Bruno Retailleau represents the Vendée in the French Senate, where he has been serving as President of The Republican group since 2014. His comments prompted by the storming of the Capitol in Washington on January 6 provide a useful European perspective, an alternative to the polarized discourse that has predominated in the United States. In addition to a pointed evaluation of the events themselves, his remarks also offer insight into political positioning in France in advance of the 2022 presidential election: as we are on the eve of the post-Merkel era in Germany, a post-Macron France may be approaching as well. More importantly, however, Retailleau reminds us that what happened in Washington is indicative of tendencies that are not exclusively American. He describes root causes of some contemporary social conflict, treating the Washington riot as symptomatic of tensions as present in France as in the United States, as well as across the West. At stake is more than Trump’s rhetoric, the impeachment debate, or the response to the 2020 presidential election outcome. The issues that fueled the populism of the past four years have not disappeared. Retailleau shows why.
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Social and economic disruptions in the wake of this spring’s virus will be unevenly distributed in intensity and time. Socially distanced rural suffering will long outlast the news cycle and panic.
Kentucky, where I live, expects our COVID-19 crisis to peak on Saturday, May 16, with 1,600 hospitalized and 240 in ICU beds on that day. By then, New York is expected to no longer need any COVID-19 beds. Their peak will have been a month and a half previous. Kentucky (more accurately, Lexington and Louisville) will probably be fine when we peak. Tennessee (e.g., Nashville and Memphis) probably won’t. Expect the news to have moved on by then. In a recent issue of First Things, Naomi Schaefer Riley reviewed Joel Kotkin’s The New Class Conflict:
Writing at the Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin examines how the drought in California reflects the broader social and economic transformation of the state—and why current political policies that inhibit growth are to blame. Kotkin is the author The New Class Conflict, published by Telos Press Publishing and available for purchase in our store. In an incisive and thoughtful review essay in Quadrant (March 2015), Peter Murphy examines Joel Kotkin’s The New Class Conflict and the prognosis for America in the “post-creative economy.” Read the full essay (subscription required) at Quadrant Online. Purchase your copy of The New Class Conflict in our online store. Writing in the Washington Post, George Will discusses Joel Kotkin’s The New Class Conflict (recently published by Telos Press) and the reasons why today’s government serves the wealthy and powerful. |
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COVID-19 is a real crisis. It is unique for being concentrated for once in places where global travelers, professionals, and creatives live. When risk for those populations is controlled to a level they can accept, expect panic and restrictions to ease. Our world happily tolerates death tolls far in excess of the worst projected for COVID-19 when only rural people or people with a high school education or less are at high risk. 
