Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Voting for Hope in France

By Kelly Cogswell

The first round of the presidential election is over, and it's down to the centrist Emmanuel Macron and the candidate of the extreme right, Marine Le Pen. I think he'll win. God, I hope so. In many ways, he was the most progressive in the pack, emphasizing education, human rights, social mobility, economic justice (achieved through reform rather than revolution), and the democratic process. It is to his credit that he was, and is, the candidate most hated by Putin, partly because nine of the other ten candidates wanted to leave Europe, not stay and push for reform.

My girlfriend’s been campaigning for Macron for weeks, going door to door in our modest Paris neighborhood, leafleting at metro stops, and in the outdoor food markets.

Here, in the 11th arrondissement, situated between Place de la Nation and Belleville, she saw a clear racial divide among voters. Young white lefties mostly stumped for the left-wing populist, Jean-Luc Melenchon, but almost everyone with roots in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, West Africa, happily took Macron's fliers and stopped to chat, even grabbing my girlfriend's arm, assuring her at length that God was on their side. "Don't worry, we'll win."

One was impressed that on a trip to Algeria, Macron acknowledged that French colonialism had included crimes against humanity. More importantly, he refused to recant, hedge, or soften his words, even though there was a total uproar afterwards that set back his campaign.

Another liked his plans to improve schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods, but also offer retraining for the unemployed, and continued education for everyone in this new world where technology and information advances rapidly.

Others support his plans to modernize the fossilized economy and create jobs in this country with 9.6% unemployment, making it easier for them to start new businesses, from small law firms to nail salons. They are tired of being offered handouts instead of jobs, palliative care instead of access to social mobility, which begins quite literally with public transportation. Out in the Paris banlieues, the suburban ghettoes, it’s a lengthy and expensive process to get to jobs in the city, assuming you can find one. They applaud when Macron calls it “house arrest”.

Like him, they see plenty to criticize in Europe, but they also embrace it. They understand a Frexit would be an economic disaster for France, and probably the end of the European Union. They know that retreats into nationalism are never good for anyone, particularly for minorities. Immigrant bashing is Britain’s new pastime, like in Trump’s white nationalist U.S.

They are glad that Macron is young, and hopeful, but pragmatic. Many, like my girlfriend, have seen what happens when authoritarian populists come to power, and are quite certain that utopias of the left and of the right, like coalmines, and salvation by old-time manufacturing, are pipe dreams that belong to the last century.

Unlike the white French, few of them consider Macron tainted by the three and a half years he spent in an investment bank. One immigrant I know considers the experience a plus. If you want to reform an economy, it helps to have real world experience on how they operate, and to accept that globalization is as much of a fact as mechanization. It's how you handle it that counts.

Women's rights and gender parity in his movement En Marche are an important part of Macron’s platform. He's also recovered his footing on LGBT issues even though he stumbled trying to reach out to right-wing voters that had opposed marriage equality.

Last Monday, we went to a big public meeting, and Macron's supporters represented, as they claim, the face of France, including an enthusiastic range of ages, races, genders, ethnicities, accents. Big screens broadcast images of the crowd, and when it showed two dykes who were surprised to see themselves there, they suddenly smiled, turned to each other and kissed, and the crowd went wild with cheers and applause. A few minutes later, it was two men kissing, who also got applause.

When Macron finally spoke, I found myself agreeing with nearly everything he said, especially his insistence on complexity, and his use of the phrase, "en même temps," at the same time. He was comfortable expressing pride in the ideas of the Enlightenment, while at the same time acknowledging that France hadn’t achieved them. That France had to modernize the economy and create job growth, but at the same time continue to protect the vulnerable. That he had to engage with countries like Russia, but still denounce the abuse of human rights, including the concentration camps in Chechnya where they had been torturing gay men. When he mentioned those, the horror was visible on his face.

If I could vote for him, I would, not just to thwart Marine Le Pen, but because I believe in his platform. Whether or not he can pull it off is another story. He'd have to get a majority in the legislature, and unify a fractured country. He may not even get past the final round vote on May 7th. One obstacle: a substantial minority of the extreme left prepared to sacrifice people of color and immigrants--among many, many others-- as they self-righteously proclaim, "Anybody, but Macron."

Monday, April 10, 2017

Don't Mention Gender or Race

By Kelly Cogswell

For the next four years our only strategy on the national level can be to persistently say, "no." And "no." And "no." No! to every single thing Trump does, or that the Republicans propose from Supreme Court candidates to financial reform, and next season's wars. Odds are we'll still lose. But as bad as things seem, they'll be worse if we sit at home with our mouths closed.

Of course, there are also proactive things we can do on the local level if we can just get out of bed. Many of the rights and privileges we've already seen stripped away can be restored or protected, at least in part, by the states. Let us then work in our hometowns for access to health care, and education, and jobs, for righteous police forces, immigrant rights, environmental protection, fair voting districts. Not to mention gender and racial inequalities.

Really, seriously, don't bother mentioning those at all. We've known since before the election that Trump voters actually had a higher income than Clinton voters. And now that it's over, studies confirm that having strongly bigoted ideas predicted Trump voters much more closely than income. But no, let's continue to dissect the Democratic campaign and its "failure" to reach white working class voters.

Especially don't contradict that large minority on the left still asserting that Sanders would have won, "If the Dems hadn't rigged, rigged, rigged the primary in favor of that horrible bitch." They still believe everything Sanders said in his speeches. Nothing that Clinton did. Believe none of the criticism about their white-haired masculine savior. Believe every single attack on that girly-bitted, establishment cunt who dared talk about race or gender when it's only class that matters. Especially the heart-breaking struggles of former factory workers and coal miners that just happened to be white. And male.

It's almost funny to watch the contortions of the white, masculinized left as they try to hide their scorn for the really, truly, actually poor. Like, for instance, immigrant women of color trying to survive in service jobs, turning up as home aides even if they can barely walk themselves after years of caring for heavy bodies, and no time off or decent insurance to fix that back, that knee.

The French are no better. I was out with a friend at a bar when he suddenly became monstrous in his hardline lefty manliness explaining that poor people shouldn't be polled on political issues because they weren't educated, didn't have time to be informed, or have the intellectual tools to think deeply about their conditions. And when I asked if he really meant that poor people couldn't be trusted to serve as experts even on their own lives, he actually said yes.

That's patriarchy. That's paternalism. That's my ticket to the nuthouse. All those men who won't let poor women stand in their way as saviors of the working class. They are all just victims themselves. Losing ground in politics, in business. Even the arts. Take that cute little animation film, "Alike", by Daniel Martínez Lara and Rafa Cano Méndez which has picked up zillions of prizes for its heartfelt observations about how society grounds out your creativity.

But in the midst of the sappy music and all the manipulated feels, nobody seems to have noticed that every single one of the hundreds of carefully universal figures whose creativity has been... let's say emasculated... by society were all male. For the entire seven minutes, females didn't exist at all. Weren't in the identical dead-end cubicles, weren't staggering down the streets to grey jobs. Weren't among the children learning how to be grey adults.

Perhaps the animators thought our bodies would have introduced a degree of difference that would have ruined their aesthetics of their metaphor which also carefully made the men all blue-grey, and "alike" in their white collars and ties, because race would also have distracted us from talking about what really matters: the freedom and happiness of those poor disappointed men of the ruling class who expected more out of life than all this horrible sameness (that they themselves willingly reproduce).

We've got plenty of similar men in the LGBT community. Some even think Trump's not such a big deal. And maybe he's not--for them. You're not really a fag if you're a white, straight-acting top, can put on a collar and tie. The one they'll come for is the guy who swishes a little. Giggles. Or snickers and snipes. Maybe even has a few curves. Or wears colors outside the golf course. Or is of color. Or erodes the assumption that there's something inherently, "universal" or "superior" about being born with a dick. In short, challenges the idea of just what a man is, or should be-- an endeavor that is as worthy as calling your senator or rep. And taking to the street one more time.