learned to appreciate the EU more due to Brexit.

So the YV apparently broke into a hospital of all places during the riots.

WTF. Just...wtf.