“Sous les paves, la plage …”
When my wife and I talk about 1968, it becomes apparent very quickly that what happened in France was far more significant than what happened here.
I’m not talking about historical events. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had a horrible, long-lasting effect on our country, more than any particular event did in France.
But the protests that year were far more widespread in France than they were here, and they had much more lasting effect.
In this country, those who wanted a revolution were never more than a minority of college students. There was almost no support from the working class, which of course has been taught not to think of itself as working class but as middle class instead.
With that in mind, even people who would qualify as lower middle class or working poor see themselves as having an investment in the system. It also allows people way above average in income to get away with calling themselves middle class.
That’s why the last two pre-Trump Republican nominees could get away with a ridiculous view of what it meant to be middle class. John McCain said middle class was up to $250,000 a year and Mitt Romney said it was nearly twice that.
In addition, working-class Americans are led to believe that if they’re not successful, it’s their own fault. Add to that the millions of evangelicals who believe that suffering in this world will lead to a wonderful afterlife, and you’ve got a society whose desire for revolution isn’t about progress but a return to older times.
Meanwhile, in France and other western democracies they were demanding fuller lives. The slogan from 1968 at the beginning of this piece translates as “under the pavement, the beach.”
And while American right-wingers were terrifying folks on the left by calling them Marxists, French leftists had fun with the idea.
In the 54 years since 1968, the American working class has lost a great deal of ground, whether it’s in job security, medical bills, retirement and any number of other things. In France and other European democracies, health insurance, retirement, vacation time and job security are all better than they are here.
What’s worse?
Do you really want to know.
Fewer billionaires. Rich people aren’t as wealthy as the wealthiest Americans.
But how many of us are looking at Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos and chanting, “U-S-A, U-S-A!” out of national pride?
Too many, I fear.
That’s why Europeans call us the teenagers of the world.
It isn’t a compliment.