The Comedy of Michel Barnier

France's political crisis doesn't seem to get much attention in the American press these days, but even so it continues.

The part of the rather tangled affair relevant to this post is that after Emmanuel Macron, in another display of his extreme incompetence (or duplicity) as a politician, forced an early election that actually left him in a weaker position than before from the standpoint of his backing in the country's legislature, and his ability to push through the unpopular "reforms" (read: neoliberal program) on which he is so bent, went on to further inflame much of French public opinion by giving those who had voted for the leftward grouping in parliament two middle fingers by forming a government with the right, in spite of its having had fewer votes and seats than they (and the not insignificant fact that they were far from wholly on board with his program). Having created this mess, Macron then appointed one Michel Barnier to the Prime Ministership.

In line with the magical thinking to which adherents of conventional wisdom are prone, they imagined that Barnier would somehow make the reforms Macron is determined to have get through parliament. Certainly the portion of the mainstream American press covering the matter, talking up Barnier as they generally do anyone who looks to them the part of an "experienced" right-wing Establishment politician--especially when his task is brutalizing working people--were ready to attribute to the man in question such powers.

Reality being what it is he Monsieur Barnier did not achieve the expected miracle, and a vote of no confidence resulted in his replacement in the post and the impossible task France's President had set before him after the shortest Prime Ministership in the history of the Fifth Republic.

Reporting on that Politico titled its piece "The Tragedy of Michel Barnier"--that choice of word, "tragedy," bespeaking such courtiers of the elite to ennoble figures like Barnier, in line with the old classical view that stories which see the powerful defeated are stories of "great men" done in by still greater forces than they, whereas the miseries of mere commoners are low comedy about fools getting exactly what they deserve. However, anyone of rational, modern, humane mind (I know, you don't see too many of these in the press, or on the Interweb for that matter) should be able to see in these elite hijinks the low comedy--and the tragedy in what is being inflicted by them on the people of France, Europe, and the world.