Presidential advisers said the term was a reference to Norbert Elias, the 20th century German sociologist who described how self-restraint and social inhibitions had civilised Europe, first in royal courts and then among the rest of the population, in his book The Civilizing Process.
This resonates with me because I once used the word "civilized" in the presence of sociologists and experienced the iciest silence of my entire life. Used it jocosely... I'd thought.
Macron is said to believe the process has gone into reverse in what one adviser called a “Trumpisation of minds and a denial of reality”.
Trump gets blame for what the left is doing... in France.
Macron is said to believe that the trend is present throughout the West but that in France it is driven not so much by the populist right as by the radical left. He has blamed followers of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the France Unbowed party, who one minister said wanted to bring back the Reign of Terror, the period of the French Revolution marked by massacres in 1793 and 1794....
Macron’s detractors pointed out that the term “decivilisation” had often been used by the populist right to denounce the impact of immigration. It is also the title of a book by Renaud Camus, the far-right author behind the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that white Europeans are being deliberately replaced by migrants in a plot hatched by capitalists in the search for cheap labour.
Here's the Wikipedia article on Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Nothing about the Reign of Terror (unsurprisingly). Excerpt:
Mélenchon is a socialist republican and historical materialist, inspired primarily by Jean Jaurès (the founder of French republican socialism).... Domestic policies proposed by Mélenchon include a 100% income tax on earnings over €360,000 a year, full state reimbursement for health care costs, a reduction in presidential powers in favour of the legislature, and the easing of immigration laws....
Mélenchon believes in the "créolisation" of French culture and society, a term coined by poet Martinican Édouard Glissant, who defines it as "a blend of cultures that creates something new", that "belongs to none of the cultures that comprise it".... "Whatever one's gender, colour or religion, we are called upon to love one another, and so we pool together our tastes and our cultures. That's créolisation. Créolisation is the future of humanity."...
Mélenchon is an outspoken critic of the European Union (EU), which he views as having been corrupted through neoliberalism. During his 2012 campaign, Mélenchon positioned himself against the trend towards economic globalisation, which he denounced as disproportionately profiting the financial industry and "high income earners" at the expense of the poor. He insisted international organisations such as the EU threatened to "strangle the voice of the people". He supports a renegotiation of European treaties.... He has repeatedly called for France to withdraw from NATO.....
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84 comments:
Trump always gets the blame for what the left does. "See what you made me do?!" They cry the cry of abusers everywhere.
"No violence is legitimate, whether verbal or against people. We have to work in depth to counter this process of decivilisation."
Sigh. Pro forma but for reals, I object to the "verbal violence" thing. Courage! Words are only words!
"Trump gets blame for what the left is doing... in France."
Are we surprised? Trump has been emptied of his personhood, his individuality, and reassembled into a social/political/cultural construct, a mannikin to be brandished and bashed for whatever cause one espouses. The Progs are inherently more childish and irrational, so they are more facile in this operation. What is now called "Trump" or "Trumpification" is just a random wrapping, a rag, a slogan, a projection, a diversion.
See also Emmanuel Goldstein and the Two Minute Hate.
I don't like Trump, but his ability to live rent-free in his opponent's heads is quite remarkable, isn't it?
I've found over my life that a denunciation of violence often occurs immediately after the victim of previous violence, verbal, physical, or political, finally hits back. Just like this example from France.
Civilized means gentlemen's agreements hold. A certain amount of necessary fuzz is provided by women.
Let’s see, you have spent the last 2 years putting people in jail for gathering in church, forcing an untested vaccine into their veins as a requirement for travel, work, education, medical care. You have frozen and stolen the bank accounts of those who did not wish to have the untested, falsely advertised vaccine. You have forced massive inflation on those people with your climate religion. You have forced Russia to defend themselves by aggressively pushing into their sphere of influence.
And you are upset that no one gives you deference or believes a damn word you say.
You and the rest of the west ( except Poland, Hungary I guess ) can get ******.
This resonates with me because I once used the word "civilized" in the presence of sociologists and experience iciest silence of my entire life.
Yet another reason to eliminate the sociology departments from our universities.
I don't know about France, but in the United States, the right to violently overthrow a repressive government is also a duty.
Doesn't anybody learn "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me." anymore?
Anti-Communists knew when hate speech became a thing for left, hate speech = violence was soon to follow. Your sign "Abortion is wrong" caused me to beat you up with impunity.
The common, underlying issue: Widely reduced attention spans per excessive use of social media and instant uncensored reactions.
Donald "COVFEFE" Trump was a victim of excessive social media just as much as the Woke left. They are peas in a pod or opposite sides of the same coin.
When you have the attention span of a gnat, you will never employ the thought, counter-argument, and final resolution cycle of ordinary reasoning. The leads to knee-jerk reactions and self-contradictions. Examples include Trump's rudeness as self-defeating for making opponents want to crawl over broken glass to eliminate him, and for ANTIFA attempting to fight imaginary fascism by becoming the most obvious black-mask fascists in the entire country. Ask Andy Ngo.
In the summer of 2020 Democrats and Liberals/leftists in The United States set a new example for the entire world as they supported the arson, vandalism, and death caused by the George Floyd riots. Democrats massaged and encouraged the violence.
Democrats and liberals supported ANTIFA as they tried lighting occupied buildings on fire. They praised the bullshit autonomous zones in Portland and Seattle.
This is leftwing violence. This is what they do. Why is Macron surprised the left in France would behave any other way?
Not enough money in the till - and all Macron wants is 2 years. That's it.
In America - we riot and burn it all down for the narrative given to us by our hack-D one party press... and the corrupt FBI.
anyway - geeez. Lazy populations.. Blaming Trump is lazy, too.
Buck up, butter cups. 2 years... so you can have your socialist goodies.
“Taboos are falling one after the other. There is no more restraint,” one minister said, attributing the trend to social media. “People are getting used to comments that are more and more violent, to mud-slinging and to accusations that are more or less brutal.”
Loads of gaslighting in that one paragraph. I guess falling taboos here means the lowering of inhibitions. I think many would agree with this statement while not at all agreeing with the rest of the paragraph. The accusations that are more brutal are from the government, such as the ones made in the statement, which are then used to suppress rights and freedom. The lefty governments seem far less inhibited in using emergency power to crack down on opposition that really is just a disagreement on leadership.
Behavioral incontinence is the scourge of our age, and it always seems to be someone else's fault.
24/7/365
and Im crazy
"This resonates with me because I once used the word "civilized" in the presence of sociologists and experienced the iciest silence of my entire life."
I hold modern sociologists in contempt. There is such a thing as civilization.
"the 20th century German sociologist who described how self-restraint and social inhibitions had civilised Europe"
Civilization does require self-restraint. Self-restraint is a virtue we have largely abandoned. We are headed in a dangerous direction.
Europe civilized? The continent that brought us the Inquisition, the Reign of Terror, both World Wars, the Holocaust, the Soviet Union, etc.
"No violence is legitimate..." Do the French police carry automatic weapons? Does the French Air Force have jet aircraft? Are some of them capable of carrying nuclear weapons? "Oh, well -- that's OUR violence!"
Sex to gender. Progress.
Racism to diversity. Progress.
Ladies to friends with "benefits". Progress.
Mom and dad to two men and a womb. Progress.
Conservation to environmentalism. Progress.
[non-sterilizing] shots/jabs to vaxxxines. Progress.
Witch hunts to warlock judgments. Progress.
Costs to prices... progressive prices ("inflation"). Progress.
Immigration to [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] immigration reform. Progress.
War to Spring. Progress.
Murder to abortion. Progress.
Morality to ethics. Progress.
Liberal is divergent, progress is monotonic, conservative is moderating. Principles matter.
The left side of the political spectrum is authoritarian, the right is libertarian, the far-left is totalitarian, the far-right is anarchist, the left-right nexus is leftist.
When the history of this era is written, Trump will be an entire chapter. No one will be able to document this time without referencing him. What they'll say is still to be determined. It's strange to be a living witness to the phenomenon.
No “Trump”, no clicks. It’s what drives the reader‘s dopamine response and the subsequent sharing of the article. We seriously need an intervention.
>This resonates with me because I once used the word "civilized" in the presence of sociologists and experienced the iciest silence of my entire life.<
It would have never occurred to me that doing so would be a problem, and it's not clear to me what the issue was for them. But now I'll have to be sure to use that word if I ever have occasion to talk in the presence of a sociologist.
I'm pretty sure the left in France has been up to this sort of thing before. It did not need the excuse of Trump for this crap.
I assume Macron is trying to push it onto something non-French to try to ignore that there is a serious issue re: French politics that he just doesn't want to deal with.
He rammed through the retirement age policy, and many French people (not just "the left") are unhappy... but they're also not realizing that even with their super-high taxation they've got to move the retirement age up. So rather than actually making the French swallow reality through normal political processes, he tried making the policy switch a fait accompli through process tricks.
And then delegitimizing disagreement with that change, by making it un-French in some way, by tying it to Trump. Yeah, that'll work.
I hope you're ready for a 6th republic. Over changing the retirement age up to the oh-so-old 64. When the French are some of the longest-lived in Europe.
At least the "Orange" in Orange Man Bad does not need translation. Or explanation. Part of the universal language of the half-wits.
The Aztec were civilized.
The Romans were civilized.
The Germans were civilized.
The Egyptians were civilized.
Civilized is an unqualified quality a la liberal, progressive, conservative.
The establishment tried to fabricate an image of Trump that made him toxic to everything he touches, or that which they can tar him with, because he's the personification of evil.
As a net result of those all-purpose convolutions, however, most of that self-contradictory complexity has cancelled itself out and been distilled into Trump symbolizing not doing whatever you are told by the establishment.
Which is a powerful brand to have just about now, indeed globally, and getting more so with each revelation of the rot at the heart of what the establishment has wrought.
Longer quality of life, [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] immigration reform, but not progressive prices (e.g. medical) it seems. Still, pay to play.
Trump isn't being blamed--he is being used as a metaphor. So many people openly taking pride in being assholes seems like a new thing to me. Being confrontational is now a virtue to both the left and the right. Like Obama said, "Get in their faces!" We love it when our guys get in their faces. We don't like it so much when the other side Trumps back.
Totally agree hat call for civility are bullshit, but that's mainly because of who is doing the calling. But now the biggest asshole in the room is the one who is respected and diplomacy is considered a weakness.
"Radical left threatens civilisation in France..
as opposed to: "Radical right threatens civilisation in Quebec
Trump is the left wings boogie man. They need him to blame for all of their left wing nut jobs rioting and burning down cities, because they won't look in the mirror to see that THEY are the cause of all of the hate and division.
When they are done with Trump, and put him away for things THEY did, I hope everybody REALIZES, it isn't going to stop with Trump. Anybody who is a Republican now has a target on their backs, because what they did (the intel agencies, the left, the GOPe and the media) they will do again, since it worked and they got away with it.
Trump is coming. Hide the women and children. They may become white pro Americans who shoot guns.
This moment in history is starting to mirror Psalm 2. “Why do the heathen rage, and the peoples imagine a vain thing? The rulers take counsel together against TRUMP…Let us break his bands asunder and cast away Trump’s cords from us… he that again sitteth in the White House shall laugh …then he shall Twitter unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure.”
If no violence is legitimate, then the State has some issues with its monopoly.
And wouldn't the entire French Revolution be illegitimate?
This resonates with me because I once used the word "civilized" in the presence of sociologists and experienced the iciest silence of my entire life. Used it jocosely... I'd thought.
That seems like a story worth hearing!
"Créolisation" sounds like to old American "melting pot" - a much better concept than the current "cultural misappropriation" theory.
Well, he does hate NATO and other forces that stabilize Europe so there’s that. He loves Orban and Putin. Belligerent nationalism was never stabilizing for Europe but Trump and his followers are into that big-time.
And the right said for at least a year that riots instigated by the left or supposedly BLM and Antifa were an excuse for the violence they visited upon the Capitol in 2021, so there’s that.
Bottom line is that the right are born followers. Leadership is just not a natural trait for them. Unless you mean leading into the chaos of 2020, or the chaos they wrought on the world in 1929 and 1933. They are natural-born destroyers and can only maintain discipline at the feet of an authoritarian like Trump and friends. For them discipline is an all-or-nothing thing.
Left-wing extremism is linked to toxic, psychopathic tendencies and narcissism, according to a new study published to the peer-reviewed journal Current Psychology.
Does n.n. Hate progress? Maybe he could ask to have Teddy Roosevelt chiseled off of Mount Rushmore - the guy was a progressive after all.
Which of the founders or even our greatest presidents after the founding were conservative?
It must be hard to be a conservative in America when your country was founded by rising up against Tory, loyalist monarchy-supporters. Few things are more conservative than monarchy.
Conservatives should just admit that they don’t belong in this country and quit trying to control its culture - a culture that clearly rejects their boring celebration of past habits or conventions that stifle individual will.
See also Emmanuel Goldstein and the Two Minute Hate.
Awww… poor Donald Trump. He must feel as defeated as E. Jean Carroll or any of his victims who regularly receive actual threats from his crazy followers.
Gahrie: "Doesn't anybody learn "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me." anymore?"
Words are now very much used to "hurt" people...particularly in our legal system and across the western world.
Britain, Canada, Ireland just last week, Australia/New Zealand for the last 2 years, Germany etc.
"Words" are getting people imprisoned all over the "enlightened" world because the lefties/wokies finally achieved the critical mass of power they needed in our institutions to execute their plans.
We shall see if it can be turned back politically. I doubt it.
The stories are breaking this week about the astonishing cash the lefty/dems/LLR-dems have been tossing into the lefty firmament to create the necessary "arguments" for declaring all republicans/conservatives/non-wokies literal terrorists and the dems/LLR-dems now have the weaponized deep state and fascist controlled/allied companies, like banks and big tech, to help them just as Trudeau used them against the trucker strike while our own dems get confidential and supposedly protected info easily against republicans but not the other way around.
And the GOPe-ers have all been bought to stand around and pretend its not happening or nothing can be done and besides its for a good cause: stopping the populists.
wendybar: "Trump is the left wings boogie man. They need him to blame for all of their left wing nut jobs rioting and burning down cities, because they won't look in the mirror to see that THEY are the cause of all of the hate and division."
Applies easily to the GOPe as well.
Trump is the GOPe-s boogie man. They need him to blame for all of their results of decades of betrayal of the republican base burning down republican base voter belief in their leadership.
The GOPe won't look in the mirror to see that THEY are the cause of the rise of Trump and reaction of many of us to their continually stabbing us in the back.
Blogger RNB said...
"No violence is legitimate..." Do the French police carry automatic weapons? Does the French Air Force have jet aircraft? Are some of them capable of carrying nuclear weapons? "Oh, well -- that's OUR violence!"
The French have a thousand year history of invading their neighbors, then complaining about being blamed. Charlemagne was the first so it's more than a thousand years.
I thought this was going to be about street protestors ("President speaks out after pension reform protests and attacks on elected officials,") but it's all over the board (“People are getting used to comments that are more and more violent, to mud-slinging and to accusations that are more or less brutal.”)
So what are we talking about? Rudeness in social media? Violence in the streets? They're not the same thing, don't have the same causes, don't have the same cures.
The only one I care particularly about is violence in the streets and you can look to government for a fair share of the blame and as a source of the cure. When a middle class person with a stake in the community gets violent, you know it's not their first choice (as it too often is with the "social justice" rioters). It's closer to their last choice, because they don't see the government as responsive; they don't see the government as willing to work with them.
If Macron could do a decent job of pretending to care about their struggles and enlisting them as partners in the solution, they wouldn't be rioting.
No 'civility bullshit' tag?
French politics has always been a clusterfuck; it's a wonder the place still functions at all.
Makes me glad I got there a few years ago.
Speaking of clusterfucks, Kunstler has an interesting theory about recent corporate-cultural ventures that focus on child sexualization and gender confusion. (Hint: Epstein didn't film himself.)
D.D. Driver said...Trump isn't being blamed--he is being used as a metaphor.
Oh, well, that's so much better...
Hemorrhoids all of Joe Biden's fuckups are blamed on Trump, so why not this?
This post should garner the civilized.... civility bullshit tag.
Kate, you woulda LOVED the Nixon Era.
I am ready to say out loud that I see some minimum requirements for a people to be considered civilized. (I'm not quite ready to say my list is comprehensive - haven't thought about that enough yet.)
1. No trial by ordeal. (Yes, I know this disqualifies some "uncolonized" cultures, or whatever the current sociological/anthropological term is. In my opinion, it DOES disqualify them.)
2. Consistent social structures in place to preserve whatever level and kind of ownership the society deems appropriate - that is, "law and order." (Note that I'm not saying it has to be Western Civ private property here - and yes, this definition would include chattel slavery, much as I deplore and reject it. I think a society can be considered "civilized" while it espouses ownership of human beings, but it CANNOT be considered enlightened and it SHOULD NOT continue on that path indefinitely. Ownership of human beings is a moral affront. Furthermore - it seems obvious from history that anything other than Western Civ private property eventually proves unsustainable in the end.)
3. No murder or symbolic murder (exile, imprisonment, or reputational destruction) of the family of a deposed or assassinated ruler (Britain, at least, has had some problems meeting this standard).
4. Some understanding that what has worked to maintain the social fabric in the past ought at least to be considered before being supplanted, on the Chesterton's Fence principle. (We're barely qualifying on this point at present.)
5. A means of preserving the society's origin story and cherished myths - which can be oral tradition.
I'm trying to lay out a definition of "civilization" that doesn't automatically include all Western nations, doesn't automatically exclude every hunter-gatherer society, and doesn't just rely on material quality of life.
""No violence is legitimate, whether verbal or against people. We have to work in depth to counter this process of decivilisation."
Said President Macron"
Violence worked once before in your country. Just ask Louis the XVI.
Does President Macron understand WW2, or WW1? Sometimes violence IS legitimate.. even against civilian targets (they make the bombs and tanks and ships.)
Terrorism, on the other hand, is very much illegitimate when targeting innocent civilians.
What is happening in France is terrorism.... but it surely ain't Trump's fault!
“It would have never occurred to me that doing so would be a problem, and it's not clear to me what the issue was for them.”
I too wondered why a group is sociologists would take umbrage with the word or concept of civilization.
Wondering how this fits?
Civilization is the process of setting Man free from men!! ... Ayn Rand
“It would have never occurred to me that doing so would be a problem, and it's not clear to me what the issue was for them.”
I too wondered why a group is sociologists would take umbrage with the word or concept of being civilized.
Said President Macron, quoted in "Radical left threatens civilisation in France, says Macron/President speaks out after pension reform protests and attacks on elected officials"
I'll go out on a limb here and simply state that the radical left, or what we (with a wink and a nod) call 'progressivism' is destroying all of Western Civilization.
It is their goal.
"I'd never hurt you Jenny. It's just this war and that lying son of a bitch Johnson."
The French, and especially the Dutch, are goddamned lucky that their subjects/citizens don't have guns. There have been MASSIVE protests going on for the past couple years.
https://checkyourfact.com/2022/01/22/fact-check-french-protest-pension-cuts/
Yeah, they debunk the claim that it is a 2022 pension protest by showing thaqt it is actually a 2020 pension protest.
John LGBTQ Henry
Verbal violence n'est pas legitimate in France, says the president of France's FIFTH republic.
Thank Gd for James Madison, father of our troubled but still thriving FIRST republic.
Damn!!!! Trump is so powerful he can control the left in France. He should be returned to the WH in place of the impotent eunuch presently there.
Is he saying that the French Revolution was illegitimate?
Is he saying that Napoleon and his 20 year killing spree was illegitimate? Trivia fact: His great nephew founded the US FBI, as if Napoleon himself had not done enough damage.
I sort of agree with him on the first. Definitely on the second. Neither was legitimate. Just strange to hears a French pol say that.
John Henry
Blogger n.n said...
The Aztec were civilized.
The Aztec committed genocide on an industrial scale and you call them "civilized"?
I hope you were being sarcastic or at least ironic.
John LGBTQ Henry
"Presidential advisers said the term was a reference to Norbert Elias"
Can you imagine such a reference in anything Joe says?
Anyway, if violence and lack of restraint are the relevant criteria, the decivilizing started in 1789, or 1793 at the latest. Remember the Vendee.
Europe civilized? The continent that brought us the Inquisition, the Reign of Terror, both World Wars, the Holocaust, the Soviet Union, etc.
Which civilization would you prefer to live in besides modern Western Civilization?
Now assume you're among the poorest of the poor. Choose again.
Now assume you're a woman. Choose again.
When the history of this era is written, Trump will be an entire chapter. No one will be able to document this time without referencing him.
Trump will be as important as McCarthy was to the twentieth century. Important, but only as part of the zeitgeist of the era. Musk however will go down as a combination of Colombus and Edison, and in the end accomplish more than both. Assuming Starship and Neuralink work, and his solar energy and energy storage work continues to advance, he will become the most important person who has ever lived, outside of religion.
Civilizations, and civilized humans, are quite capable of genocide and slavery. Has nothing whatever to do with any Yuck Factor that the soft-hearted and soft-headed often toss out as something relevant to the judgement--even in places as sensible as this one.
There seems to be a notion that the French Revolution--or some portion of it, or some result of it--introduced anything new in the way that Europeans treated their neighbors. In a way. it's a tribute to the changes it did bring that so many seem so terrorized by it today.
But it's often the fate of great revolutions to be dismissed by their distant beneficiaries as irrelevant and eventually, criminal.
The FR, and the tyrant Bonaparte, pushed the historical ratchet many notches in the right direction, and anyone who acts butthurt about it now is posturing.
Blogger hpudding said...
See also Emmanuel Goldstein and the Two Minute Hate.
Awww… poor Donald Trump. He must feel as defeated as E. Jean Carroll or any of his victims who regularly receive actual threats from his crazy followers.
Pudding head, you should give credit to E Jean as one of he most successful fiction writers of the 21st century. Unless, of course, her bonanza is reversed on appeal as it should be.
Macron is opposed to verbal violence, except, of course, verbal violence directed against Marine Le Pen. Because reasons.
Blogger n.n said...
The Aztec were civilized. Evil, but civilized.
The Aztec committed genocide on an industrial scale and you call them "civilized"?
Well, yes, they were. What they had qualified as a civilization, and the inhabitants followed the rules established, and therefore, they were civilized As were the Incas.
Really good thing the Spanish came along and wiped out their civilization with the help of subjugated tribes. North American natives, despite the romanticism and mythos attached to them, weren't much better.
But let's go further back. Carthage was a civilization. Carthago Delenda Est repeated often on the floor of the Roman senate. Destroy a rival power. Not coopt it, or make peace, or even conquer and demand tribute. Destroy it. Was this irrational hatred?
From the University of Oxford: The city-state of ancient Carthage was a Phoenician colony located in what is now Tunisia. It operated from around 800BC until 146BC, when it was destroyed by the Romans.
Children – both male and female, and mostly a few weeks old – were sacrificed by the Carthaginians at locations known as tophets. The practice was also carried out by their neighbours at other Phoenician colonies in Sicily, Sardinia and Malta. Dedications from the children's parents to the gods are inscribed on slabs of stone above their cremated remains, ending with the explanation that the god or gods concerned had 'heard my voice and blessed me'.
Child sacrifice. Abortion as a rite. I suppose there's some difference- but just how much?
Bottom line is that the right are born followers.
See what I mean? Fucked in the head.
The right champions individualism. The left champions collectivism. Ergo, it's the 'right' who are born followers according to this nutcase.
Nobody does insults like the French, but they are also experts at hyperbole, satire and what Macron is doing here - complaining, when others object to your stepping on their faces.
Was it not Napoleon who insisted on the very wide avenues in Paris, the better to deploy his troops across them in line, to shoot down protesters? Yes, yes it was Napoleon, who incidentally at the time was ruling France.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2018/12/20/parisian-boulevards-built-wide-not-for-cars-but-to-better-quell-street-protests/?sh=691ee8b12d1c
The Aztec committed genocide on an industrial scale and you call them "civilized"?
They sacrificed human lives, we perform human rites. Civilized is an unqualified quality a la liberal, progressive, conservative.
Trump will be as important as McCarthy was to the twentieth century.
The handmade tale of McCarthy survives, whereas Wilson's AG Palmer is excluded from the headlines. Palmerism was the stuff that legends are made of, a competitor to the modern Whitmerism, Pelosiism, etc.
Fuck you, Pierre, is my attitude toward Emmanuel Macron.
"I laugh at the weak who consider themselves good because they lack claws."
Enveòglersécævoös
The confusion stems from expecting Marxists to be pro working class. They quit that in the late 60s. Now they are pro big corporations. That opened a wide opportunity for a NYC genius to swipe the GOP. All Trump had to do was become a populist.
We are witnessing a bout to the death. The Marxist calling themselves Democrats are going insane watching the Trump they killed off several times come back from political death no matter how many psyops they run. That damn Trump won’t stop fighting.
Which is fine since he is fighting for me. Like the picked scapegoat Churchill, he wants to fight instead of sign the surrender to Hitler.
The Great Napoleon did some necessary and long-overdue slum clearance in Paris, but the idea that his work there reflected crowd-control concerns has been exaggerated.
At one time the term 'civilized' meant 'lives in permanent towns and not tents and temporary shelters'. That's why the Creeks, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole were called the five 'civilized' tribes . Not because they were 'nice' people. The Aztecs were civilized because they had a 'civil' structure. They were evil nasty people devoted to the blood sacrifice of their subject tribes.
Also, violence, or fear of it, is the final determinant of all disagreements. Either governmental or personal.
Civilization is based on one word. Trust. That is why corruption kills civilization.As our trust dies, so will civilization.
A correction about Paris. It was Napoleon III who changed Paris. Or at least his "Urban Planner", Baron Haussmann. From 1853 to 1870 he cut new public works through Paris. New sewers, water and Boulevards. One interesting touch is the building of new apartments along the new Boulevards.
A very interesting man. He may be seen as the inspiration for the tragic American urban planning profession. Robert Moses in New York is another of his ilk.
Amen, ken in tx. If you are unable to defend yourself or what you think you own through (preferably governmental) violence or the threat of violence, you are a slave who owns nothing.
"He insisted international organisations such as the EU threatened to "strangle the voice of the people". He supports a renegotiation of European treaties.... He has repeatedly called for France to withdraw from NATO....." I can't say he's wrong.
Haussmann was working in a centuries-old tradition already (see Joan DeJean's "How Paris Became Paris.") Paris was the first city in the world that had guidebooks to the NEW construction rather than to the remains and ruins of greatness.
As for Haussmann and Moses, AYFKM?
Haussmann and his ilk created some of the most beautiful urban spaces in the world, and helped make Paris the center of modern art and elegance. Moses and his ilk created settings for dystopic nightmares.
Isn't that what all governments are? The threat of violence.
John Henry,
Of course the Aztecs were "civilized." They had a vast, well-integrated social and economic system. That they also killed off vast numbers of people from adjacent tribes, usually in most horrible ways, doesn't make them any less civilized.
Would you say the USSR was "civilized"? East Germany under the Stasi? Germany under Hitler? China during the Great Famine or the Cultural Revolution? Or (as someone says above) Carthage?
Civilization is just a name for any society that has the rudiments of social structure, government, economics. There is no positive content to it at all, unless you think that any government, of whatever sort, is preferable to anarchy. Which is absurd on its face. I'd certainly prefer anarchy to, say, living in North Korea. Or present-day Russia, for that matter. Individual people aren't like states; they can have individual thoughts, individual affections. An anarchy would be (literally) a bloody mess, but there would be scope for individual kindnesses. In a totalitarian state, that's the kind of thing that generally gets you shot. With some preliminary organ donation, if you happen to be in Communist China.
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