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Where Have You Gone, Emmanuel Macron?
The French President was once a darling of the U.S. progressive movement. Lately, he’s been disappointing them.
France.
The country gets left out of discussions about Brexit, about the equally unexpected election of Donald Trump.
Strangely, in the U.S. and in other countries seriously considering strategies of dealing with the environmental toll human industry has taken over the previous century, France doesn’t come up much either.
Not even as a cautionary tale, which is perhaps unfortunate.
Environmental austerity measures in France, culminating in an extremely unpopular tax on fuel, gave rise to the “Yellow Vest” movement in 2017, which is still pushing back against some of the more globalist directives, sometimes violently.
Recently, the unhappiness of French voters manifested itself in a completely unacceptable and dangerous way.
During a rope line reception, a man shook the French President’s hand, then used that handshake to seize Macron and soundly slap him across the face. The assault, before Macron’s bodyguards managed to tackle and subdue the perpetrator, happened in a matter of seconds.
“Montjoie and Saint-Denis! Down with Macronism!” the man, a medieval weapons enthusiast, was heard to…