My apologies for the long absence. I was finishing my manuscript, attending a conference on multiculturalism, and vacationing in France. It is the last of the pretentious items that I wish to write about.
Our family vacation to Paris almost perfectly coincided with a nine-day transit strike which crippled France’s transit system. As a result, I failed to put on any weight (a usual outcome of my trips to Paris) because I was pushing a 50lb five-year old in a pram across the vast urban terrain of the City of Lights. I also think I pulled something in my back.
While the strike personally inconvenienced me, it also cost France about $592 million a day and chipped away at Sarko the American’s image as untouchable. While Sarkozy’s current popularity ratings are down, he is most certainly not out. Nearly a third of Frenchmen still support him (and by extension, his attempts to reform the bloated French state). His decline in popularity saw a measly five-point drop, something I am sure the cocksure president can live with.
Some have rushed to declare his presidency over, reform at an end, and a return to the “good ol’ days” of the welfare state, however, let me set you straight. Most Parisians condemned the strikes vehemently, while not even mentioning the government. I only met one gentleman who supported la grève, but he did so only on principle, suggesting that the government had signed a contract which they were now trying to reneg on. All others wanted the strikers to go back to work.
President Nicholas Sarkozy was quiet during most of the storm—only speaking out a day or so before the strikes were suspended. Once he opened his mouth, the strikers backed away. The French seem to have reconciled themselves to the realities of globalization and their important place within the process. Rather than let the future pass them by, they are willing take a leadership role. With Bush flailing in his self-created morass and Putin orchestrating the rapid creation of a postmodern police state, the world needs France now more than ever. And that also means they need Sarko. He has the capacity to get the French to realize that abandoning certain aspects of the welfare state is a good thing. No one expects France to become the predatory, capitalist free-for-all that is America (nor would any thinking person want that). However, it’s time move beyond the 1970s. The global economy is an incontrovertible reality. France cannot continue to act like it did when China was a third world country, and the existence of the USSR kept the world from facing the impossibility of socialist utopias.
I love France, and the French. But they—like us—are going to have to adjust to the realities of the current era. France gave the world the strike—now it’s time for them to give us something else. I, for one, am looking forward to their contribution.
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I would like to say that knowing that you were there in the choked midst of things, and that you are a gifted, intuitive and always speculatory flâneur, I thought it best to leave it to you to discuss the situation to you. I would like to say that, truth is I've been both lazy and unsure as to how to interpret the whole matter.
I am not sure that I heard any of the mighty roars that Sarkozy's administration was through. If anything I think the whole affair was likely a given - nearly something that had to happen given the mandate that Sarkozy insisted that he had by way of his election. Indeed, if anything he has demonstrated that he knows the the proper dancesteps and denouement of French politics, even if the beat he prefers is heavier on the bass and occasionally slightly more frenetic. As you note, when he finally spoke, the strikers backed away and agreed to negotiations - likely the desire of the jogging president anyway.
Out of curiousity, how do you define a "postmodern police state"?
fp
I define a 'postmodern police state' as a territorrially-based entity that possesses a monopoly of legal violence, and one which uses such violence to prevent the development of civil society while making public statements that it both encourages and promotes civic responsibility among it citizens (as Putin did today).
Interesting, but how is that different than say Franco's Spain or Pinochet's Chile? Or for that matter (depending on how far you wish to stretch the term "violence" but it was you who introduced "postmodern") George Bush's US post-9/11 where we are told dissent is anti-American and good Americans simply consume?
fp
My good sir, I did not exclude any particular state from my definition. I meant it to be inclusive of states like Francoist Spain, Pinochet's Chile, and Salazar's Portugal. By pointing out Putin's remark of yesterday, I simply placed him within that milieu. (For more on this, see Jonathan Becker, "Lessons from Russia: A Neo-Authoritarian Media System," European Journal of Communication, Vol 19, No. 2: 139–163). As to your over-reaching bit about Bush's America, I must push back. Consumption and mass media manipulation can certainly play a role in making a police state more postmodern (as was eloquently depicted in last year's "V is for Vendetta"), however, my definition (which I stick to) would not apply to 2007 America. The use of physical violence to quell dissent is, perhaps, at an all time low in this country. Your infamous "black helicopters" have dissappeared and favor of more insidious devices, namely FOX News, HDTV, and Paris Hilton. Civic society languishes with a smile under such corporatism, while it grits its teeth and prepares to fight under overt repression.
Forgive the delay here, I have been busy with the tedious machinations of my students' poor efforts. I admit that I jumped too quickly out of the blocks. After (re)reading what I had written even before your first response I cautioned myself that you had indeed not limited yourself to Putin's Russia in your declartion of a postmodern police state - and if you have available a copy of Becker's article I would indeed be glad to avail myself of it. Without recourse to what I am sure is sage analysis of the political situation in Russia from Becker, I might still suggest that simple violence, whether walking in lock-step with the rhetoric of civil society or not, seems so, well modern. As you rightly point out - even if in a work of phantasmagoria - consumption and mass media manipulation can and do play a very important role in what I might recognize as a postmodern police state; in fact I think they might well play the penultimate role. I would chasten you however, simply because the violence has not always been police dogs on unarmed citizens, that doesn't mean it hasn't been occurring.
We are all well aware that the seldom read and hurried through Patriot Act has at least watered down the guarantees of civil liberties, there remains the ongoing issue of invasions of privacy regarding the phone converstaions of citizens and what constitutes "torture" has become a playful point of presidential debate.
The EU has issued a report condemning the practice of "Extraordinary Rendition" and Germany and Italy have pressed kidnapping charges on US agents responsible for such in their lands. Executive Orders issued by the administration have arguably criminalized simple opposition to the war. While a redacted copy of the Administration's "Presidential Advance Manual" obtained by the ACLU makes clear that obfuscation of the message of folks protesting the President (intended to keep protesters out of the view of not only the gathered media but also the President himself!) is to be attempted first, removal of protesters by security forces is to also be used when necessary. From their deployment in New Orleans to the their use as the security force for American diplomats in Iraq, the Administration has its own (only hazily accountable) praetorian guard in BlackWater mercenaries. During the 2004 GOP Convention in New York (apparently following an expanded version of the President's Advance Manual) the police of Bloomberg's New York arrested and detained protesters for longer than is allowed by law - citing clerical errors - all the while collecting personal information to be held and added to whatever list might well be created. The day of police dogs might be past but violence, even if it comes wrapped in a velvet glove and carrying a fistful of consumer goods, is very present.
fp
On the political and judicial hubris of "Extraordinary Rendition" even amongst closest of allies, and not necessarily tied to the "War on Terror" as it is so often portrayed, see yesterday's "Sunday Times"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2982640.ece
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