Scandals in Communist Frenchystan
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
This isn't actually true. There's two reasons that turnout in American elections is so low. For one thing, we have really shitty politicians. For another thing, American culture is more accepting of "You both suck. I'm not voting for either of you" as a valid choice in an election. In Europe, as I understand it, there's a harder cultural pressure to hold you nose and vote for the least bad option. To the point where some countries make it the law that you have to cast some vote. That would never fly here.
Very many countries also have at least some kind of proportional system which means that you actually have more than a binary choice in quite a few cases. I would say that the First Past The Post system is quite bad because it leaves a lot of people without proper representation - an extreme example I've seen was in Scotland where 40% of votes yielded 85% of the seats (or absurd numbers like that).
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@Kamil-Podlesak said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Let me guess: like in the most of USA, the election day is a workday (Tuesday)
Well yeah. When else would you have it? In the USA, the Constitution says you have to have the election on Tuesdays, so we have the elections on Tuesdays. (modulo a bunch of
stuff.)The history of it is that when they wrote the Constitution, most people were farmers and most farmers went into town on Tuesdays for the market. They picked Tuesday because that's the day most people were in town.
In the UK, elections are always on a Thursday. Because....??? Probably tradition. It certainly won't be a meaningful part of any law, but tradition is its own set of norms.
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@Rhywden said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
This isn't actually true. There's two reasons that turnout in American elections is so low. For one thing, we have really shitty politicians. For another thing, American culture is more accepting of "You both suck. I'm not voting for either of you" as a valid choice in an election. In Europe, as I understand it, there's a harder cultural pressure to hold you nose and vote for the least bad option. To the point where some countries make it the law that you have to cast some vote. That would never fly here.
Very many countries also have at least some kind of proportional system which means that you actually have more than a binary choice in quite a few cases. I would say that the First Past The Post system is quite bad because it leaves a lot of people without proper representation - an extreme example I've seen was in Scotland where 40% of votes yielded 85% of the seats (or absurd numbers like that).
I said "both" because I was talking about the US, but if you noticed I switched to "Do all of your candidates suck?" when I was asking @remi about France.
In the US, at least, our parties represent big enough coalitions that our minor party candidates are usually significantly worse than either the Democrat or the Republican. Our parties have internal factions that in Europe would be separate parties.
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@dkf said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@Kamil-Podlesak said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Let me guess: like in the most of USA, the election day is a workday (Tuesday)
Well yeah. When else would you have it? In the USA, the Constitution says you have to have the election on Tuesdays, so we have the elections on Tuesdays. (modulo a bunch of
stuff.)The history of it is that when they wrote the Constitution, most people were farmers and most farmers went into town on Tuesdays for the market. They picked Tuesday because that's the day most people were in town.
In the UK, elections are always on a Thursday. Because....??? Probably tradition. It certainly won't be a meaningful part of any law, but tradition is its own set of norms.
Y'know, sometimes I think some kind of commentary by the authors to laws and constitutional paragraphs would be a good thing. Like:
Here's the text of the law and this is why we wrote it and this is what we want to achieve with it.
At least that way you don't end up with absurdities where you try to frame a 18th century law into 21st century problems. Of course, the whole thing probably has other pitfalls.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@Rhywden said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
This isn't actually true. There's two reasons that turnout in American elections is so low. For one thing, we have really shitty politicians. For another thing, American culture is more accepting of "You both suck. I'm not voting for either of you" as a valid choice in an election. In Europe, as I understand it, there's a harder cultural pressure to hold you nose and vote for the least bad option. To the point where some countries make it the law that you have to cast some vote. That would never fly here.
Very many countries also have at least some kind of proportional system which means that you actually have more than a binary choice in quite a few cases. I would say that the First Past The Post system is quite bad because it leaves a lot of people without proper representation - an extreme example I've seen was in Scotland where 40% of votes yielded 85% of the seats (or absurd numbers like that).
I said "both" because I was talking about the US, but if you noticed I switched to "Do all of your candidates suck?" when I was asking @remi about France.
In the US, at least, our parties represent big enough coalitions that our minor party candidates are usually significantly worse than either the Democrat or the Republican. Our parties have internal factions that in Europe would be separate parties.
Yes, but over here you can vote for those factions directly. Not saying that our system is ideal - but a complete deadlock of the system has a rather low chance of happening (and usually leads to a new election).
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@dkf said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
In the UK, elections are always on a Thursday. Because....??? Probably tradition.
It might have well been written in the constitution then
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
the Ukrainian crisis (and the end of the COVID one) helping him a lot.
Funny, in Poland Ukrainian crisis would be the end of his career entirely.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
If absenteeism is 20% higher than it usually is (based on your rough estimate), do you have a guess as to why?
I do, but so does everyone, so don't take my word for any more than "everyone is an expert on everything."
The first thing to note is that this isn't a new phenomenon (and yesterday even had a bit less abstention than the same round in 2017!). So it's definitely not just a one-off thing that might have reasons unique to this time, and more some sort of deep societal trend.
Do you think it's a perception that none of the candidates are very good?
That is the main reason put forward by most analysts, although I personally do have a slightly less negative alternate vision of this that I've never heard elsewhere (so I may be spouting pure uninformed bullshit!), see at the end of this post.
Staying on your point for now, yes, typically a lot of "yellow vests" discontent was linked to people feeling that no one is standing for them (and yes, that included the extremes), and thus a lot of those people didn't bother to vote.
That part is worrying (to me, at least) because, again coupled with other things that e.g. yellow vests said, it shows there is a significant chunk of the population (maybe 25% or more) that feels that nothing in the society they live in fits their needs or ideas -- not even marginal extreme single-issue political parties or pressure groups (*). Regardless of anything that could go in the
about specific political ideas, having that large a group that's so out-of-step with the society they're in is... not good.In the second round of 2-rounds elections (president or parliamentary), it's often that the 2nd round candidates don't represent a large share of 1st round voters, so many people may feel that they have to pick the lesser of two evils and prefer not to vote. Typically this year, since we had 3 roughly equal mutually exclusive groups (far-left, centre, far-right), any 2nd round with 2 (**) of those was going to be highly unpleasant for a third of voters.
This is obvious in that 2nd rounds usually have a slightly higher abstention than 1st rounds.
That situation isn't too worrying to me. In the absolute I would prefer a world where everyone can find something not too unpalatable in the 2nd round but I also want world peace and a poney, so I'm not too hung up on that.
(*) in (variations of) first-past-the-post elections, arguably people supporting tiny groups may not bother to vote because they know those won't be elected, but that's less true in proportional elections, of which we have a few, and that show the exact same trend.
(**) there is a quirk of parliamentary elections where abstention matters. 2nd round candidates are the first 2 ones (if no one got 50+% in the 1st round) and any other candidate that got at least 12.5 of registered voters (not votes!). We can thus end up with 2nd round with 3 or 4 candidates (theoretically up to 8 but even 4 is extremely rare). With 50% of abstention, this meant the threshold to the 2nd round was 25% of votes, and it meant very few cases where it happened. This arguably matters as a 2nd round with more choice means, well, more choice, and this is also a part where our electoral system is clearly built around a relatively low expected abstention.
A perception that most of the Parliamentary seats are in areas that are pretty "safe" for whichever party holds them, so one individual vote is unlikely to matter?
That's a factor in many cases, and typically in 2017, when a new president was newly elected, there likely was a wide-spread perception that "he won the presidential election so he'll win the parliamentary ones as well, so why bother?" This happens in some other cases where a safe seat might see a lower turnaround, but generally speaking that's not a major factor.
When that happens, I don't see it as a huge issue. I personally consider that voting is a moral imperative, so I try and go (even if I end up voting blank) even in those cases, but I'm not too worried if other people follow that reasoning.
People being afraid of congregating indoors to vote because of COVID?
That partly was a factor for local elections that we had in 2020, but this wasn't a factor this year, no.
Now the last brick on my usual Wall'o'Text, my own unorthodox view, in particular due to my exposure to some other countries: I believe that some people don't bother to vote not because no candidate pleases them, but because they believe that all candidates will have the same impact on their lives -- which is somewhat similar in that no candidate is better than the other (in their eyes), but also not similar in that they may also think that the actual constraints of power will lead them to doing more or less the same thing.
Now I'll immediately say that this isn't very convincing, and even less for national elections. But I think it plays a role for local elections. At the city level, the city council only has a limited impact on what taxes they may rise or not, and they will all have to care about cleaning road, collecting garbage, maintaining primary schools etc. So yeah, sure, some people will want more vegetarian meals in school canteens, or build more cycling lanes, and those issues will sometime make national headlines. But in the end most councils will act fairly pragmatically within the bounds of what they can do, and "good" councils are more those that are led by motivated people than those who share your ideas on nation-wide ideas such as immigration or economy (since at the local level, they can't do much about those).
At the last local election a lot of commentators were worried when a lot of people who didn't vote said "I don't care who my local mayor is" but the way I see it, this isn't necessarily as big a problem as it may seem. You don't really care who your local grocer is either, as long as they sell you groceries. Sure, you may slightly prefer one brand to another, but on the whole... meh.
But again, this might just be me trying to be contrarian, so don't take that too seriously.
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@MrL said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
the Ukrainian crisis (and the end of the COVID one) helping him a lot.
Funny, in Poland Ukrainian crisis would be the end of his career entirely.
His position on that nowadays is becoming a bit more precarious internally as well. But in the first couple of months of the war, he enjoyed a rather large internal support.
He was also helped a lot by the fact that his two main opponents (Mélenchon and Le Pen) had in the past been very cosy to Putin, so they themselves were in a difficult position on that topic.
But from what I can read, there's definitely a hugely different view of the war in Eastern Europe (in particular Poland) and Western Europe. What is seen here as trying to keep all options open, is seen there are dealing with the devil or betrayal and capitulation.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
"yellow vests"
My brain wants to conflate "vests" with "vespa" (wasp) to come up with "yellowjackets":
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
But from what I can read, there's definitely a hugely different view of the war in Eastern Europe (in particular Poland) and Western Europe. What is seen here as trying to keep all options open, is seen there are dealing with the devil or betrayal and capitulation.
Germany's actions are openly* likened to Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and France to Vichy.
Putin's butler is the mildest how Macron gets called.
* openly on the internet, in official channels it's all kissy-kissy we are in it together
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@HardwareGeek well, some people who were wildly gesticulating around got pretty badly stung, but in the end yellow vests didn't achieve much except being themselves crushed, so it's perhaps not a bad image.
Filed under: not sure if
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@MrL Conversly, Poles are similarly seen here as, somewhat understandably but still unreasonably, frothing at the mouth.
As I said,
.(note that I'm not endorsing either view here, this thread is already close-enough to the
...)
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@MrL Conversly, Poles are similarly seen here as, somewhat understandably but still unreasonably, frothing at the mouth.
Poles are acutely aware of that. One positive thing in all of this is the reality check - if there was any belief around here that France will help when shit hits the fan, it's gone.
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@MrL said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
But from what I can read, there's definitely a hugely different view of the war in Eastern Europe (in particular Poland) and Western Europe. What is seen here as trying to keep all options open, is seen there are dealing with the devil or betrayal and capitulation.
Germany's actions are openly* likened to Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and France to Vichy.
Believe me, a lot of Germans don't think of Scholz too highly either.
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@Rhywden Duh, he's a career politician, and before that he was a
walking, talking slime moldlawyer. People are known to hold rabid dogs in higher esteem (regardless of the political philosophy of any particular politician).
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@HardwareGeek said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@Rhywden Duh, he's a career politician, and before that he was a
walking, talking slime moldlawyer. People are known to hold rabid dogs in higher esteem (regardless of the political philosophy of any particular politician).We actually have some career politicians who do a very good job - Baerbock and Habeck.
Habeck, as one example, has the ability to explain his reasoning and his actions in an understandable way which makes it clear where he's coming from and why that lead to a particular decision, without sounding condescending. An ability that Scholz lacks completely.
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@MrL said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
One positive thing in all of this is the reality check - if there was any belief around here that France will help when shit hits the fan, it's gone.
I'm not sure how France would react in case of an actual direct attack against Poland (and following NATO reaction). I don't think it would simply shrug and walk away, but it certainly wouldn't be the one leading the fight (inb4 various jokes about France military prowess, go ahead...).
But yeah, other than that, France doesn't give a fuck about what's happening East of the Rhine...
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@MrL said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
One positive thing in all of this is the reality check - if there was any belief around here that France will help when shit hits the fan, it's gone.
I'm not sure how France would react in case of an actual direct attack against Poland
There were (are?) two competing views on this around here.
One is "they'll do the same thing they did in 39*", the other is "we are in NATO, it's different now".I heard people from the second camp correct everyone around them with "but Ukraine is not in NATO" in March. They fell rather silent since then.
* Declare war to formally fulfill treaties, do nothing and wait for Poland to get murdered, go back to business as usual.
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@MrL Want to bet that Russia will go and "accidentally" shoot a single 9mm round over the Finnish border in the near future?
Because when the war really starts, that'll give NATO members the "but that war started before Finland was a full NATO member" cop-out.
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@MrL said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
One is "they'll do the same thing they did in 39*", the other is "we are in NATO, it's different now".
My own guess is that France would do both.
After having declared war (and that's assuming that NATO as a whole actually holds and its members (not just France) do declare war...), they wouldn't sit at home because it doesn't make sense (ostensibly in 1939 it made some sort of sense to wait for the Germans, though of course history proved that strategy very wrong, but it's not obvious that attacking would have worked any better).
Instead, they would probably send some token force to the East, but not large enough to actually matter (as if any European country can really do that...), and/or trying as hard as they can to keep these forces outside of the main action.
But it really would depend how the other NATO members were to react, and how public opinion would look like, which in turn would depend on the exact circumstances of Russia attacking, so this is all far too vague to make any prediction.
Also, circling back to the start of this sub-thread, if Macron were to loose power (= be forced to name a prime minister and government from either far-right or far-left), both alternatives are very cold towards NATO, and friendly towards Russia, so it's likely they would be even less likely than Macron to do anything.
I heard people from the second camp correct everyone around them with "but Ukraine is not in NATO" in March. They fell rather silent since then.
Well they're not wrong. Ukraine wasn't, and still isn't, in NATO, and enough noise happened around the idea of NATO in the past few months to make that a not-negligible factor. Whether it would really actually matter is a different question, but it's definitely not totally irrelevant.
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@acrow said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Because when the war really starts, that'll give NATO members the "but that war started before Finland was a full NATO member" cop-out.
I agree with you here. I do believe that NATO is indeed relevant-enough that if Russia attacks another country, they'll be careful to do it in a way that lets other NATO countries some wriggle space.
Which both means that NATO isn't going to be that useful to protect some countries, but also that NATO is still relevant enough to somewhat constrain how Russia acts. Whether this "better than nothing" is the best that can be realistically achieved is anyone's guess.
(ETA: remember that the alternative of "no NATO" is what happened to Ukraine, where if they had been steam-rolled in a couple of days as many people initially expected, NATO would have just shrugged and walked away)
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
they wouldn't sit at home because it doesn't make sense (ostensibly in 1939 it made some sort of sense to wait for the Germans, though of course history proved that strategy very wrong, but it's not obvious that attacking would have worked any better).
It's actually very obvious. If France attacked immediately, WWII would not happen at all.
Germans took almost everything they had to Poland, leaving a skeleton crew on western border. Siegfried Line in 39 was a joke. The whole plan hanged on assumption that France will not attack.
Well they're not wrong. Ukraine wasn't, and still isn't, in NATO, and enough noise happened around the idea of NATO in the past few months to make that a not-negligible factor. Whether it would really actually matter is a different question, but it's definitely not totally irrelevant.
It really does not matter anymore, when mass graves are excavated on the other side of the border and your 'ally' proclaims that we have to "let
HitlerPutin save face".
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@MrL said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
they wouldn't sit at home because it doesn't make sense (ostensibly in 1939 it made some sort of sense to wait for the Germans, though of course history proved that strategy very wrong, but it's not obvious that attacking would have worked any better).
It's actually very obvious. If France attacked immediately, WWII would not happen at all.
Germans took almost everything they had to Poland, leaving a skeleton crew on western border. Siegfried Line in 39 was a joke. The whole plan hanged on assumption that France will not attack.
Yes but no. Germans only could do that because the official doctrine of France was to sit behind the Maginot line! So if France had attacked, it would have either meant that suddenly in a couple of days they would have completely overturned decades of military doctrine, which is firmly in the territory of pure fiction (whole countries do not change their doctrine, in which they've invested all their energies for years and years, in a single day and without some good military reason), or that for the decades before they had built a different military doctrine and then Germany would have been aware of it and would have prepared differently.
Basically, by 1939, France simply could not go on the offensive. They had abandoned that option somewhere in the 1920's or 30's, and absolutely everyone in Europe knew it.
So saying "if France had attacked [in 1939, and everything else until 1939 happening the way it did]" is the same as saying "if a meteor had fallen down on Berlin and killed Hitler." In theory it could have happened, but it was so unlikely and unrelated to anything else that it makes little sense to try and look at that, except if writing pure fiction (but not history).
A better discussion might be why France chose that doctrine (in the immediate aftermath of WW1, part of the answer is obvious, but that's not the full answer of course), and then what other doctrine they could have chosen (De Gaulle famously tried to move the doctrine in the late 1930's but it was too little, too late) and then play "what if" in 1939. But you have to adapt German's operations in response to that, so you can't just take the historical deployment in 1939 and assume it would have happened unchanged.
It really does not matter anymore, when mass graves are excavated on the other side of the border and your 'ally' proclaims that we have to "let
HitlerPutin save face".... aaaand we're back to my "Poles are similarly seen here as, somewhat understandably but still unreasonably, frothing at the mouth."
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@MrL said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
they wouldn't sit at home because it doesn't make sense (ostensibly in 1939 it made some sort of sense to wait for the Germans, though of course history proved that strategy very wrong, but it's not obvious that attacking would have worked any better).
It's actually very obvious. If France attacked immediately, WWII would not happen at all.
Germans took almost everything they had to Poland, leaving a skeleton crew on western border. Siegfried Line in 39 was a joke. The whole plan hanged on assumption that France will not attack.
Yes but no. Germans only could do that because the official doctrine of France was to sit behind the Maginot line! So if France had attacked, it would have either meant that suddenly in a couple of days they would have completely overturned decades of military doctrine, which is firmly in the territory of pure fiction (whole countries do not change their doctrine, in which they've invested all their energies for years and years, in a single day and without some good military reason), or that for the decades before they had built a different military doctrine and then Germany would have been aware of it and would have prepared differently.
Basically, by 1939, France simply could not go on the offensive. They had abandoned that option somewhere in the 1920's or 30's, and absolutely everyone in Europe knew it.
So saying "if France had attacked [in 1939, and everything else until 1939 happening the way it did]" is the same as saying "if a meteor had fallen down on Berlin and killed Hitler." In theory it could have happened, but it was so unlikely and unrelated to anything else that it makes little sense to try and look at that, except if writing pure fiction (but not history).
That's curious, because German generals were pretty sure France will invade. It was a major disagreement between Hitler and the army (in fact Hitler himself wasn't sure, and called it a great gamble after the fact).
The fact that Hitler was right was the final blow to army's independence, as generals started seeing him as a messiah from then on.... aaaand we're back to my "Poles are similarly seen here as, somewhat understandably but still unreasonably, frothing at the mouth."
Mass graves tend to do that to us. We are just irrational like that.
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@MrL said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
That's curious, because German generals were pretty sure France will invade.
Well they weren't entirely wrong, but the offensive was so half-hearted that it never could achieve anything. And the thing is, it was all in line with French political mood of the 30's and military doctrine. Typically, the day-to-day front line newspaper chronicles that gave the French name to the Phoney War are pretty clear in how French army and population were not really geared towards an offensive and felt way more secure behind the Maginot line than going in what would have been expected to be a repeat of WW1 doomed mass attacks (which was somewhat reinforced by the failure of that limited single attack!).
So perhaps the German generals were wrong in their assessment of France. Though Hitler still had to compose with the army's command at that time, so if they had good convincing arguments for a large-scale French/British attack, they would have found a way to mitigate against it. But they didn't. Part of it was that they had the initiative (and intelligence at the time being far more limited, the Allies only had a very partial view of where German forces were!), but that's not all. And anything that was said post-war ("we would have been crushed if they had attacked") is highly tainted by hindsight, so not necessarily very useful to try and understand what was actually happening in their heads at the time.
I'm not saying that the Allies could not have supported Poland more strongly, or more effectively. Clearly the Allies did let Poland down. But I don't think that, by 1939, it really ever was possible that the Allied forces would go on a German-style full-scale invasion. You need to tweak more than the mind of a couple of generals to make that outcome likely. I believe that, at best, they could have kept a moderate pressure on the German lines, but probably never really enough to break through whatever light forces were left to defend Germany, and pursue that hypothetical break-through in a strategic way.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@MrL said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
That's curious, because German generals were pretty sure France will invade.
Well they weren't entirely wrong, but the offensive was so half-hearted that it never could achieve anything. And the thing is, it was all in line with French political mood of the 30's and military doctrine. Typically, the day-to-day front line newspaper chronicles that gave the French name to the Phoney War are pretty clear in how French army and population were not really geared towards an offensive and felt way more secure behind the Maginot line than going in what would have been expected to be a repeat of WW1 doomed mass attacks (which was somewhat reinforced by the failure of that limited single attack!).
So perhaps the German generals were wrong in their assessment of France. Though Hitler still had to compose with the army's command at that time, so if they had good convincing arguments for a large-scale French/British attack, they would have found a way to mitigate against it. But they didn't. Part of it was that they had the initiative (and intelligence at the time being far more limited, the Allies only had a very partial view of where German forces were!), but that's not all. And anything that was said post-war ("we would have been crushed if they had attacked") is highly tainted by hindsight, so not necessarily very useful to try and understand what was actually happening in their heads at the time.
I'm not saying that the Allies could not have supported Poland more strongly, or more effectively. Clearly the Allies did let Poland down. But I don't think that, by 1939, it really ever was possible that the Allied forces would go on a German-style full-scale invasion. You need to tweak more than the mind of a couple of generals to make that outcome likely. I believe that, at best, they could have kept a moderate pressure on the German lines, but probably never really enough to break through whatever light forces were left to defend Germany, and pursue that hypothetical break-through in a strategic way.
Yes, that's the whole point - Allies could, but didn't want to.
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@MrL but my point is that it's not obvious that what they could have done would have been enough to significantly change Poland's fate (especially since Poland collapsed so quickly that the Germans would likely have had time to finish taking over Poland and transport enough troops back to the West in time to stop or significantly slow down an Allied attack).
To truly change the course of the war at this point, they would have had to go on an all-out attack immediately as soon as Germany attacked Poland, which simply wasn't in their list of realistic options.
Again, I'm not saying Allies shouldn't have attacked anyway -- in hindsight, they probably should have. But I don't think that it ultimately would have changed things that much, at least in the short term. In the medium term, I believe the Allied armies wouldn't have gone very far (as they did in the Saar), then later would have collapsed in a similar way as they did, just maybe along different lines.
Still, that by itself might have been enough to tip France into keeping fighting from Algeria rather than capitulating, since that decision hinged on very few choices. Which consequently might have meant a different war in the Mediterranean and so on, but there's too much possible divergence to make anything else than a guess at this point. It's all "possibly," "hypothetically," "maybe."
And maybe relevant to this line of thinking, you can build the hypothetical of France staying in the war even without changing their initial actions (so without needing to change the reaction to Poland's invasion). In fact, a group of historians played that game some years ago and wrote an interesting alternate history out of it -- it's fiction, but very well informed and close to historical facts (sadly I can't remember the name and besides it's in French), and it all branches out on Weygand not capitulating (or being replaced as Commander-in-Chief by a more sanguine general, I don't remember, but the point is that this tiny change is something that could very well have happened, given all the political context, and is more likely than a large scale attack on Germany).
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@MrL said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Yes, that's the whole point - Allies could, but didn't want to.
And didn't have their forces deployed in a configuration that would have been able to, at least not immediately.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@MrL but my point is that it's not obvious that what they could have done would have been enough to significantly change Poland's fate
Germany had pitiful forces on west border, it would collapse easily. Allies would pour into Reich with little opposition. Hasty retreat from Poland wouldn't be able to stop them from controlling large portion of Germany. Their generals knew that - that's exactly why they opposed the idea of attacking Poland.
(especially since Poland collapsed so quickly that the Germans would likely have had time to finish taking over Poland and transport enough troops back to the West in time to stop or significantly slow down an Allied attack).
It collapsed so quickly because Allies did nothing, which convinced USSR that it's safe to invade on 17th.
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@MrL you keep repeating things I already replied to, so I'll spare everyone from reading more walls of text and stop this discussion. I think you're ignoring the realities of the situation at the time and what could realistically have happened in favour of an hypothetical alternative that to me looks like a pure flight of fancy.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I think you're ignoring the realities of the situation at the time and what could realistically have happened in favour of an hypothetical alternative that to me looks like a pure flight of fancy.
And I think you are constantly floating between "didn't want to", "couldn't" and "wouldn't work" to avoid admitting Allies duplicity and cowardice.
on stopping the discussion.
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@acrow said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@MrL Want to bet that Russia will go and "accidentally" shoot a single 9mm round over the Finnish border in the near future?
Because when the war really starts, that'll give NATO members the "but that war started before Finland was a full NATO member" cop-out.I read an analysis a few months back which stated that the only obligation NATO article 5 actually gives is to contribute to the war effort. The weapon shipments many NATO countries are sending to Ukraine would satisfy the article 5 requirements.
However, there is also a mutual defence article somewhere in the EU not-a-constitution. This requires all other EU countries to assist "by all means in their power", a much stronger requirement than the NATO one. And last I checked, Finland was already an EU member.
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@PleegWat said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
However, there is also a mutual defence article somewhere in the EU not-a-constitution. This requires all other EU countries to assist "by all means in their power", a much stronger requirement than the NATO one. And last I checked, Finland was already an EU member.
Except the EU has a history of ignoring inconvenient clauses in their agreements. Shared debt, anyone? Dublin accords?
Whereas the NATO has no other purpose than mutual defence. So if it fails to act, then it can be considered null and void altogether. And the other NATO participants don't want that. So I'd consider NATO the stronger agreement.
Also, even if all Finland got was exact same weapons shipments as Ukraine got, when Russia eventually comes knocking, it'll still have been worth the trouble of joining.
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Back to French politics!
The left-wing coalition that got the largest share of seats, after Macron, is already showing signs of fracturing.
Its leader (and leader of the largest component, Mélenchon) said that they should form a single group in the Assembly. Now a "group" in the Assembly has a special meaning, it gives them some money but more importantly in this case it gives them some control over what is debated in the Assembly, powers to launch some investigations and so on. MPs still always vote by themselves, but the "group" in which they are gives them a bit more clout.
Ostensibly, this is so that the left has a larger "group" than the far-Right (Le Pen), so they could claim to be "the" opposition. If the coalition breaks down into its constituting parties, Mélenchon's France Insoumise only has about half the coalition's seats, and is smaller than Le Pen's Rassemblement National, so she would get the (totally unofficial and with no actual impact except in medias) title of "largest opposition group." But obviously in this case, what Mélenchon wants is to keep the upper hand over all the other parties.
So immediately as he said that, all the other parties of his coalition said variations of things like
, 
and 
.Similarly, Mélenchon has already said they will ask for no-confidence vote into the Prime Minister, and the other left parties have pointedly refused to say whether they will support this vote (some of the most moderate ones are likely to abstain in such a vote, as they will want to influence government policies, but not to cause a crisis by making the government fall).
Although he's keeping quiet on that, it's likely Macron sees this with glee -- if it ever comes to calling an early election to try and find a majority, and the left alliance has exploded, they would probably struggle to recreate the coalition, which would probably mean less votes for them overall.
(also I can't help but be amused by the fact that Mélenchon's campaign was about how he wanted to give back more power to the Assembly, and yet he himself wasn't candidate, and even now he is still making the biggest announcements rather that, say, someone from his party who's actually an MP...)
Meanwhile, Le Pen is already showing what I sort of expected i.e. she's already a bit on the side lines. The debate is about whether some moderate right MPs will support or not Macron (turning them, in effect, into kingmakers), and about this left coalition, but Le Pen is until now stuck into an opposition that nobody talks to. Of course it's only been 3 days since the election, it's far too early for any real work to have started.
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Also if you read French, this interview covers pretty well the current situation, in a rather non-partisan way. I could say this guys agrees with me but more modestly it's probably that my opinions matches those of a more informed person.
GRAND ENTRETIEN. Législatives 2022 : "Ce qui nous guette, ce n'est pas tant le chaos ou la crise, mais plutôt l'immobilisme", estime le chercheur Olivier Rozenberg
La coalition présidentielle Ensemble ! a échoué à conserver sa majorité absolue lors des élections législatives. Le chercheur, spécialiste de l'étude des parlements, évoque les conséquences de cette Assemblée fracturée sur la vie politique.
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It's been a long time since there hasn't been a wall of text here, and the past few days (and days to come) are a nice moment to fix that!
So Macron's government doesn't have an absolute majority in parliament, even adding to it a couple of junior parties that aren't exactly his but that support him.
Roughly, Macron has 45% of seats, the left (under the leadership, though very fragmented, of the far-left Mélenchon) has 25%, the far-right (Rassemblement National, under Le Pen) has 15% and the moderate right (Les Républicains, under... whoever it is, I can't remember and it's unlikely any of you have heard of him) has 10%. Plus some rounding errors in minor isolated parties, whatever.
At the beginning of the summer, Macron still managed to pass a couple of laws, mostly thanks to support from the right (but also a couple of votes from here and there). But it was easy, since those laws were essentially about subsidising energy prices so everyone was in favour of it (at most they complained it wasn't going far enough, but nobody was truly against it).
Things are starting to become more serious (funny?) now, as the government is trying to pass things like the budget for next year.
Nobody agrees on it (more on this from our political analyst Pikachu...), so after a few days the government decided to do what they'd said beforehand that they would do, and that everyone was expecting them to do. Namely, they used "article 49.3 of the constitution" which in essence means "it's my way or the highway:" the law is adopted without any debate or vote, but any group of MPs can put forward a motion of no-confidence. If adopted, the government (prime minister) gets the boot.
Of course all political sides are now going on overdrive, with the government saying that this is an entirely legal way to do things (which it is) and that all previous governments (left and right) used it many times in the past (which they did), and that they are just taking the "responsible" position of not letting the opposition block things just because they don't want to compromise. The oppositions are saying that this is a way of suppressing the democratic debate (which it is) and that the government only does that because it doesn't want to compromise. Pick your side.
Now the funny bit is that as soon as the government triggered this "article 49.3," not one but two motions of no-confidence were put forward! One by the far-right, one by the far-left. And both groups immediately announced that they would not vote the motion from each other. Meaning that this guarantees that none of the motions will pass and the government won't fall.
/ 
/ ..., pick your emoji.In effect, everyone is happy with the situation and keeps posturing about it, but no one wants to take the risk to actually topple the government (which would likely end up, with a couple of intermediate steps, in Macron calling new parliamentary elections).
So we're set up to continue this way for some time. After this finance law, there is immediately another finance law (for social security) that is coming up, and that will likely trigger another "article 49.3" (this cannot be triggered all the times, but the parliamentary rules are such that here it can be), this week or the next. Then in a couple of months Macron will likely try again to pass his pensions' reform, which likely will end up the same way.
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@boomzilla Spot on.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
two motions of no-confidence were put forward! One by the far-right, one by the far-left. And both groups immediately announced that they would not vote the motion from each other.
And in a twist that actually no-one predicted, the far-right (Le Pen) decided to actually vote for the other motion (as well as hers, they are two separate votes)! This didn't change the end result (motion rejected), but this is a great political coup by Le Pen, and it's hilarious to watch.
The left got their panties in a huge twist when they suddenly realised that, shock and horror, their votes were on the same side as those of the far-right! A couple of MPs from the left even went as far as abstaining on their own motion, to make sure they'll never share anything with Le Pen.
A few MPs also revealed that, previous to submitting the motion, they tried to phrase so that Le Pen could never agree with it (i.e. include something about immigration), but that this was rejected by the rest of their group (and in particular the far-left). The way it was reported by some was "the far-left were so hell-bent on making a motion that could have a chance to actually pass (by being supported by the far-right) that they refused to exclude the far-right." Apparently it's a bad thing to actually want your motion to pass (though obviously no-one really wanted it to pass, but still). Amazing.
The other side (moderate right) is also quite annoyed, because they are nominally in the opposition, but were the only opposition that didn't vote the motion, and thus were what caused the motion to fail. So everyone in the opposition, right and left, now screams at them for actually being not in the opposition.
Macron... doesn't know whether to smile or cringe. Seeing the oppositions uniting isn't a good thing for him, of course, but then again seeing the oppositions destroying themselves with their own dumbness is probably quite enjoyable for him. Besides, his government won't fall until the moderate right stops supporting him, and given the political climate it's very likely that in a new election the right would loose the few seats they have, so they absolutely do not want to take that risk. So the situation hasn't really changed for him in the end.
Great shitshow, , would watch again.
Next episode is this week as, as predicted, the government has used the "article 49.3" again for a different law. But the situation hasn't really changed since last week, still no-one wants the government to fall and having the same political theatre twice in two weeks isn't really appealing to anyone (this isn't the UK
), so there will be a no-confidence motion, it will be rejected, and everyone will move on.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
(this isn't the UK
)Everyone's expecting the UK's shitshow rating to go down now. Can't really go much higher than out of 5 without actually starting a major civil war.
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@dkf said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
actually starting a major civil war
: hold my beer, WinterIndyRef2 is coming.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@dkf said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
actually starting a major civil war
: hold my beer, WinterIndyRef2 is coming.and it doesn't matter if they don't vote the correct way, by the looks of things...
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How is this topic not in the Garage?
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@loopback0 said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
How is this topic not in the Garage?
I've wondered that this entire time but since it was born outside, and is verging on 500 posts, one presumes everyone who might care long since ignored this topic.
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@Arantor I think the main reason that this isn't in the garage is probably because it is (mostly) about
, and somehow that fact might be enough to prevent heated debates?
And you've got to let @remi have at least one topic for his walls-ofs-texts.When we start commenting on similarities in not-
I worry that this might turn into the garage after all, lets not do that.
Or maybe its not in the garage because it hard to argue against the premise of the walls-of-text which basically states "policitians from all sides are idiots sometimes"
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@loopback0 said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
How is this topic not in the Garage?
It never was and nobody really asked for it to be moved there, so...
I'm also trying to keep it not too controversial (and limit my shitposting to short things with (I hope!) no ambiguity that it's shitposting, like my
comment above), and it has worked until now, again based on how nobody really complained. There were even a couple of subthreads with real discussions (well, as much as there ever is...) and that ended without drama.You can either see it as an anomaly (that, again, hasn't bothered anyone enough to get it rectified), or the proof that political stuff can peacefully exist outside of the garage when people (from all sides) are a bit restrained (and probably also don't care too much, though again some subthreads weren't really of that kind).
I'm of the second opinion, and if enough people get bothered and get a moderator to
and move it, I'll be a bit disappointed, but won't make a fuss about it.
