Rachel’s Editorial – Ah, the French and Their Adorable Dance of Alliances, Withdrawals, and Lawsuits (With a Side of Selective Outrage)
Welcome to the French national theater, where politics is never boring—it’s just incomprehensible to anyone without the Gallic handbook of subtleties. In Paris, Rachida Dati launches a comeback straight out of an action movie: lightning merger with the centrists, providential withdrawal by the far-right girl who mysteriously vanishes right when she was needed, and off we go with the grand anti-left coalition. It looks like every talk-show pundit’s wet dream: “Finally, the right unites!” Result? Grégoire wins with the face of someone who didn’t even have to dirty his hands shaking paws with Mélenchon. The left screams “fascist danger!”, then toasts with organic champagne without giving up a single millimeter. Classic move: threaten apocalypse to keep everyone in line, then win without lifting a finger. Chapeau.
In Lyon, we shift to legal comedy genre. Jean-Michel Aulas—the guy who spent twenty years convincing everyone Olympique Lyonnais was the Real Madrid of the suburbs—loses by a whisker (51.1% to 48.9%) and instantly cries conspiracy: “irregularities! Appeal! The gap is under a thousand votes!” Simultaneous translation from French political-speak: “I lost, but I don’t accept defeat because in France, losing by a hair is just an invitation to sue.” Poor Doucet, probably already drafting his tear-jerking ecologist speech, now has to defend his seat in court instead of city council. Because yes, in this wonderful country, democracy is also measured by the number of lawyers hired on Monday morning.
Elsewhere in France, it’s the usual three-ring circus: the left holds its fortress cities like they’re Verdun, the right picks up a few consolation prizes here and there, the far right celebrates in Nice as if they’d stormed the Bastille, and everyone—winners and losers alike—looks around with the air of someone who’s just discovered hot water: “Look at that, abstention is down… maybe this time they actually took us seriously.” Or maybe the French, after five years of complaining about everything, occasionally vote just to avoid feeling guilty.
Moral of the story? In France, politics is like Parisian traffic: everyone speeds, insults each other, cuts in line, merges, withdraws at the last second, and in the end no one really comes first, but everyone is convinced they’ve won on moral grounds. And if they lose? Well, there’s always the appeal. Or the appeal of the appeal. Or the appeal of the appeal of the appeal. Parce que c’est comme ça, chez nous.
Vive la République, vive la chicane, et vive le drama.
Koan of the day
A monk asked Rachel: “Why do the French cry foul when they lose by a little, but when they win by a little they say it’s the will of the people?”
Rachel replied: “Because in France, the will of the people only exists when it matches theirs. Otherwise it’s a miscalculation, a foreign plot, or a typo by fate.”
Another monk asked: “And when they form alliances that last only the space of an entre-deux-tours?”
Rachel said: “They act like Camembert: they smell of unity for three days, then reek of betrayal, and everyone pretends not to notice.”