Jinn
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Posts: 73
Original Join Date: April 4th, 1984
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Post by Jinn on Apr 10, 2017 10:15:19 GMT
Anybody following the upcoming elections in France (Apr 17, 2017) or the current terminal state of the EU?
History in the making. Or its undoing. I want to discuss, but not one-sided or to myself.
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Jinn
Member
Posts: 73
Original Join Date: April 4th, 1984
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Post by Jinn on Apr 25, 2017 10:38:13 GMT
Update to anybody who is reading:
The early polling period (Apr 17-24) culminated in the first round of voting on Apr 25. The results of Round 1 are:
Relative newcomer Macron of the EMA (representing centrist, pro-EU, big bank, big govt type manifesto) leading at 24.0%
Relative underdog Le Pen of the National Front (representing right wing, nationalist/populist, withdraw from the EU type manifesto), following very closely at 21.3%.
Traditional french parties; Republican and Socialist Party ranking at 20.0% and 19.6% respectively do not proceed to the second round come May 7 - a stark contrast to the past couple decades of French govt politics.
Its evident France voted for change...but what kind?
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Selena
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Odinsdottir
Posts: 318
Original Join Date: February 13, 2003
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Post by Selena on Apr 26, 2017 7:06:09 GMT
I don't think any of us are very well-versed in French politics, but I'm very much against the wave of nationalism sweeping over the Western world. History tends to show that when we turn away from global cooperation and focus on isolationist self-interest, then major conflicts tend to arise. Either internal strife or international aggression -- sometimes one leading to the other.
Things like the refugee crisis are fueling support for the European nationalist groups, while general cultural change is fueling America's nationalist movement. It's a reaction to poor adaptation / poor social management. People don't usually know a lot about other cultures. The unknown is scary. Fear breed hostility. Etc. In my social circle, the only people who furiously hate foreigners/other ethnic groups are -- conveniently -- the people who never interact with those groups at all.
So, obviously, I hope she doesn't win. Nationalists are like explosives that haven't gone off properly. They may be harmless. They may detonate with a sudden movement. And the more you're surrounded by, the more dangerous the situation gets.
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Egann
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Posts: 124
Original Join Date: Sometime in 2008
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Post by Egann on Apr 27, 2017 2:08:56 GMT
I confess, I'm no expert at European politics, either. But I understand that politicians in the EU and to a less extent the UN aren't subject to reelection and have a longstanding habit of sliding left after election. This, of course, drives voting bases right. Remember the Aesop's fable with the sun and the wind, and the harder the wind blew the harder the man clung to his cloak? Same thing. Top down policies will always produce backlashes.
I don't suppose anyone here will agree, but I'm not terribly concerned by nationalism. Globalism has been a long and arduous tale of people with connections getting more and more connections to play with and people without playing wage-slavery bidding wars against abused workers in China and India. The byproduct of globalism is everyone in the world has to adopt a similar class structure to everybody else, and on average the world is upper class and wage slaves. The real kicker, though, is that democracy requires a reasonably informed and intelligent population to work, so copycatting the world's social structure is also breaking democracy on a worldwide scale. Not just here in the US.
So perhaps globalism has brought peace, but it's a pyrrhic sort of peace which plays lip-service to many of the things western civilization stands for even as it undoes it.
Perhaps nationalism will lead to wars. I suspect not, though; nuclear mutually assured destruction did a good job of that through most of the Cold War without building a house of cards out of trade deals. Regardless, I don't see much in the way of an alternative.
A moment of big-picture thinking; I expect the transition to post-scarcity economies is THE bottleneck of the Fermi Paradox. The technological tools at our disposal are huge and there aren't good reasons to not abuse them--see Vault 7. Things will go wrong if we dawdle about, which is more or less exactly what I think globalism has had us doing.
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Jinn
Member
Posts: 73
Original Join Date: April 4th, 1984
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Post by Jinn on May 8, 2017 10:03:34 GMT
President elect Emmanuel Macron.
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