
The French, Coming Apart - redsummer
https://www.city-journal.org/html/french-coming-apart-15125.html
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JPLeRouzic
This a very long article, the main theme is that different factions in France
are in a kind of soft war with a clear faction on the loosing side. They are
immigrants, the Elite and the older working class.

As a old Frenchman I would say two things that are self contradictory, first I
think this guy makes a good diagnostic of the current situation, second:
Things are not that simple, the last time France was a pleasant utopia was
before WWII. After that it had continously been a mess:

De Gaulle made a coup to get the power in 1958, Paratroopers were sent to
Paris[0], Corsica was briefly taken under military rules[0] and the IV
republic died quietly without blood bath. The 70" were nice but the 80" were
horrible economically speaking. After that it was the rise of Europe, which
closed plants but did not created jobs. Most of the economy is now controlled
by the state (56%).

Since 2008 we have lost most of the freedom that citizens enjoy under
democracy: Our parliament has no right, there are moral laws as in 1984,
generalized spying on citizens and soldiers in arms are everywhere in public
spaces.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Resurrection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Resurrection)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op%C3%A9ration_Corse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op%C3%A9ration_Corse)

~~~
astrodust
There's also the _Midnight in Paris_ theorem
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_in_Paris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_in_Paris))
where everyone's idea of a golden-age in Paris is someone else's least
favourite, and the true golden-age was actually an earlier era...

> The 70" were nice but the 80" were horrible economically speaking.

That's basically how it went for many countries in the Western world. The
1970s weren't bad, but the 1980s saw income inequality start to spike
completely out of control. Income for the average person stagnated, and in all
honestly has never really recovered.

France is a peculiar institution with a wild, tangled history, but it's not
immune to global trends.

~~~
agumonkey
Odd because the current adult generation, born in the 80s probably only
remember the fruits of the 70s tree: music, movies, games, fashion,
electronics.

~~~
astrodust
1970s: Economy is pretty shitty, but it's shitty for everyone equally.

1980s: Economy is doing alright but only for the 1%. Everyone else is stuck in
the shitty 1970s.

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chmaynard
I want to thank @redsummer for posting this fascinating article. Despite its
flaws, Hacker News is one of the best things going on the Internet right now,
especially for retired folks like me who have the time to wade through the new
stuff and find the occasional gem.

My takeaway is that globalization has winners and losers. The winners get to
keep the spoils and write the history books. The losers are debased and then
ignored.

~~~
justaguyonline
It really was a great read. Most importantly to me, I got a lot of insight
into American society by reading a bit about French society and politics.

It's things like this that make me wish I knew another language so I could
peer across that barrier and into another microcosm more often.

~~~
JPLeRouzic
I am a bit late to reply, but languages are changing also. The average written
French in media is now much poorer in vocabulary than it was before 1995, and
there now are many grammar mistakes. The language evolves continuously.

And the spoken French has incredibly changed in the last decades. Most young
people would have problem to understand the spoken French of 1900.

That said, French (like English in GB, or German) spread a lot thanks to TV in
the 50'/60'. When I was young there was still old people speaking the local
language of their tiny part of Brittany.

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woodandsteel
This is an excellent and unsettling article. The problem is that neither the
old parties nor the new right have any solutions that would really solve the
problems.

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user5994461
Nothing to see. The article is not even about France or French, it's only
about Paris.

Paris is getting evermore expensive and people are driven away. Just like
every major city in the world. The people who already got a property are
golden, while everyone else will never manage to afford one.

Same issue with all the major cities: London, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, New York,
SF, Tokyo, Hong Kong...

~~~
JPLeRouzic
It is perhaps a global issue, but it has not much to do with Paris. I live in
one of the "rich" towns mentionned in the article (Rennes) and the
unemployment rate is an incredibly high 15%! The article is IMO more about a
state that had killed the private sector, which was previously providing good
jobs.

Now as you say, the middle class who made every efforts to get the magical
"Master in something", still do not have access to state sponsored housing and
do not either find any of the highly qualified jobs that were promised by
countless politicians.

The citizens whose parents emigrated decades here ago, are very angry toward
the state, even if they live in state social housing, because they have no
jobs either and they live constant harassment by police forces.

