French Presidential Election: Part 7 — The End

Paris 7 May 2017

8:00 pm 

Macron 65.5%

Le Pen    34.5%    

2:30 PM: In less than six hours the name of the next French president will be announced. I don’t need to go far out on a limb to predict it will be Emmanuel Macron. Though Marine Le Pen briefly enjoyed an outside chance to overcome the odds and squeak into victory, she destroyed it on the night of the debate. By the way, the official audience figure is 16.5 million, well under the predicted 20 to 22 million that I cited in Part 6. Why do I argue that she has no one to blame but herself for her display of incompetence, confusion, bad faith and bad taste? Because she herself proudly boasted that she had deliberately chosen a totally appropriate and, what’s more, a winning strategy. Her running mate Nicolas Dupont-Aignan publicly and proudly agreed, and many of her supporting commentators concurred. She was expressing the anger of the people. Some are even suggesting at this late hour that her audacious performance will prove to be stronger than all the forces allied against her. They are confident that she will win on an upset!

I can’t understand this uncritical support for someone that has never displayed the qualities of a viable leader of the résistance against jihad. Is vociferous denunciation of Islamization all it takes to fit the bill? If that were so, there would be no difference between writing a blog and leading a nation or even leading the opposition to a jihad-friendly government. In a democracy, you have to convince a majority of voters, you have to get elected. And then you need all the qualities of a brilliant, exceptional, strong, upstanding, competent political leader capable of prevailing over tremendous domestic and international odds.

This explains my dismay at the constant flow of messages from friends and allies in the United States telling me that Marine Le Pen will win, should win, or would be the best choice. The odds when the official campaign ended at midnightFriday were 62% to 38%. Where in the world have we ever seen an upset of that dimension? I will not repeat here all the verified evidence I have reported over the past five years to show the ambiguity of Marine Le Pen’s position on Islam. Can you set aside the coziness with Assad and Hezbollah, the antizionism of her pre-chosen prime minister, her tactical pressure on French Jews to accept sacrifices so the limits she will impose on Muslims won’t seem discriminatory? Do you understand what it means to dual French-Israeli citizens to be told they will have to choose one or the other? Is Frexit the French version of Brexit? Aside from the fact that Marine has surreptitiously dropped it from her platform, there is no comparison. Great Britain was never in the Eurozone, has a vibrant economy and, by its historical and geographical separation from the Continent and Churchillian tradition, has the guts to negotiate a tough divorce from a stubborn EU.

Seen from the USA, the free enterprise capital of the world, Marine Le Pen’s economic platform that fits hand in glove with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Bolivarian dreams-anticapitalist, antiglobalist, anti-American, and naïvely protectionist-might seem too vague to matter. Here on the ground, it would be disastrous. And the double-decker monetary system? The way she described it during the debate, multinationals would use the euro for their unspeakable foreign intercourse and the good French salt of the earth folks will have their francs as delicious as the baguettes they’ll purchase with them. A candidate that can float such preposterous notions is trustworthy on all things Islamic? It’s not logical.

Besides, she’s going to lose. And we’ll be stuck with Emmanuel Macron. In a democracy, you have to win elections if you want to implement your policies. However brilliant, if you can’t convince voters, you’re back in the shadows with the unsung poets.

The Dump

May surprise, Wikileaks ex machina, the eleventh hour dump, the world-shaking upset. Gigantic hack of Emmanuel Macron’s computers. And wild hopes are blooming. Of course no one’s interested in messages about the candidate’s appointment with his barber, who’s going to pick up his suit at the cleaner’s, how many wreaths to order for the memorial ops. All eyes are focused on the explosive offshore account documents. Macron stashed the millions he made as investment banker chez Rothschild (the name that always gets a wink) in a phony offshore company on one of those islands. Wikileaks leaked the supposedly Russian-hacked documents. French media will be released from the election weekend gag order at 8 o’clock tonight. Instead of popping champagne corks with Emmanuel and Brigitte, they’ll be picking through the dump looking for gold. Or maybe the miracle is already happening and thanks to Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange, Marine will be présidente!

And Macron on his way to jail?

The other dump concerns the self-righteous François Bayrou. It seems his party used the same racket as the Front National to siphon money from the EU Parliament in the form of salaries for his fake parliamentary assistants that were in fact working for the party. It will be interesting to discover in the near future whether this is a French specialty or a European practice.

I don’t trust Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange over millions of misguided French voters. I don’t want dirty politics to be replaced by ugly snooping. If crooked politicians can’t have some privacy, then no one will. Deep inside these garbage dumps a new kind of totalitarianism is festering.

Time to cut our losses and start thinking about the next steps, the new strategies. If François Fillon was the right man at the right time, he wasn’t able to overcome the twisted schemes devised to disable him. His victorious rival is going to face another kind of vicious schemes and it will probably begin this evening. Occupying la République, storming la Bastille, the flame throwers and bank smashers will be out in force to denounce their defeat while the filthy rich banker celebrates his victory in the courtyard of the Louvre and the heavens will grumble with harsh winds and chilly rains that douse our hopes for springtime in Paris.

The ever-ready Muslim Brotherhood will be hatching new plans for a new phase of an eternal combat.

It’s not just France, my friends. A copy of the international NY Times fell into my hands yesterday. It’s a cesspool. A cesspool disguised as a sparkling blue Olympic swimming pool. One op-ed gives an exquisitely original plan for peace…Israel-Palestine peace of course. Start by being nice to each other. This is followed by endless recommendations to Israelis to stop expanding “colonies,” give more of this, do less of that and, finally, accept the 2002 Saudi initiative as the basis for the 2-state solution. You know, 67 borders, divided Jerusalem, question mark on the refugees, the whole rehash. Another op-ed has the solution for the lone wolves problem. It’s so simple why didn’t anyone think about it before? Didn’t you notice that 90% of them are mentally disturbed? So stop looking for an Islamic problem. Just alert your society to this mental health crisis, ask people to notify authorities when they notice someone getting psychologically wobbly and then, instead of combing through his Facebook pages on the lookout for decapitation videos and black flags of jihad, get him some topnotch psychological treatment. Believe you me.

An in-depth article on the eve of the final round of the French election gathers disgruntled testimony in the Parisian banlieue of Stains that voted 40% in the first round for the Chavez admirer Mélenchon. The NY Times reporter labels residents by their Tunisian (Moroccan, Senegalese, etc.) “heritage.” They’re disappointed in François Hollande, fiercely opposed to Marine Le Pen, unhappy with their lot in France, feel poor and abandoned, don’t believe in politics, some will vote Macron, many won’t vote, they are all innocent victims of a damned racist country that offers them no opportunity. The Muslim mayor of Stains, Azzedine Taibi, says they need effective inspirational government programs. Not someone like Hollande, says Selamine Abderrahmane, an assistant mayor in neighboring Bobigny; he didn’t keep any of his promises. Abderrahmane will vote Macron to be sure Le Pen won’t win. His friend, a white municipal counselor, can’t bring himself to cast a ballot for the “globalizer” who promotes policies that pit workers that are French against foreigners who will work for less. The French workers in question being the residents of Stains, of all those varied North African and sub-Saharan “heritage.”

Disclosure

4:40 PM: less than four hours to go. Before I sign off, I would like to add this disclosure: I can’t vote. I am not French. Though I’ve lived here for close to 45 years, I have always kept my American nationality. Why? Out of gratitude to the country that took my family in as immigrants from a Europe that 30 years later would be exterminating those they left behind. Grateful immigrants, I might add. And the other reason is a sort of blithe spirit that keeps me lightly poised and not dug in: my nationality there, my physical presence here, my imagination everywhere.

Back to you at 8:01 PM.

French Presidential Campaign: Part 6

French Presidential Campaign: Part 5

French Presidential Campaign: Part 4

French Presidential Campaign: Part 3

French Presidential Campaign: Part 2

French Presidential Campaign: Part 1

RELATED ARTICLES:

French Elections: Macron in 2017, Le Pen in 2022?

Uninspired French Voters Choose a ‘Centrist’ President Rather Than a Far-Right One

‘Centrist’ Victory in France Calms Nerves, Yet Solutions to Core Problems Seem Distant

---