But what are being demanded are cultural changes. These precede and influence political changes.
On the level of practical politics, which I will discuss later, I will be sweeping and brief here: neoliberalism (and free-market capitalism) is incompatible with democracy, and we all know it, and thus this particular version of the pan-European project is inherently anti-democratic; the historic heavy, urban-based statism of France is an anti-democratic legacy of the Napoleonic "revolution"; the 1789 French "revolution" was bourgeois and thus not democratic" 2019 France has to stop holding on to all of these falsely progressive legacies. China's CR and all forms of socialism prove that local, socialist democracy is the only guarantee of success and stability. But back to cultural changes".
Above all, a Western Cultural Revolution must begin with an urban mea culpa the gift of apology is the only way to start in any such situation of familial division and bad blood, which is what France currently has. Even Jesus son of Mary said the same thing, according to Matthew 5:23 Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
After reconciliation comes actual gifts reparations in order to even the scales in the favor of rural areas.
But reparations and admission of arrogance/imperialism is verboten in capitalist societies what the CR proves is that the rural-urban divide can only be healed through a collective mentality, not an individualist mentality: the urban individual must renounce their alleged superiority.
That is the primary psycho-cultural message of the Yellow Vests; the proof of this is obvious in the exaggerated hatred of President Emmanuel Macron.
His aloofness and arrogance are unprecedented in modern times, I agree, but his anti-democratic methods and beliefs are not at all different from his predecessor, Francois Hollande. Perhaps his anti-democratic methods and beliefs are 10-15% worse than Hollande's, but many Yellow Vests only want Macron to quit simply because they have been so deranged by Macron's urban sense of entitlement that they lose their sense of scope I hear it often from Vesters every Saturday. But, just like Trump, Macron is the symptom and not the disease.
Macron has become a symbol of what we can call the "anti-CR forces in France", and the danger is that if the symbol falls if Macron actually quits that could stave off the demand for an actual French Cultural Revolution. Certainly, Macron's puppet-masters will allow him to resign before they allow the sweeping discussions and changes of a CR.
Thus the first step towards reducing the rural-urban divide in the West begins with a revalorisation of rural areas. As long as mainstream journalists continue insisting on a "red state-blue state" divide, no nation can possibly be united, healthy and successful.
This revaluing is a cultural change what about practical measures?
The CR sent politicians to do farm work no wonder the Western political class hates the idea of a CR
The disease which roils the West is something which socialism is based on, and especially Maoism, and which was ably demonstrated in the Great Leap Forward the collective mentality must triumph over the individualist mentality. Indeed, I fairly refer to the CR as the "Great Leap Forward #2" because the CR was an unquestionable restarting of collectivist projects.
But Westerners don't wanna! To hell with the collective!
The collective line which in Western Liberal Democracy is only limited to preserving the solidarity of the 1% among themselves is really rather religious in its view, as it is based on the idea of something larger than just the individual and goes far beyond day-to-day concerns.
Nor is it mere nationalism, which is just a larger, modern version of tribalism. In neoliberal capitalism the loyalty is only to one's self and family (and often not even to family, but one's "household" within the necessarily multi-household "family-- and often not even to one's household!), so it does not even achieve tribalism. How someone can live without a view of something larger than one's own self is beyond me it is truly to live without honor, and only with ego.
(In order to prove the enormous socioeconomic success of the CR, this book drew heavily from the ground-breaking investigative & scholarly work The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village, by Dongping Han, a former Chinese villager himself. Han hailed from and studied rural Jimo County, interviewing hundreds of locals about the Cultural Revolution (CR) and poring over local historical records. Han was kind enough to write the forward to my new book , I'll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China, which is available for purchase. This 8-part series is not a part of that book.)
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