French election: fear, and Macron, rule

Emmanuel Macron has won his second term in the French elections today. Clearly fear rules in France.

Latest returns from the French election

Today’s French election was technically a runoff. But that’s the way elections run in France. No one gets a clear majority in the first round, so France must always hold a runoff.

CNAV did not have projections earlier than now, because any reliable projections would be illegal. That’s right: exit polling is illegal in France. In fact, French law tells its media to keep absolutely silent about elections when going into one. They’ve made a judgment that trying to predict an election, will end up manipulating one.

Projections are now available from The Guardian and the national office of ABC News. Projections waited until now because polls close in Paris at 8:00 p.m. local time. Because that is Western European Time, Paris is six hours ahead of New York. Therefore, polls closed in Paris at 2:00 p.m. EDT. They closed an hour earlier in rural precincts.

At last report, Emmanuel Macron had 58 percent of the vote, to Marine Le Pen’s 42 percent. Le Pen points out that this is as much as any candidate of her persuasion has ever won. Nevertheless, it’s still a loss. She has conceded the election, and Macron had claimed victory. They won’t have official results until tomorrow, but no one expects that margin to reverse.

Fear rules

Why did Macron win the French Election this year? Because he struck fear into the hearts of his countrymen. And that he could do that so easily, shows that French people are afraid of independence, afraid to assert their culture, afraid to stand on what it means to be French – and afraid of their own shadows.

To take the prize example, Macron, back in January, said he wanted to make life miserable for anyone refusing the vaccine against COVID. To that end, he put in place the kind of restrictions that already have Americans close to rebellion. Or perhaps we’re just practicing a quiet civil disobedience. No one seems to want to say for sure what the French are doing. All we know is that Emmanuel Macron put these measures into place – and still won today’s French election.

Incidentally the Centers for Disease Control tells people: if you don’t have the jab, don’t go to France. But that’s as much because they rate France as having a high level of COVID as because the French police are likely to quarantine you or jail you or bar you or expel you for not having the jab.

Fear of independence decided the French election

But all that is incidental. In blunt fact, fear of independence decided the French election today. As if anyone had any doubt: Macron took the stage to claim victory, and what was playing in the background? Not La Marseillaise, that tells you to grab a weapon and march until your furrows run red with mingled blood. Not the bad-ass anthem with the children singing in chorus that they, too, shall enlist when their elders lie dead in battle.

Oh, no! They have to play the continental anthem of Europe. That’s right: you had people singing new politically correct lyrics to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

That’s no ode to joy. That is a song of subservience. And that France, the country of Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle, should come to this! They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Or as they say it in their language, they ought to have shame.

Marine Le Pen said she would focus next on legislative elections. That’s all very well. At least France has separation of powers, which Israel, for example, does not have. But today’s French election shows that the French are not ready to reclaim their independence, as the British did. For shame – or as they literally say in French, what shame. Quel honte – pour c’est un grand coup de deshonneur.