The French and Us

We and the French, forever united by the Marquis de Lafayette.

At the age of 24 he joined George Washington in the field and became one of the American leader’s youngest and most outstanding officers and strategists (strategy not being a long suit of Washington).

In mid-1781, Washington granted Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton’s wish to command in combat at Yorktown. There served under Continental Army General Lafayette while a French fleet blockaded the English (as Benjamin Franklin had worked assiduously and succesfully to charm the French in Paris to secure their arms, military and naval participation, and money.)

Arriving in France 150 years later, it was only fitting that Gen. John (Blackjack) Pershing declared, “Lafayette we are here.” We were “over there” and we would have to come again.

The French and Americans forever have had this love-hate relationship as we were again so rightfully reminded June 6 this year.

But where are we now? Where is France now? Now in this pregnant moment in history, this moment when both nations are in danger of slipping off the edge, of cascading into sordid eras of militant, mindless, ignorance; slipping into eras when mindless nativism and native Fascists rise ruthlessly in both

Understand, Fascists do not govern, they rule and they ruin. If Donald Trump, American Fuhrer, Duce, Cuadillo – call him what you will, and they all mean leader – becomes president he will not govern. Others will for him. He will rule. They will wreck.

Be assured as you read this that he knows nothing, knows none of the little of American history in this piece. Let us not forget then when president he said, he actually exclaimed, “Lincoln was a Republican, who knew?”

Trump is an ignorant, deranged beast, inellectually savage, incapable of knowing or caring about what is true, and interested only in his photo ops, adulatory mobs, fake physical appearance and others’ physical appearances for the camera.

No, Trump will not govern, he will rule, as the Supreme Court has declared, turning 1787 on its head – as a king. So much for original intent, which the founders abundantly and definitievely said meant and should never again mean a king.

He may not have a plan, he never has a plan. But those around him do. We have seen the plan, they’ve published it. It is the 20/25 plan and their latest innovation is a call to resume nuclear testing. Imagine that.

It is a plan to dismantle the American government, to repress all who disagree or dare to disagree and, worse, to pummel and punish them.

“It can’t happen here?” Oh really, you think so?

It has been happening here for years as Trump and his henchmen and women have, like alien creatures, invaded, taken over and, being the political and social cannibals they are, eaten from inside out the body of an American pollitical party that exists now in name only. It is happening. If Trump wins, it will have happened.

Until now wherever France’s politics have taken the French, a majority of them have known one thing. They do not want again to live under or in Vichy France.

They or at least a majority of the French have understood that Le Pen – and before her, her father and their party -represent that and far worse – represent the worst of and in France, represent the Velodrome deportations by the gendarmes for the Germans in 1942, represent the traitor Petain and the quisling Lavalle in Vichy.

To elect Trump here is to elect Vichy or worse than Vichy here in American terms. To elect Penn and her Party is to elect Vichy in France and worse than Vichy.

A real example where we might be going? Among recent columns in the New York Times along with many about the Biden debate debacle, Gaza, Ukraine, and all that, is a piece about diet and retail food choices.

It reports what other nations are doing to regulate food and drink packaging messaging to indicate risks to health they contain in sugars and other additive substances.

The piece promotes federal health and food regulation to establish clearer health messaging on packaged comestilbles.

It should have been revised to note the impact of the ruling by the mob of six on the U.S. Supreme Court when on Friday they upended the 1984 high court judicial Chevron doctrine.

Until Friday, that jurisprudence had been adhered to for 40 years by federal courts giving deference to regulatory agency expertise and informed, educated ability with judicial respect for Stare Decisis.

It is why you can look at the back of a food package and learn its percentage of sodium, sugar and the like. It is why we have rules and regulations on clear air. Regulation is why Boeing has to explain its door problem, why it even has a flying door problem.

Under the court’s new rule the food industry will be able to stop any further such information being given to the public. And be sure it do that as will every other industry seek to rip apart necessary public regulation. You do not have to have been a public regulator as I was to understand that most basic fact in a nation of 340 million people.

These justices, six of them at least, do not know the law or the Constitution. Then how can they know everything? AI is busy learning everything and even it can’t.

A law may say a public agency must maintain order on a train and the appropriate agency shall adopt regulations to govern such order. The agency not the law, will say that means you can’t spit or urinate or smear feces in a rail car. That is called regulation.

This is but one example of what is to come. And it will come to pass as will the jails of the mind, but also of the body. So will the camps.

Oh but you say, we have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights?

Ha -ha and ha again. Those elected from and those put on the courts from Trump world will as the court did Friday, ride roughshod across them. How do we know? Listen to what they say, what Trump says. Read what they say they will do, what they say in writing they will have him do. Look at Judge Cannon, look at Alito giving his American impression of Roland Friesler.

Hitler and his party achieved their highest, pre-chancellorship election result in June 1933 at 37%. In December that year he slipped to 32%. He became chancellor on Jan. 30, 1934.

Three months later his party scored its highest election result, still with all power and his left opponents banned from the election, just 42%. After that it was too late. He didn’t have to defeat his opponents in elections. He had them locked them up in the camps. Germany had no more elections.

But is this all so much arcane German history or is there a present American anology? And one for the French? Why go into all that? Because it is in its way a prelude.

Our presidential elecitons are governed by an 18th Century white male oligarchy’s mechanism, the Electoral College. They put it in their Constitution, a political deal in that moment in late 1787, to insulate government,their government, from the public. It has done that three times so far in this century. Three times since 2020 the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote but lost the presidency in the Electoral College.

Germany in 1933? France now? What’s the link to us, to the U.S. today? Simple, it’s democracy. You keep it or you lose it and if you lose it you are lost with it.

First projections from France, which are always right on the mark, indicate the Fascists preliminary win at about 34% of the vote Sunday June 30,but not a majority in the National Assembly. The allied left received 28% of the vote, and Macron’s right-center fell to 21%.

There are 577 National Assembly districts in Metropolitan and overseas France. Candidates are selected in and from each district.The final decision will be made tomorrow, July 7, 2024 in a second round. A candidate must have 12% to go forward to the second round – not 12% of the first round district vote turnout, but 12% of the registered voters in the district.

But they don’t have to go forward.They can withdraw to help another candidate. A Macron candidate in third place could withdraw to help one on the left, or vice versa.

The big if is whether the center and left factions can agree to back their strongest candidates, withdraw their weakest ones and prevail in unity against the Facists.

Macron’s center right is malleable. The issue is the left alliance because based on past performance it will likely resist amalgamation. We will know the final result Sunday.

Will that result tell us it can’t happen here or will it tell us it is going to happen here as well?

Make no mistake, this election, our election Nov. 4, is the one in which finally we will find out whether Sinclair Lewis was a prophet? Or if we need to announce to France, to Lafayette, that we have succumbed, forget us, we are not coming ever again.

We and the French, bound in history, driven by the same devils, together in the present.