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GORDON DUFF: THE COURAGE OF THE FRENCH
FACED WITH “BAILOUT FOR THE RICH”
THE FRENCH FIGHT BACK WHILE AMERICANS WHIMPER
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
France’s answer to “Bush the Lesser” is their president Nicholas Sardozy. This is the one with the ex-model/rockstar wife and Russian sounding last name who came to power on almost the same platform former Vichy leader Pierre Laval.
Laval was the genius who thought sending French workers to Nazi Germany was a good idea. That few survived to return damned Laval but not his spirit. Sardozy, like Laval, stresses “French” patriotism and promises to keep France safe, no matter how many American soldiers die in the process.
Idiots, wanting to be safe, elected him and now they are sorry. They aren’t so safe and are finding the minor things like life, food, housing and shelter, perhaps jobs too, seem to take second place to promoting the Sardozy’s wife’s singing career.
HOW DO AMERICANS DEAL WITH THEIR BAILOUT?
This week, here at home, Republicans are working to stop the Obama stimulus because it does too much to protect home owners, job holders and probably won’t pay for many million dollar “office remodels” or corporate outings. In Washington, unless money goes to the people who fill the tables of the best restaurants or who pay the top lobbyists, any money spent is an “entitlement” or “Socialism.”
“Stimulus” means stimulating people to buy race horses, yachts and villas in foreign hot spots even though the businesses they ran or worked in went belly up because of their mismanagement. When making “a list,” leave room for the names of more than a couple of Democrats along with the usual GOP suspects, the traditional puppets of “big theft.”
Americans will know nothing of the Obama bill. The news won’t report it. Even if they did, Americans now believe that any sort of civil protest is a form of terrorism. In ways, they are right. Any American protesting anything can be jailed forever without trial. In fact, our normal Constitutional rights to assemble were voted away by Congress years ago. Where were you when that happened?
WHAT IS A “GENERAL STRIKE?”
Unlike America, the citizens of France aren’t waiting for an election to speak their minds. Thursday, the French will be telling Mr. Sardozy and his trophy wife how they feel about his ideas. France will stop.
What do I mean by “stop?” I mean no planes will fly. I mean no trains will run. I mean the highways will be blocked by trucks. I mean the ports will be closed. I mean public transportation will stop. I mean factories will close. I mean you better buy whatever you want to eat Wednesday because Thursday France will stop.
They call it a “general strike.” This is what can happen in a democracy when the big money boys buy enough politicians and think they can do anything they want. Last time I saw a “general strike” in France was when the government was going to restructure their Social Security system, kind of a “privatization” thing. Folks in France tend to be a bit more suspicious of their government than we are and shut the country down. I was impressed.
“COUCH POTATO” PROTEST
Since the protests of the Vietnam War, Americans have become more and more complacent. Though you can get Americans to vote, you have to either run a “Negro” candidate to get the southern boys and Okies out from under their rocks or collapse the economy before anyone begins to notice.
Even then, suspending the Constitution and stealing every loose cent in the country barely gets a yawn around here.
Perhaps, if every time the government tried to rewrite the constitution or give a few billion or trillion dollars to their rich buddies or even send out a few aircraft carriers to help out an oil company with negotiations, people took notice, like the French do, maybe we might not be where we are now. You know where that is. You know the name of the creek and the paddle was lost or sold long ago.
Are the French, who pay attention, and put their bodies on the line to protect their freedoms more patriotic than Americans who sacrifice their sons, sometimes to defend their country and sometimes, perhaps too often, for no reason at all? Is it better to defend democracy where it can really be lost, close to home?
Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
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Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=4589
Posted by Gordon Duff on Jan 27 2009, With 0 Reads, Filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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I agree. Now let me offer an explanation as to the difference in paradigms here. In France, home the bloody French Revolution, misery, death and imprisonment for being on the wrong side of politics is a known political quantity. Virtually every family in France has a story to tell about this side of life…and death. However, in the United States, we are a country that is more Calvinist than Switzerland (the actual home of John Calvin, (aka Jean Cauvin) or Scotland, where the Calvinist religious movement called the Presbyterian Church started. We are the ultimate Calvinists. The rest of the world understands that. And like true Calvinists we tend to see the world in stark hues of black and white, good guy and bad guy, absolute right and absolute wrong. American viewpoints usually referred to as Manifest Destiny or Raw Capitalism or Social Darwinism or the Gentrification of the Inner City or No Child Left Behind tend to show how simplistic and fundamentalist the typical American world view actually is. To state this simply, Americans tend to be much too simplistic for their own good. We can look at very complicated and difficult issues, find a five second sound bite that suits our emotional capacity and proclaim we have found “the answer”. We have not found the answer, but we have found our mental panacea for the moment to deal with the stark reality that is facing us.
In the USA the poverty stricken are termed ‘the disenfranchised’. Disabled veterans with limbs missing and brains blown off their spinal cords to the point of immobility are seen as not much more than wards of the State or the working poor. Think not? Read 38CFR which outlines the rules that govern how much money they are awarded by the State. It is atrocious. Do you want to know who pays for the typical American’s refusal to understand that we are Empire supported by an army and navy drawn from the working class and poverty stricken? Go to Walter Reed or Bethesda Naval Hospital this week. You will see thousands of these men and women walk by the main foyer in a day. Many are missing limbs. They have paid for your delusions of “fairness” and “justice” and the “American world view”.
Americans get what they deserve ultimately. Do not blame me if these young and broken veterans take up arms once they realize that they have been used in the ultimate Ponzi scheme. They paid the rich not only with money, but with missing limbs and broken minds. At some point, these young people are going to figure this out and whole lot more than stopped trains, trucks and planes is going to be apparent in this country. We are going to have a bloody revolution. That is the last price of empire.
Don’t say that I did not warn you.
CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)
When talking Calvinism in Scotland, look up Alexander Duff of Pitlochery, founder of the Presbeterian Church. (great great uncle)
All family have black sheep.
The French learned to hate their church for its role in partnering with an oppressive feudal state. Only 11% of French, a nation considered one of the most religious on Earth, actually attend Mass.
The French would have Jews or Protestants (Huguenots) if they hadn’t murder all of them.
I saw military protests, active duty, while in Vietnam. It was difficult to find this anything but disturbing but, taken in the context of how Vietnam is viewed today, the protests, mostly racial in nature, would be looked on as justfied.
It is far more disturbing that troops now see themselves, or I am certainly told this, as "warriors for christ"…….
g
Interesting replies. Cogent and historically accurate, however I feel Tom Barnes’ references to a “revolution” to be in the category of wishful thinking.
That this nation allows the shabby treatment and downright abuse of the very people willing to defend it, is a shameful enigma. And we are not singular in this treatment of veterans. Virtually all countries that field a military treat veterans with varying degrees of abuse. I talk with veterans of mnay different countries, and have yet to talk with one who feels their country gives them the treatment or respect they deserve for their sacrifices. Normal soldier “pissing and moaning”? Hardly. And yet few ever mention the thought of a “revolution” against their own country. The very thought seems antithetical or even traitorous. And some know from history the brutality with which such acts were responded to. I recall film clips of good ol’ “Dugout Doug” MacArthur’s response to a veterans strike. It wasn’t pretty.
We have a majority in our nation of people that are ambivalent at best to serving their country in the military, and thus have no idea of the physical and mental suffering often attached to it. We have a majority of elected officials who also have never served, and yet are elected to serve as our guardians and guarantors of fair and proper treatment.
Yet, also historically, this is nothing at all new. Seems to be the nature of the beast, be it a Roman infantry soldier or Civil War cavalryman.
Is there an answer or solution? Hell, I doubt it. But a “veterans strike or revolution”? Careful… your “grateful” nation could simply shoot you down in the street. Using fellow veterans.
“For it’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, and ‘chuck him out the brute…..
The veterans that I feel for are the older guys that don’t have a good education, don’t read well and are to proud to ask for help. Most of these veterans get screwed on the disability and pensions from the veterans Adminstration. If they don’t apply, they don’t get anything. The Veterans that need the most are being left behind.