This is absolutely worth your time. I read this early this morning when I couldn’t sleep.
French elites have convinced themselves that their social supremacy rests not on their economic might but on their common decency. Doing so allows them to “present the losers of globalization as embittered people who have problems with diversity,†says Guilluy. It’s not our privilege that the French deplorables resent, the elites claim; it’s the color of some of our employees’ skin. French elites have a thesaurus full of colorful vocabulary for those who resist the open society: repli (“reactionâ€), crispation identitaire (“ethnic tensionâ€), and populisme (an accusation equivalent to fascism, which somehow does not require an equivalent level of proof). One need not say anything racist or hateful to be denounced as a member of “white, xenophobic France,†or even as a “fascist.†To express mere discontent with the political system is dangerous enough. It is to faire le jeu de (“play the game ofâ€) the National Front.
The only ideas I see coming out of tech elites are “Universal Income” for the deplorables, which presumes the real issue is economic rather than one of dignity and meaning. The solution is not welfare for those left behind. That will end very badly if that’s all they’ve got. But what is the solution? I don’t have one. I wish I did. But I don’t see any of this headed good places.
As the article points out, the fundamental question of our day is over globalization. In the end, we’re all going to end up living in a smaller world. We won’t stop that. It’s just a question of what globalism looks like and who it benefits. The current system being set up by transnational elites is untenable. They won’t admit it, but it is. They will probably put the world through hell figuring that out, and I think this is just the beginning.
I’ve had to do a lot of hard thinking as political coalitions have shifted around. It’s enough to really make you question your values. Do I feel any kind of solidarity with France’s Yellow Jackets? What if I do? What does that make me? I’m sure a lot of you are struggling with the same things. I keep coming back to this:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
I think I still believe that. I think I’ve always believed it. We’re a country that had a bourgeois rebellion. The French took the same ideas and had la Terreur. The article I pointed out noted that in many ways the French Yellow Jackets have it worse than we do. What are we going to do when it’s our turn?
