One of the ‘ickiest’ words that I could say in a blog is about to be said, and that is none other than…. politics. We are so used to over zealous poly sci majors ranting about their grievances and sending them off to the internet to be not cared about by nearly everyone that reads it. Luckily I am not going to try and air my own opinions (however close they are to the topic at hand), but rather I am going to dive into French politics. Now that we (hopefully) have started to remove debilitating stereotypes onto the French, lets not add others by assuming all Frenchmen everywhere are like minded and agree on everything. That simply just is not true. That would be like saying that every Texas Republican and every California Democrat have the same opinions. What I will discuss is the general trend, recognizing that this only an analysis of observations.
So first, lets start off by stating a fact, the president of France is a socialist. You might be thinking “Ew! How could anybody associate themselves with those violent leftist radicals of the 19th and early 20th century? And is this thought bubble just a ploy to bump up word count?” To address the first question, I must say that socialism has, since its conception, been an alive and well movement throughout France. This differs from the United States because as Socialist movements abounded in Europe, right wingers like Joseph McCarthy launched crusades against any ‘commies’ in infamous cases like the red scare. No such cultural stigmas existed in western Europe and consequentially those seeking to fight for the lower classes were often met with great support. As for the second question… no comment. Back to the point, François Hollande is the Socialist president of a very leftist in many (but not all) aspects. In France, the poorest of the poor are taken care of at the federal level. For instance, if somebody only makes 6,011 euros in one year, they pay a 0% tax rate. As where if you lie in the top tax bracket you can be paying 45% or more in income tax. Whether you feel that this is just or not, this style of income taxation has provided France with large budgets to go towards things like (God forbid *sarcasm*) healthcare, unemployment programs, infrastructure, and much much more. As where in the United States, the rich are not taxed as much so they can pay for their own frivolous luxuries, like healthcare. Please do note the sarcasm. Anyways, what I’m trying to get at is that even though some of these concepts may seem really foreign to us, there are those across the globe that practice systems seemingly opposite to our own. So whether you agree with the French version of light-socialism or not, you are going to have to exist alongside it. Perhaps even some of these seemingly foreign concepts are coming to a government year near you? Just take a look at the roaring debate that is occuring on whether the US government should subsidize healthcare?
~Laissez les bons temps rouler!
After reading this, it made me think about our world in conversations meeting where we talked about empathy. I feel like you touched on the point that although France has a different type of president compared to us in the U.S., you are trying to have us understand and empathize with how their president runs his country although we may not initially agree with their president’s practices.