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by tasogare 1031 days ago
> I don't know France

Then don't try to put discredit to the saying of an insider. GP is 100% right. I've been back after about ~5 years living abroad and the country is in an astonishing decline on every plan (educational, moral, economical, political, diplomatic, security, judicial, medical, etc. the list goes one). And most of it is stemming from the policies enforced in the last decades.

3 comments

> Then don't try to put discredit to the saying of an insider.

The GP in question is a generic ramble about distaste for current government. You can apply that for each and every country - there's not one where citizens are happy with their leaders. And if this flies for 'insider knowledge' in France you really are f**d and, its not because of the government.

> The GP in question is a generic ramble about distaste for current government.

For the last 4 presidents and their ~15 governments (20 years), both "left" and "right".

But I agree said rambling remains quite generic nonetheless.

>But I agree said rambling remains quite generic nonetheless.

That's what makes it sound like noise. If you took "france" out of the sentence I wouldn't be able to tell which country this is talking about. US, Canada, UK, China, Japan? It's like the fortune reading of government criticism.

The current président de la République managed to trigger protests and strikes that are only rivaled by the '86/87 student riots. The yellow vest protest almost had the potential to turn into another May '68 style event. It almost always begins with police killing a French citizen of Algerian origin or by messing up with the fuel prices. Hollande was a total disaster and Sarkozy is a 2x convict by now, no need to say more.
That wasn’t my point and doesn’t change anything about GP’s own merits or lack thereof.

I was actually trying to show it does have some merit by pointing out that, despite being generic, said ramble targets all the governments we’ve had over the last 20 years, and thus shouldn’t be so easily dismissed.

The conclusion was me playing nice by finding some common ground with the person I was replying to.

That’s all.

It wasn't the saying of an insider, it was empty rhetoric based on the perception of an insider, there's a big difference.

I'm sure you perceive the decline, and you were so kind to mention in which fields. Let's take an example, i.e. economy and security. Immigration and illegal immigrants are often related to immigration, in public discourse. I'm sure the government in the last 20 years has done something about it (despite me not knowing France): either it tried to tighten it, or to make it happen more smoothly, or to integrate the immgrants, or to convince them to go back, or...

Now, I'm also pretty confident there's a sizable percentage of people that think that immigration is not a security problem nor an economic problem, but it's casted as such by the right; all these measures were a waste of time and money, which could have been used to improve other stuff in the public interest.

There's a decent amount of people that believe immigration should be helped and increased, and the efforts in controlling it have been wrong, and bad, and against the public interest.

There's people, likely on the right, thinking that there's way too many immigrants, and the previous government didn't do enough to address this; it is in the national interest to reduce immigrants, make sure they are all working, but without hijacking the possibilities for French citizens.

Did I guess correctly? Who is The People, and what is the correct National Interest now? Does it by any chance align with your views on immigration (which might or might not align with those of the OP, btw - we can't say much about those since there was no content)?

Well, I never stopped living in France and I disagree with your takeaway, so I guess we're back to square one.
> educational, moral, economical, political, diplomatic, security, judicial, medical

Which one is better? Because I don't see one.