Macron's second presidency was as calculatingly managed by France's liberal elite as his first.
As the country's economic and geographic schisms widen further, yesterday's Yellow Vest protests will seem like a tea party by comparison.
© The CradleEmmanuel Macron now has a second term, courtesy of France's urban elites. But the magnitude of the problems he faces, both domestic and external, will ensure indefinite strife in the country.
I called it last December in a column
here at The Cradle.
These are the essentials: Certified Arabophobe Eric Zemmour, who is of Algerian origin, was manufactured by key establishment players of the Institut Montaigne variety to cut off the populist right-wing candidacy of Marine Le Pen. In the end, Zemmour's electoral performance was dismal, as expected. Yet another candidate pulled off a miracle intervention and was even more useful: ambitious egomaniac opportunist and so-called progressive Jean-Luc Melenchon.
'Le Petit Roi' Emmanuel Macron generates less than zero empathy across France. That explains the huge voter abstention of 28 percent in the second round of votes.
The numbers tell the story: There are 48,803,175 French citizens registered to vote. Macron got 18,779,809 votes. Marine Le Pen got 13,297,728 votes. Yet the most eyebrow-raising performance was by the
Abstention/Nullified/Blank candidate: 16,674,963 votes.
So the president of France was re-elected by 38.5 percent of voters while the real second place, Absention/Nullified/Blank got 34.2 percent.
That implies that roughly 42 percent of registered French voters bothered to hit the polls basically to bar Le Pen: a brand that remains toxic in vast swathes of urban France - yet hardly as much as before - and even with the whole weight of oligarchic mainstream media engaged in Two Minute Hate campaign mode. The five oligarchies who run the so-called 'audiovisual landscape' (PAF, according to the French acronym) of campaign messaging are all Macronists.
Comment: Did the US pay its tab for Syria? Iraq? Afghanistan? Viet Nam? Japan? Korea? This war was totally avoidable - but that was not the plan.