Monday, November 07, 2005

France on Fire or HOW NOT TO DO IT HERE

The conservative MSM may have you believe France is burning because of those damn Islamo-fascists and poverty losers that have ruined their country (as if they cared)--a harsh precautionary tale to keep Americans intoning that now-mindless mantra "Keep fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, keep fighting them there so we don't have to..."

Fortunately someone who's been over there has something better to say:
"As someone who lived in France for nearly a decade, and who has visited those suburban ghettos, where the violence started, on reporting trips any number of times, French_riots I have not been surprised by this tsunami of inchoate youth rebellion that is engulfing France. It is the result of thirty years of government neglect: of the failure of the French political classes -- of both right and left -- to make any serious effort to integrate its Muslim and black populations into the larger French economy and culture; and of the deep-seated, searing, soul-destroying racism that the unemployed and profoundly alienated young of the ghettos face every day of their lives, both from the police, and when trying to find a job or decent housing. "
I used to believe there could never be an environment in America where something like this could happen, but in the Republican post-Katrina world of mass budget cuts to those who have less and less by those who want more and more, I am not so sure.

No, religion will not be an organizing factor but poverty and the constructive racism such policies create, could. Los Angeles burned, as did Watts...and with the likely one hundred thousand homeless Katrina may have left by next year, poverty and class are going to be factors our government will be hard-pressed to keep under wraps before elections. Will they do it by blaming the victims of poverty for their plight, again? Maybe politicians in this country should look to France's elitist mentality and imagine what it would take to create those conditions and then they should NOT DO IT HERE.

[UPDAYE] As with poverty it is not enough to shrug one's shoulders, say "Oh, well" and walk away. The conditions that create poverty multiply with time and the misery of the impoverished.

In an attempt to find for myself a better way to grasp the conditions facing those discussed in this post (and then of course the greater issue) I am coming across a variety of sources created by artists (those interpreters of the human condition our learn-to-work education system seems hell-bent on forcing out of our awareness).

Germinal, both a French film and story by Emile Zola are my first finds. Here is a snip from a synopsis of the latter:
"Zola's technique of "naturalism" attempted through scrupulous research to depict the lives of ordinary people. For Germinal, he descended into a mineshaft very much like the one he describes below, taking detailed notes. Zola's works portray groups of humans in the grip of circumstances beyond their control, often destined to be destroyed in monumental catastrophes. "
"...beyond their control." A condition many social conservatives in this country refuse to believe can be possible.


Broken links? Suggestions? Other stuff? Contact me here...

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