On The Occasion of Bastille Day,

[ancianita]

(and because 23 And Me says my French ancestry goes back to Napoleon), it's notable, imo,
that in the context of The West's fight to preserve democracy, we're not the only Western nation that is reckoning with its past.

Title in Vanity Fair's print version: "Fighting For the Soul of France" by Tom Sancton

This is the linked digital version. (It's got a paywall, but allowed me a first look; I hope you, too.)

LE PEN VS. “WOKISME”: THE SOCIAL JUSTICE WARS RESHAPING FRANCE

Napoleon Bonaparte is arguably the most famous Frenchman who ever lived. But this year, as the country commemorates the bicentennial of his death, a fierce controversy is raging over the emperor’s legacy. Despite his glories, detractors point to the darker side of the ledger: Napoleon destroyed the republic founded in the aftermath of the French Revolution, led hundreds of thousands of soldiers to die in a futile invasion of Russia, imposed a civil code that put women under male domination, and—most egregiously—reestablished slavery in French colonies, including the island of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in 1802, nine years after the revolutionary convention had abolished it—a decision that French president Emmanuel Macron recently called a “mistake, a betrayal of the spirit of Enlightenment.” In the words of Françoise Vergès, a political scientist and militant feminist, Napoleon “was a racist, sexist, despot, militarist, and colonizer, but all of that is generally swept under the rug.” Not anymore.

The debate over Napoleon’s merits and demerits goes far deeper than the assessment of a long-dead ruler. It is part of a fundamental reexamination of France’s history, culture, and society. On the one hand, there are the traditionalists who defend France’s “universal” values of republicanism, egalitarianism, secularism, and national unity; on the other, an increasingly vocal faction—derided as avatars of what they call American-style wokisme—focuses on issues steeped in identity politics, postcolonialism, anti-racism, and feminism. And beyond that debate, the country is undergoing profound political, economic, and demographic changes that portend a very different France emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the political front, France is losing faith in its traditional parties and leaders. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy was recently convicted in a corruption scheme and handed a three-year jail sentence, two years of which were suspended. He went on trial in May for alleged improper campaign financing during his unsuccessful 2012 attempt at reelection. His former prime minister François Fillon was convicted of paying his wife more than a million euros out of public funds for a fictitious job. (Both cases are under appeal.) And these are just the more prominent examples of French politicians running afoul of the law. Some analysts blame the wave of guilty verdicts on activism by left-leaning judges. But the main effect is to feed into a populist rejection of the whole political class as tous pourris—all rotten.

Though Macron and his government have so far avoided becoming ensnared in such scandals, the president’s standing has been weakened by this populist distrust—witness the massive Yellow Vest movement that began in 2018. Macron rode to power as a fresh-faced reformer denouncing politics as usual. But many of his policies—especially his proposed pension reform—have sparked resistance, while his ad hoc movement, Republic on the March, has suffered numerous defections prompted by his often brittle authoritarian style. His disapproval rating, per the French Institute of Public Opinion, stands at 62 percent (though harsh criticism of sitting presidents is something of a French custom).

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/07/the-social-justice-wars-reshaping-france

Happy Bastille Day!??

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/60e62498fd437d70b02160c3/master/w_2240,c_limit/Fighting-for-the-SOUL-OF-FRANCE.jpg

[Jim__]

1. Thanks for the link - it let me read the whole thing as my one-time free article.

It does raise some important questions for me. The French supported the revolutionaries in the American Revolution, and that was at least a part of what led to the French Revolution. The support of the American Revolution put the French government deep in debt - it added to an already serious problem - and King Louis wound up calling the Estates General into session to address this issue. And the meeting of the Estates General led to the French Revolution. The American Revolution and the French Revolution led to big changes at that time. France formally ended feudalism and embraced its form of democracy, the Americans formed a democratic republic.

A lot of the article talks about the similar types of problems in modern day France and modern day US. Serious disagreements over individual rights versus rights of minority communities, instabilities caused by immigration. It seems like modern day democracies may be coming under serious threat - here, in France, and elsewhere in the world - for instance Hungary and India.

Do you think that the problems we are seeing today in the US and France will lead to as big of a change in the international order as the American and French revolutions led to?

[ancianita]

2. Cool. Glad you could.

Last edited Wed Jul 14, 2021, 07:29 PM - Edit history (2)

You ask a great question we should all consider.

As we know, we're in the forest, like our nations' founders were, and so, to the extent that they couldn't see how far their influence would go, how far their structures would carry us, we likely can't, either.
And I do believe that the problems we see today in the US and France will be eclipsed by
a) cascading climate disasters and
b) technological innovations and disruptions that change our economy, and help us mitigate ciimate. But I don't think digital currency will be of any help, nor the brains of the billionaire class.

I also think, while a) and b) are happening, that humans at this point, don't have to worry about algorithms reaching the major breakthroughs that produce Artificial General Intelligence. Stuart Russel says that is impossible; if it is, it won't come in our lifetimes.

And so democracy's structures will still be important enough as a Western humanistic values platform to guide the whole world's populations through coordinated governmental decisions on both economies and climate. We know that corporate governance doesn't want consent of the governed, and we know that corporations' market values are amoral.

If governments are captured by corporations, and fail to value humans, we will have to revert to community sustenance that does actually require common sense democratic majority decisionmaking and collective moral care.


We won't know how much change will have happened until we feel out of the climate and technology woods, and perhaps can finally see the forest, but I don't believe that Democracy as an idea will die.

Democracy as an idea will carry on through humans who prove how worth it living a collective human life is, and will continue to be.
I believe that.