Would that imply that Obama too (or Kerry) would look more like centre-right in Europe? They are/were quite popular in Europe, though, which would place european politics a bit more towards the right than usually acknowledged. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
But even so, I believe that the popularity of Kerry and Obama (and Clinton, for that matter) was and is more grounded in
And, of course, one shouldn't forget the beaten wife syndrome part of it: Many Europeans seem to genuinely wish to believe that European and US interests were overlapping to an extent that they manifestly are not in the real world. So when Bush made a point of explicitly telling his European vassals to fall in line or fuck off, it deeply upset many people, who are now ecstatic at what they view as an apology for - or at least a renunciation of - the Bush years, because it means that they can go back to loving the Big Neighbour to the West.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
European politics is a lot farther to the right than is usually acknowledged.
Well, certainly France and Italy at least have a far-far-right government at the moment. And the UK is likely to change its rightist governent for an extreme right one at the next election too.
As ever Europe catches the US diseases some 10 years late. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
Sarko always came across to me as "mostly harmless" [with apologies to Douglas Adams]; a self-absorbed little twit whose handlers substantially just continued Chirac's policies.
He is ANYTHING but harmless. He is in fact extremely dangerous. He has done a lot to fight back the rule of law -the constitution is a joke under Sarko (as was its revision -obtained through buying MRG and threatening UMP representatives. In a secret ballot it would have been thrashed). He is a regular user of the judicial system as a political weapon (bear in mind that he cannot be attacked, not now, nor for anything he would do while somebody else is not president). The French public media is about to be turned into a fully fledged propaganda -not only will the president directly appoint -and revoke at will- its director, but the Government will pretty much decide what's in the programs. On top of that, there have been many cases of intimidation of the press -not just intimidation in fact, but ensuring that journalists got fired.
A climate of hatred is being nurtured.
From the very first days after the election, it was made clear that corruption would be welcomed with both arms, as Sarko was keen to accept huge gifts from very wealthy people who greatly depended on French State contracts.
France has managed in about two weeks to lose any credibility in Europe (back in May 2007), to the point that now even when France may be pushing for something positive, it tends to be a non-starter.
We now have -oh joy- extra troops in Afghanistan.
He has mismanaged the public deficit to colossal proportions. A huge margin for action was just burnt in a gift to people who did not need it -and something that seemed to reduce employment in the medium term, even discounting the effect of the crisis. On the other hand, civil servants just need to take a pay cut because, you see, "we are a broke state" (and here I quote the statutory but completely powerless prime minister).
Thankfully in a way, the crisis bit just soon enough, but you must remember that Sarko was actively pushing, in the summer of 2007 for France to emulate the US mortgage system.
Yes, it is a good job in a way that he is incompetent enough that he fails to carry through most of the terrible changes he promoted. But he will have done huge, lasting harm.
Now, there was an incredible achievement though: he managed to make Jérôme regret Chirac. That is quite something. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
The level of ideological extremism in the US, which you see in its Republican party, bleeding ever so casually into its Democratic one, does not occur in a vacuum and, if you work in finance for instance, you will hear things on a regular basis you wouldn't ever hear among polite company in Europe, certainly not from christian democrats.
Certainly there is a vocal minority of extremists, some of whom even have a bullhorn and a public forum; this being said, the extremism has achieved nowhere near the casual acceptance within certain social spheres, the critical mass in the public discourse, as it has in the US. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
Angela Merkel is to the left of Barack Obama. (Considering your other posts - and your irritation with the German govt approach to the crisis, see this as a tease. But you know that this is correct... Angela is really to the left of BHO)
My experience with many (surely not all) christian democrats in The Netherlands, especially older ones, was that they could be very lefty on economical issues (surely much to the left of mediterranean social democrats or american liberals). Could one even see "social" christian democracts in .DE and .NL as political alies? (in the economic side)
But be careful with christian democrats in the south of Europe, many of them were associated with Franco, Salazar, Mussolini. And show little regret...
Not to mention the right-wing spectrum in Central and Southeastern Europe... *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Give them a generation.
Italy...they've have more than a few such generations to purge themselves of the bile, and yet they give us, over and over again, Burlesquoni. Which is, if you think about it, and after four recessions they've gotten themselves for their trouble in just the past decade or so, pretty fucking amazing, and makes you wonder how they made it into Schengen, the Eurozone and ultimately the EU itself. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
I disagree. Yes, there is some of that. There is also (much more strongly) that many nasty things that existed before came back to the surface from under the lid of that occupation. But, there is also the effect of the societal damage wrought by the IMF-pushed 'reforms' post-1989. And there is also the failure to strongly push a better political culture, both on the part of domestic left-liberal intellectuals, and EU representatives during the long accession process (still on-going say in Croatia). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
It's even true to some extent in France, though to some extent stomped out somewhat effectively in the post-war period unlike in the other Latin countries.
Overton window discussions aside, Merkel is also pretty clearly to the left of Obama, Merkel is too, arguably the Tories in England are as well. Clearly Chirac was as well. Even Sarkozy the opportunist is not going to leave France in some crazed neo-liberal paradise the 30-year developed apparatus of which, in the US, Obama will likely not even make a dent... Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
Whom did you mean at the second instance?
Even Sarkozy the opportunist is not going to leave France in some crazed neo-liberal paradise
I wonder though what would have happened had the financial crisis arrrived a few years later. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Minor historical correection: he was -- especially at the time he practiced mass impalements -- Vlad III of Wallachia, not Transsylvania; Bram Stoker fucked up historical details there. (He wasn't a Count, either.) But he was born in Transsylvania, at the time his father Vlad II Dracul was on exile there; and he fled to Transsylvania when he was overthrown in Wallachia (but there he was soon arrested, and soon taken away to be imprisoned in a castle 30 km from where I type this). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Of course, I could get out by claiming that I was talking about Bram Stoker's count :-P
