Fatigue Wins Out

It looks like Le Conservateur has decided to stop publishing after all. I had mentioned the possibility in my post on the MRAP Report. I'm very sorry to hear it. I always enjoyed his insights and his disciplined and uniquely personal style of expression. His love and knowledge of Art were also a welcome change from the usual political talk. Sites like his are an important complement to the news sites. Somebody has to interpret the news, otherwise there is no real informing, merely words that say this or that happened on such and such a date. Without the personal opinions, first-hand experiences and subjective reactions to events the web would be a dull routine, like television. Le Conservateur is the umpteenth (I've lost count) good French website to close since I started blogging. Almost always the reason has been lassitude and a sense of disappointment over the impossibility of bringing about change for the better in France. And yet he had managed to reach a wide audience. His last post begins as follows:

Several years of good and loyal service, and then fatigue. Fatigue at watching the country sink into stupidity and the Right become totally insane... Now, good cheer to all in the coming chaos.

Is he implying a civil war, a total breakdown of order, a gradual disintegration of the current system into newly "liberated" States (such as Brittany)? A continuation of the current police State with a few more tentacles? Or a half-hearted attempt, with violence as an almost inevitable factor, by the people to bring about a change only to find themselves more stymied, more policed, more squashed, more threatened than ever? If the "chaos" results in the brutal end of the Fifth Republic and a new beginning with a new, improved Constitution of the Sixth Republic, that might be a good thing, except that most realistic analysts I've read cannot envisage a Sixth Republic being different from the others. The problem is the Republic itself. It has to redefine itself from top to bottom. It has to be a French Republic, for a French people proud to be French, not a Cosmopolitan Suicidal Chaos of Coercion, Corruption, and False Gods.

His "poster" above reads:

WARNING

Your political commissaire is watching. Use these expressions once a day to show your autonomy of opinion and save your meal tickets!

He then lists the daily required expressions for those wishing to survive:

One more proof of global warming. Diversity. Legitimacy of taxes. French social model. Laïcité. Obligation to welcome foreigners. March towards progress. Advantages of Europe. Freedom of sexual choice. Need for immigration. Abortion is an opportunity. We are a multicultural country. Freedom to become a parent. Mixing races socially. Diplomas for all. Right to housing. Prison overpopulation. Ultra-liberalism destroys the planet. Quality of public service. Collective transportation. All scientists agree...

I would agree with one of his readers that the list is far from complete. But it will do as a sketch of the lethal pressures under which the French people must labor every day, whether they are aware of it or not... these pressures lead to discouragement, demoralization, de-spiritualization, dumbness, cowardice, clinging to easy scapegoats, self-hatred, arrogance, physical illness, psychic conflicts, intellectual comas, and death from denial of the right to self-preservation...

I still believe that the most serious illnesses can be reversed. At the very least, death can be stalled...

P.S. The reader who said the list was not complete suggested these additions:

Social model that is the envy of the world. Education that is the envy of the world. Successful integration that is the envy of the world. Public services that are the envy of the world.

America has often spoken of itself as being the "envy of the world." It's better not to talk this way, even if there is some truth in it. People are apt to take it too seriously and to slavishly imitate the worst aspects of the envied country, only to find it doesn't work that way. Every country has to do what it does best, without imitating other cultures, but not without being inspired by what is best in those other cultures. Over-boasting also serves as an open invitation to disaster, as people who do not belong in the envied country flood in, and expect the streets to be paved with gold. They too have to learn the hard way. The worst situation is when the envied country actually says, "Come on in. We'll take care of you." That is the current insanity in most Western lands today. France and America are possibly neck-and-neck for the title of Most Suicidal Nation. (Excuse my sermon, it's Sunday.)