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Isn't it weird how patriotism works. I mean, you spend months bemoaning your compatriots' stupidity, conservatism, gullibility, pigheadedness, and then... you travel abroad. And as soon as you arrive in a foreign country, you suddenly feel the urge to uphold the honor of your particular country. Disparaging comments and silly stereotypes make your blood boil, and you end up proudly explaining why your nation's values and mores are, despite a few flaws, quite exemplary. Your people are hospitable, trustworthy, resourceful, freedom-loving and yet with a deep sense of the collective. I think much of the reaction coming from France to the news of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest is due both to sheer shock (imagine if Obama had been arrested for rape in Paris a year before his election) and a sudden resurgence of "national pride". I mean, in France, forcing someone to have oral sex with you is a very clear case of rape and carries harsh prison sentences. If DSK had done that in PAris, he would have been sentenced to a few years in prison. OR would he ? If an ordinary French person had forced someone to perform oral sex on him, he would have been sentenced to several years in prison... but is it possible that DSK has already raped other women in France and got away with it, because of his status ? Ah, the nagging doubt... At the moment in France, the atmosphere is one of, yes, shock, as the future president, the one expected to win the elections, ends up in a NY cell for raping an African woman in a hotel. People tell me it feels somehow surreal, as they thought such august individuals were above such trifles, and had, well, "minders or, you know, err... bodyguards and stuff" to take care of them, especially 11 months before an election. All in all, I'm more than happy to see DSK go down the drain, even though he is, in the PS's spokesman's words "innocent until proven guilty". He represents Social Democracy in its final, inevitable conflation with "neo-liberalism" (US and French), or rather Keynesianism without the Social Works industrialization projects. Just keeping interest rates down and giving tax breaks to corporations to "stimulate investment" and casualizing the workforce in the name of "providing jobs for everyone". The Socialist PArty will win the elections anyhow, no matter who they field as a candidate. And the policies they will introduce will be the same as those they pursued in the 1980s and 1990s : wage freezes, tax breaks for the rich, moaning about the never-ending "bleak economic prospects", promises, more promises, more promises, what's the alternative, Sarkozy ?, more promises, more wage freezes, more tax breaks, more promises, more moaning about the recession, more promises, more symbolic measures (legalize cannabis, legalize euthanasia, ...) that will result in heated "debates", more... ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
