The French working and middle classes know how to throw a first class fit when the servants of the rich in government come after their lifestyles. They don't always get their way (Macron used a parliamentary maneuver to make some changes in pensions, in late February), but they make damn sure the government knows it can't get away with encroaching on them without a fight.
I actually think that one reason Europe has done much better in tamping down the coronavirus than Trump's America is that the governments and corporations were afraid of a public backlash if the death toll went on rising. So they did their effing jobs.
In mid-April the Financial Times reported that the CGT workers union (which it darkly observed is under Communist influences) had filed a criminal complaint against the Carrefour supermarket chain and its CEO for not protecting its workers from the coronavirus. The unions also went to court to force Amazon to step back and only ship essential items until the courts could review the company's safety procedures.
The only thing I know of like that in the US is the UCFW's lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture's waivers to poultry plants allowing them to speed up the assembly lines. During a pandemic! Workers breathing harder is undesirable with a respiratory disease floating about.
But in France, it wouldn't have been one union filing a lawsuit (which one of Mitch McConnell's unqualified Republican judges/ideologues will likely slap down). It would have been a massive set of mutually reinforcing strikes.
By feeding us decades of propaganda against unions and "socialism," the American rich have broken the legs of the people, and left them to twitch helplessly as more and more indignities are heaped on them. They've divided us by race (Trump is not alone in this tactic, only the least subtle), they've convinced us to give the super-rich power because they will make us rich too. (How is that working out for you?).
There is now no mainstream political party in Western Europe that is anywhere near as far right as the GOP. The closest analogues to today's Republican Party in Europe are the far right white supremacist parties, like Marie LePen's National Front in France or the AfD in Germany.
It appears that a plutocracy produces fascism, since appeals to racialist superiority and playing on fears of a brown and black Other are the only things that can convince people to give up their basic human rights (like a comfortable life in retirement, which they have paid for, or the right to cast a mail in ballot during a pandemic).
But despite all the military parades and brave talk of master races, fascism is just the ultimate humiliation of the sheeple. Mussolini drove enormous numbers of Italians into poverty. The Axis used them for cannon fodder at the front. If the increasingly wimpy Americans don't watch out, they will find that it is too late to fight back, since they have surrendered all their means to do so. So as to avoid being panty-waists and all. They will be left with a borrowed greasy cheeseburger they can't even pay for.
Bonus Video:
President Donald Trump Is Praised By The Cabinet He Appointed | The New York Times
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