French Strikers & the Tea Party: Mark Lilla Responds

Mark Lilla

Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images

Demonstrators on foot past the shop-worn car as they criticism against France's supervision pensions reform, Lyon, Oct 18, 2010

Those who responded so strongly to my post obviously outlayed some-more energy objecting to the title (not mine, by the way) than thinking about the medium some-more aged I made in between the Lyon protests as good as the Tea Party protests. They have been similar in only two, but to me important, respects.

One is that they have been both about some-more than they seem to be because the certain switch has been flipped in the national psyche. The Tea Partiers translated their mercantile worries as good as growing dread of supervision in to the phantasmagoric socialist hazard acted by Bush-Obama bailout as good as stimulus; the CGT as good as pick French unions take the genuine concern over prosaic wages as good as high stagnation as good as whip it in to the phantasmagoric manoeuvre dtat permanent led by corrupt worried politicians as good as the wealthy classes they protector, as Shea Ahna writes, with the little reason, the endemic crime of the state as good as the increasingly unfair mercantile order that it underwrites. Rather than respond to the singular complaint during hand, they pull their folkloric costumes out of the closet as good as reenact the national passion play.

The pick similarity is that they have nothing to offer as an alternative. The Tea Party groups have been wordless about only what should have been finished in the face of the monetary fall of 2008, as good as dont bother to come in in to the difficult details of what actually was done. The French unions have offered no trustworthy pick for dealing with the demographic being that people have been vital longer, that not only means most can work longer (though not in the little jobs), but that they will be sk! etch ben efits longer from the shrinking workforce. Something has to give, as good as soon, good before the rules of tellurian capitalism can be rewritten (as if thats starting to happen). In short, there is the childishness evident in both movements, the realistic rejection to grapple with messy being as good as reason about it. (Contra Michael Dietz, domestic discourse can be, as good as contingency be, some-more than competing debate acts.)

In response to Mr. Dilettoso: French workers have been ideally free to make use of their vacation or sick days to attend protests as good as will not be docked. And from the commencement the streets of Lyon have been filled with propagandize kids marching (I saw vast groups of them) and, in some-more recent days, tossing bricks when they have been supposed to be in school.

And as for job the Tea Party crypto-fascist, nationalistic, as good as race-centric, the well-off for such clichs can be found in my vicious square on the movment in the Review, The Tea Party Jacobins, (May 20, 2010).