The Yellow Jackets Revolt and The Future of America

The media has been so quiet on the Yellow Jackets in France that you could be excused for thinking my title refers to some kind of invasion by weird wasps.

Well, for the record, it doesn’t. It refers to the ongoing revolt in France by various groups but mostly, honestly, middle aged, middle class people who have just had middle-class enough and are now setting fires to things and making life hell in the ritzy districts of Paris (and elsewhere.)

You probably thought that was all over and done with, and you’d be excused for thinking it, because our media has worked so hard not to report it.

'Citizens of the World'? Nice Thought, But ...

Megan McArdle

The inability of those elites to grapple with the rich world’s populist moment was in full display on social media last night. Journalists and academics seemed to feel that they had not made it sufficiently clear that people who oppose open borders are a bunch of racist rubes who couldn’t count to 20 with their shoes on, and hence will believe any daft thing they’re told. Given how badly this strategy had just failed, this seemed a strange time to be doubling down. But perhaps, like the fellow I once saw lose a packet by betting on 17 for 20 straight turns of the roulette wheel, they reasoned that the recent loss actually makes a subsequent victory more likely, since the number has to come up sometime.

Or perhaps they were just unable to grasp what I noted in a column last week: that nationalism and place still matter, and that elites forget this at their peril. A lot people do not view their country the way some elites do: as though the nation were something like a rental apartment -- a nice place to live, but if there are problems, or you just fancy a change, you’ll happily swap it for a new one.

In many ways, members of the global professional class have started to identify more with each other than they have with the fellow residents of their own countries. Witness the emotional meltdown many American journalists have been having over Brexit.

And from a larger perspective:

A lot of my professional colleagues seemed to, and the dominant tone framed this as a blow against the enlightened “us” and the beautiful world we are building, struck by a plague of morlocks who had crawled out of their hellish subterranean world to attack our impending utopia. You could also, I’d argue, see this sentiment in the reaction of global markets, which was grossly out of proportion to the actual economic damage that is likely to be done by Brexit. I mean, yes, the British pound took a pounding, and no surprise. But why did this so roil markets for the Mexican peso? Did traders fear that the impact on the global marmite supply was going to unsettle economies everywhere?

We have a ruling elite that hates the societies that produce them.

Or the conference before the Visegrad 4 one or something like that. Lots of people earnestly talking about cooperation and Europe and stuff. Definitely the B team on display which was why I just scraped into an invite. Frances Coppolla and I did a panel, should Greece leave the euro? Which Frances has already talked about (my answer, Hell Yes, everyone should leave, it’s an idiot way to run a continent).

The interesting bit was how scary it was in fact. The groupthink is strong in this arena. There is no questioning of the goal, even if it’s not clearly delineated. That ever closer union is just assumed: how to bring it about being the only difference anyone has. I was the only truly eurosceptic person there and I wasn’t on the panel discussing eurosceptics for example (Frances is reasonable on this subject where I am not).

At one stage I pointed out that fiscal union simply was not going to happen. Europeans just are not going to allow 15-20% of GDP to be distributed through Brussels, which is what would be needed for the automatic stabilisers to operate properly so that the eurozone comes even close to being an optimal currency area. To do that really does mean German taxes paying Greek pensions.

It. Will. Not. Happen.

Not this century at least.

Everyone was shocked: how could you say such a thing? And anyway, we need to work out how to make this happen not think of why it cannot.

Belgium reintroduces border controls with France to prevent influx of Calais migrants

Who could have seen this coming (other than me)?

Dolce & Gabbana launch range of hijabs and abayas

Italian fashion house Dolce and Gabbana are looking to the Islamic market by launching its first collection of headscarves and full-length robes for women.

The collection of hijabs and abayas were unveiled on website Style.com's Arabia homepage and feature a mixture of more modest, classic designs and flashes of print, lace and color.

DRUDGE on Greek "NO" vote

EURO FALLS AFTER GREECE VOTES...
Jubilation in Syntagma Square tinged with fear...
BANKS PREPARE TO RAID DEPOSITS...
Panicked residents stock up on essentials...
Quartet of crises threatens Europe's core...
Merkel, Hollande Call for Summit... 
Brussels weighs next steps...
STOCKS ROCKED...

BIG FAT 'NO'
EU ON THE BRINK

The Pope joins the EU in a sad world of make-believe

Stop the World , I want to get off!

When future historians come to look back on our age, few things will puzzle them more than the extent to which our politics became so dominated and bedevilled by two belief-systems, each based on an obsessive attempt to force into being an immensely complicated political construct which defied economic, psychological and scientific reality.

One of these was the peculiar way in which Europe’s politicians, with full support from the US, had set out to unite their continent under a form of supra-national government unlike anything the world had seen before. The other was the way those same politicians fell for the idea not just that human activities were disastrously changing Earth’s climate, but that by taking the most drastic measures they could somehow change it back again.

Although for quite a time these two belief systems seemed to carry all before them, each was essentially based on a fantasy view of the world; and it is in the nature of trying to act out a fantasy that it must eventually overreach itself, to the point where it collides unpleasantly with reality.

...We see it in the desperation of the Greeks to escape from the trap created by forcing them, through corruption and dishonesty, into the euro. ...

Similarly, the last desperate throw by the EU and the US to achieve a world agreement next December to “halt climate change” is not going to succeed, not just because the “science” on which it is based is so increasingly questionable, but because the emerging powers of the East, led by India and China, are simply not prepared to go along with it. If the West wishes to commit economic suicide, so be it. In their own national interest, they are not willing to follow.