Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
In a recently televised interview, the French president Macron adressed the chaos that ensued during the protests triggered by a controversial decision regarding a change of pension age in France. It’s not the first time that the public reacts like this to policies they’re dissatisfied with. You might say it’s a hallmark of French mentality ever since the Revolution.
They are very vocal and violent about it and it’s peculiar when compared to the rest of Europe, apart from Russia that’s equally famous for their own Revolution that brought about the rule of the Bolsheviks. Oliver Cromwell caused a spark in England but it all settled down with the restoration of the monarchy and went back to business as usual.
During the now infamous interview, Macron discreetly removed his expensive wrist watch in front of the host. This further exacerbated the clumsy hypocrisy of an attempt to sound sympathetic to the plight of protesters. It’s a good idea that came about at the wrong time and caused the wrong reaction that’s by now gone viral all over the internet.
This dude is prone to bad ideas. Not just because he married his former teacher. Who’d do such a thing? It’s like marrying your own mother. At my school an attractive appearance wasn’t mandatory and they lived up to their standard: most looked like that crazy cat lady with a work enthusiasm of a prison inmate. Compared to predecessors like Miterrand or Chirac, he’s got the charisma of a bellboy.
You’ll have to try hard to find a passionate group of supporters that would endorse Macron’s missteps. The difference between him and Marine Le Pen is that the loyalty of her voters is based on a different principle that hasn’t got much to do with politics, but with grievances and ideas of the average person.
Of course, Americans are the perfect case study in terms of political loyalty. It is going to be put to test now because Donald Trump has been formally indicted on a dozen accounts and is due to be arrested as the first president in American history to do so. One of the most prominent accusations is the hush money he paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels.
Yet there’s something that Trump has and no amount of accusations can take that away: teflon personality. You can throw shit at him but it will just fall off without leaving as much as a stain. Because in his case loyalty is based on passion, not reason. He correctly recognized that the court of public opinion has more power than the Supreme Court: that’s why cancel culture has gained so much momentum. If you’ve got a confederate flag, even if he ends up behind bars, he’ll still be your guy. When you’re passionate about something, you stick with it no matter what. That’s the pool he dipped his toe into and the secret behind his success.
I remember one time when I went to my local polling station during the local elections. There was an old lady who asked me to help her because she had forgotten her glasses at home. She simply asked to find the most popular local right-wing party on the list for her. This is the essence of the old-fashioned conservative voter.
They don’t ask questions, they’re automatons that just go and do what’s required. Like that guy that always orders the same burger. It’s about reliability, safety and resistance to change. European progressives like Macron wouldn’t know how to pull it off if their lives depended on it. After all, that’s how the Capitol riots and Brexit came about. People were told what they wanted to hear without being patronised by language they didn’t clearly understand.
While Macron tried to pull of a modesty stunt that backfired, Trump lives in a gilded mansion in his own private golf club and it didn’t hurt his credibility. You know why? Voters don’t care about your Rolex but your words. What’s more, the brazen honesty of the populist approach to politics acts like a sponge that sucks in everyone’s attention leaving the justice league far away in the dust.
In movies, Mr. Nice Guy rarely gets the girl because politeness doesn’t get you laid. Trust me, this is experience talking. Gwyneth Paltrow’s skiing accident is a bigger clickbait than a a Russian soldier getting convicted for crimes against humanity. Even Judge Judy is more relatable than Nancy Pelosi. And she’s a fictional character. Because real, elected officials are distanced from the reality of their supporters.
Populist demagogues attract people because they go against the predominant discourse and play the victim card. Trump is already doing it and Fox News has once again turn into his trumpet (pun intended). He’s a millionaire that won the 2016 elections partly due to his underdog image.
No one took him seriously, he was supposed to be a distraction that would provide entertainment for the masses while Hillary Clinton prepares for her inevitable coronation. Comedians used him as an endless source of material without realising they were doing him a favor. It was the perfect embodiment of the proverbial American dream: the underdog snatching victory from the favourite against all odds. Of course, the dream turned into carnage with the Capitol Hill insurrection.
There’s no more time and we can’t excuse our ignorance by pretending we didn’t see it coming. We did, but in 2016 we refused to believe it. The EU’s striving to be a global role model for unity, inclusion and progress made it blind to the little pieces that make up its puzzle. The rise of right-wing populism is the direct consequence of obsession with Europe as a concept of values and semantics rather then a functional entity with realistic ambitions.
Their one-size-fits-all principle will be their doom in the long term because European history and culture is too complicated to be transformed into a liberal utopia without major political earthquakes. If we fail to recognize it, it will be an another underestimated red flag. We’ve seen it happen in Hungary with Viktor Orban and in Turkey with Erdogan.
If we really need a porn star to deal with toxic politics the world as we know it has no chance of survival. In France, former president Sarkozy had connections to the Emir of Qatar that allowed the Sheikh to act as a sugar daddy pumping money into the country in exchange for all kinds of favors. Which is why “follow the money” is usually a smart approach in investigative journalism. Unfortunately in countries like Turkey, journalists are having a hard time because exposing political machinations and holding leaders to account can put them behind bars or worse. This is why supporters of populists tend to treat them as a threat that’s striving to undermine and obstruct the system.
What conclusion can we draw from all of this? To quote the movie, gentlemen prefer blondes. But neither one of these two know how to handle a crisis without embarassing themselves. Internationally, Macron is a slightly obscure story because in America France is all about croissants and Chanel. He married his school teacher and Trump boasted about wanting to date his own daughter. Joe Biden’s wife is also a teacher. In spite of that, neither Macron nor Biden seem to have learned the most important lesson from the man that will haunt Washington as long as he’s alive:
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
And he keeps proving that it’s true. This is what makes him resistant to all the attempts of the Democrats to discredit and destroy him: when he says it, people believe him. Whether his oponents like it or not, whatever happens, he’s here to stay. And that’s something not even the Supreme Court can change.
Emmanuel Macron can’t dream of inciting such passion in those that voted for him because he walks on political stilts that constantly balance between Paris and Brussels. Compare that to Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement, a global initiative so flawed that it proved the point of the old saying : too many cooks spoil the broil. The tedious power players in Brussels could use it too.
