Even in the US, it’s pretty hard to avoid the stories regarding the daily strikes and riots in the land of a thousand cheeses! Their worthless president, a younger version of Grampa’ Brunch, Obummer and Slick Willie, all rolled into one, decided that democracy isn’t relevant to make his uber rich patrons happy. As you recall, Macron the Con (con means asshole in French) has raised the retirement age against the people’s will with the excuse of saving pensions and getting the country aligned with the rest of the EU. Public opinion polls state a clear majority don’t want a benefit instituted way back when Mitterand had the job; the first and last successful Socialist President of France, Hollande was NeoLiberal dickhead.
Contrary to the standard knee-jerk guess from Amerika via our corporate-owned news sources, it isn’t about the French being lazy, it’s the usual bullshit from the French Center-Right’s claims of what they must do is a necessary “reform.” The French see through him. It’s another attempt to transform the working people and middle class into Americans or Brits; they pay way more and receive less while the rich and political class are exempt from the pain. Macron the Con just repackaged the same load of crap from Chirac and Sarko. Then he used some more Amerikan excuses…I was elected, ergo the people voted for my plan. Not really you frog-eating dildo. The French people had two horrible choices in the last runoff, you, with five years of incompetence to show, or Le Pen, the far-right candidate and their version of Meatball Ron minus the desire to gut the social safety net. They had to do the same thing we did in 2020, hold our collective noses and voted for the lesser evil. I voted for Bernie again as the shitty Amerikan system was set up to by Alexander Hamilton, the other patron saint of dictators, so my say is drowned out in an un-democratic winner-take-all system.
Nobody should be shocked at Macron the Con’s actions. Before he went back into French politics, he worked as an investment banker (amazing he could scrape up the $70K on a gov’t job t0 buy out his job contract for this?). His biggest achievement was aiding the evil Nestle food behemoth acquire Big Pharma Pfizer’s baby food division for around $12 billion. Thanks to the commission he received, he became a millionaire overnight. This proves he has no interest in helping anyone but himself. Well, he did go to the same inbred schools the French political class attend (both their Left- and Right-wing parties go), École Nationale d’Administration, aka French Harvard.
I hope the riots continue and eventually he will have to retract his corporate overreach. Trust me, Amerika sucks. Everyone but the One Percent have to work until we die.