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I did have this discussion with the wife earlier today. She was saying good on the French for protesting. I agreed but said at the same time is there any significant differences between how good people have it in the UK and in France? We were just in France recently and I didn’t see any evidence that protesting so much has resulted over time in France actual being measurably better to live in than the UK with all its infuriating apathy.
I’d rather the protesting, though, fires and all. You also don’t always see the benefits just walking around. It’s also nice to know that if shit goes sideways for any reason, you can actually count on people to help you.
Here in Canada we just kinda roll over and take it up the ass. It’s not gotten us fucking anywhere.
I guess but France is still bowing to Zionist interests and their retirement age remains at the new older age
Americans storm the capital building. “Worst event in American history”
I wonder why people don’t revolt in the US? Maybe because people get upset over politicians feeling scared.
Even if you don’t like the exact reasons why they entered, or had cops opened doors for them, it did have one effect. Politicians now know people can come through those doors on any other day over any other issue, so they better not make it worth it in general.
One thing I love about France is how they number their republics. This is now the fifth one. Some people are talking about abolishing it for a sixth. So, even Constitutional authority is subject to occasional “fuck this shit we can do better”, and the idea of abolishing the Constitution of the Fifth Republic for a better one is nowhere near treasonous but honest democratic-republican politics. Compare that with the American dysfunction of having a document written 200 years ago as a snapshot of an expedient compromise between fops being vested with semi-divine aura.
And then there’s the british who haven’t even managed to abolish monarchy yet
Maybe republics don’t work. Maybe it just creates a permanent, insufficiently accountable, political class that has to sell out the people to retain power.
My solution, and you are going to laugh, Switzerland. You should be laughing because Switzerland is labeled a republic. But it’s not a pure republic. It has significantly more direct democracy. The mechanisms provided by a republic alone just don’t do the thing they are labeled as doing. It doesn’t give you politicians that are accountable to you. It just doesn’t.
Or maybe we should just let Switzerland expand slowly into France. Not by war. But by recognizing a better model is worth growing. And France shouldn’t feel threatened by it. If the politicians represented the people they should be happy for every French that finds himself with a better life on the other side of a border. Richer too because property value will go up the second the line moves. But politicians don’t care about the people. They seek power. And loss of land is fewer people to have power over. So they would throw a fit. But that fit would only prove the point that those politicians don’t have your interests, so it’s proof the boarder should move.
Let’s grow Switzerland by 3% a year, as long as it has higher quality of life associated with it and is growing a smaller country into a large one. That creates competition that would actually incentive politicians. It would end up being a self-failing prophecy. France would improve with better incentives, tying what politicians want (authority) to what we want (better lives). And then it would stop being necessary. Then people can go back to lying to themselves about pure republics working.
Republics were a hugely progressive idea… for the 1700s. Enormous compromises are built in from an era when the fastest a message could travel was by horse and implementing any manner of direct democracy on a national scale would have been impossible. Nowadays, though, it would be trivial.
Except of course for all those old white men already in power, who like the old game because it’s easier to tilt in their favor.
In the Netherlands we got all cuts for social services off the table by the left parties working together with working unions who striked untill we got our way :3
They really do. 3 years ago my daughter was getting ready to take a school trip to France when protests broke out over something. I was worried about the trip and ended up learning a lot about how France protests. Here are some things I learned:
Protesting is considered important and this is taught to kids in school.
It’s often a family affair, grab the whole family and go protest.
Protests are a happy, party-like environment with music and vendors selling food to protestors.
Leaders actually listen to some.extent.
American version:
Protesting is a right, taught in school.
Grab family, go to protest.
Protest turns violent because of hidden cops. Mom gets shot. Dad loses job. Family loses house.
Die.
Which is so odd. America got started because of a protest.
“Protesting is a right and everything great we have comes from it, but you will be tear gassed and condemned if you try”
2028 you get black bagged by ICE for the crime of thinking about planning a protest
As opposed to the good old days when the CIA and FBI would do the black-bagging.
no, the CIA would hype you up to do a terrorism and then turn you into the FBI so they can get the news story
Leaders actually listen to some.extent.
in the US* No, I have to say this one and I’m not trying to sound any kind of way about this but it’s a little true: Is that the action that comes from anyone in power after a protest comes from fear. That it goes from peaceful discourse to actions that can range and vary…Though I suppose one could equate it to the rebel-terrorist fighting. … The people of the US fighting for their voices to be heard are the rebels and the oppressive terrorist government that couldn’t give two shits less, except for furthering their dictatorial agendas
Personally,I stay home because I don’t want to die and I watch videos of protests and see where it can lead and I’m like fuck that!!! I want to go to some of them when I read where they are because I stand with more and more causes after informing myself of current events after being a skeptic but I voice my opinions online.
It’s sadly the fact that protesting can in some odd way by definition be considered a terrorist act once turned violent and that I believe that, “leaders,” turn the police on people during protests and sadly the terrorist government is making is so that they’re allowed to use fear tactics to suppress protests.
There’s no direct, “winning.”
Leaders actually listen to some.extent.
Do they? I haven’t seem a lot of meaningful changes in France due to protests in the last 10-20 years. Perhaps you have a list of them that a directly due to protests? It seems like the ruling class, leadership and in general regular people just ignore protests as ‘part of life’.
They do listen to some extent. Not always, obviously, but saying protests are basically useless is just wrong. The CPE was scrapped after protests in 2006, the écotaxe was abandoned after the Bonnets Rouges protests, the fuel tax increase was cancelled after the Yellow Vests, and the government backed down on several measures after the 2024 farmers’ protests. You can argue protests do not always succeed, but pretending they achieve nothing just ignores what actually happened.
Unfortunately the government’s like to wait a few years and try again. The message doesn’t always stick
Macron cancelled a tax hike right before the pandemic, IIRC. I can’t think of anything else particularly substantial from the last 10-20
Holy shit we are docile. How have we not had a fascist takeover yet? The other thing that amazes me about Brits is their priorities. They will riot over things like pedos and immigrants but when their government takes them into illegal wars, destroys their healthcare, public transit and education they do not give a fuck. The public outpouring of grief following the death of billionaire Diana Spencer was equally baffling and grotesque. It is weird to live amongst these people.
Better just keep switching PMs every 18 months or so to make sure that the leader is almost perpetually someone who wasn’t voted in, that should sort it.
British people will riot over pedos?
Jimmy Savile and Andrew Mountbatten probably would have disagreed.
I mean, right now there are students protests in France.
One student had his hand blown off by a police grenade launcher, and something like 50 officers were injured.
They don’t fuck around
It’s almost like you actually have to fight for your rights or something.
His hand was because he picked up a flash grenade to try and throw it back. But yeah, the current protests are rough. A few thousand people detained and a few hundred officers injured last I heard iirc.
So? What was a flash grenade doing on the ground for him to pick up in the first place?
What the fuck do I care? All I’m saying is what happened. I’m not here trying to argue anything other than correcting that his hand wasn’t “blown off by a grenade launcher”.
what the fuck do I care
Mmm. Clearly.
Ok? Not sure what moral superiority fumes you are trying to sniff but have fun with that. 🙄
😆
Wish the rest of the world was more like the French. We’d be able to achieve so much change.
And then the Brits hang this poster on their windows unironically
Yeah. Until the British need something that brown/black/yellow people don’t want to give them for free, then they fucking Hulk the way to it. They are affable only to their oppressors, they love their royals.
Is it true what you wrote about British government? Anytime I talked with people from Britain, either I end up talking to a crowd that says “Islamists are taking over UK” or a crowd that says “Right wing is problem”. I really never got what they are doing these days.
They are talking about the small boats. Apparently, if you shoot every small boat it will make a difference: less crime, cheap goods, no crisis
As a Brit I have to stand up for us.
A very small minority are obsessed with illegal immigrants coming over on boats, and the rest of us hate them. They are called Gammons.
Secondly I don’t know anyone who cares about a persons gender. If there is, its a very small minority headed by JK Rowling, who we all also hate.
But of the government said they were starting to ration oxygen, it would be terribly inconvenient, what what.
Brexit did not just pop-up into existence fully formed, done in a jiffy, and immediately afterwards British society returning to its otherwise eternal blissful state of everybody being perfectly just and fair.
From my own experience living in Britain as an EU immigrant before Brexit, it is my impression that said kind of people you mention aren’t at all a small minority, possibly aren’t even a minority.
Further, even most of the “thinking” types have to a lesser or greater extent fallen prey to the soft Jingoism relentlessly pushed by pretty much all of the Press in Britain, were the “Great” in Great Britain isn’t part of the name of one of the British Isles but rather it describes the quality of the British Society, British People, British Politics and pretty much everything else British.
I mean, all it takes is to compare the portrayal of international gatherings in, say the BBC, with the portrayal of the same in the news of other countries, and invariably the thing is passed by the BBC as British politicians being given lots of attention and treated as important by the rest, which does not at all match what’s reported in the press outside Britain.
And don’t get me started on how even supposedly left-of-center newspapers in Britain publish opinion articles about the “scandal” of people sexually behaving in ways that are not the norm, which are incredibly similar to the anti-homosexuality tropes of a few decades ago (only it’s not fashionable to be a sexual moralist against homosexuals anymore, so now different victims are chosen).
From my experience, prejudice in British society is totally normalized, at a level well beyond what I’ve seen in other countries in Europe I lived in - which is why IMHO it’s so easy for anti-immigration scare stories to flare up and for things like transphobia to rise to the surface and grow.
I work for Brits. No mate, I can’t agree with you. Cost of living and the fcking smallboats with Arabs are the only things that they smalltalk about
Well, humans have always been a mess in crowd
I remember hearing about French firefighters getting geared up, setting themselves on fire, and running at riot police lol.
Kids told about thursdays riots here in Bordeaux where the firefighters came and put out the burning trashcans etc, but they also cheered the protesters on!
Same side 😘!
Riot is in our culture ! We learn it at school !
Is there something exceptional about english-speaking white people that makes them such effective bootlickers?
A quick glance at uprisings and riots in British history might surprise you. I frequently-ish pass two buildings in Wales where the British Army shot and killed British people.
You have to subjugate your own people before you can subjugate foreign people.
Yes: god and guberment lol. Solid 800+ years of it last I checked.
