The French Election, be scared, very scared

     Liberté, égalité, fraternité, the motto used to call the French people to fight for freedom and a new and enlightened government in France in 1790 resonates still today in the hearts of people, if not in the practice of their nations. Emanuel Macron's victory in the French election against Marine Le Pen with a margin of 58.5% to her 41.5%, that is 18,779,641 to 13,297,760 votes, was a wide margin, but one so close that it should send shivers down your spine. 

    Why should this scare you?  Le Pen's self-identification in a 2017 BBC interview was, "The policies that I represent are the policies represented by Trump and Putin". She embraces policies of nationalism, exclusion of immigrant populations, self-interest over the communal good of her nation, censorship of speech, and internationalism. I will be blogging later about the importance of an internationalist goal for the future, but in simplest terms, we cannot adequately deal with issues such as Global Warming, the growing economic and military friction between superpowers, the colonization of space, global health issues, poverty, corruption, and human rights to name a few. Nationalist leaders achieve a certain amount of popularity by appealing to self-interest, and even more so by feeding fears through exaggeration, false analogies, and the scapegoating of minorities.  These are not endearing values for a people, and they are the initial stage of a power structure that will create a dystopian reality in which leaders their position in the most egregious, most violent, most totalitarian way in order to retain power and to pursue their vendettas no matter how petty.

    Having spent some time in North Korea and worked in Russia and served as a police officer in California and worked for the US Military, I have become acutely aware of the chain of corruption that can start out with the pettiest level of officials and bureaucrats. There are always people in power who will seek out every crevasse where corruption can operate in the dark. There it will fester, grow, and infect other parts of government. The more power corrupt officials gain, the more opportunity they have to surround themselves with toadies and sycophants who feed the disease.  In some cases, this corruption will die within the constraints of the system. It might be that they are caught breaking the law or that whistleblowers expose them and the system actually makes a personnel correction.  In other cases, these petty corrupt officials will succumb to some other more ruthless or lucky corrupt officials. In a few cases, the corruption will grow and metastasize infecting the system and feeding into a breakdown in the principles of meritocracy. If these morally bankrupt individuals arrive at the top levels of government, a common occurrence associated with their narcissistic ambition, they will make it impossible for a nation to serve the common good and make it ever-more difficult to foster the right of every individual to reach their potential and pursue a life with a fair portion of happiness.  

    What is terrifying about the results in France is that the robust performance of the right is not unique to France as demonstrated by the recent results in Hungary.  We are witnessing a shift to the right internationally. In the US, Joe Biden won with a not dissimilar margin, 51.3% to 46.8%. That means 7 million more voted for Biden vs. Trump. While Biden got 81,283,098, Trump got 74,222,958, that is a remarkable number of people voting for Trump who, like Le Pen, has voiced these ultra-nationalist policies. During the horrific 4-years of his presidency, Trump did everything possible to foster hate, empower racists, scapegoat Muslims and Hispanics, undermine the independence of the three branches of the US government and thus checks of power, eroded the right of women to have control over their own bodies, corroded voting rights, further tilted the imbalance of wealth and power, fostered corruption and nepotism as acceptable elements of our government, tried to drive a wedge in international cooperation, encouraged the atrocities of autocratic states, and in the end, he directed an audacious attempt to overthrow democracy in the US with effects yet to be fully understood. That is a lot of Americans who are blind to what occurred over a 4-year period.

   The progress and vision that the world dreamed of at the end of WWII are succumbing to the cynicism of those who truly lack an understanding of history and of the knowledge gained through the millennia of exploration of moral humanism. Let us celebrate the victory of Macron over the shift to the right, but let it serve as a warning that even in nations that proclaim the values of liberté, égalité, and fraternité, there are some 40% who are completely vulnerable to populist ideas predicated on the rightwing notions of hate-based scapegoating, anti-internationalism, anti-science, a disregard for human rights, and to paranoid conspiracy-laden fear-mongering. We can blame some of it on the influence of media and the lack of curiosity to explore multiple sources of information. We can blame another part on the failure to adequately educate our youth on historical and philosophical ideas underlying a humanistic view of the world. One thing most people, even those sucked into this foul right-wing morass, will acknowledge if they are questioned is that once the institutions of democracy and freedom are lost, it is unlikely that they will be regained easily. Please, let us all work harder to guard our freedom from this scourge of ultra-right nationalism. Eject these nasty people from government at every level using the tools of democracy. Do not let cynicism about the potential of humankind create a negative reality for our future.