Because You Never Asked

 

(6/11, Spain )

     If my 2 month stay in Spain each year has become a traditional aspect of this work’s content, a sub-title for such would include my occasional purchase of an International Herald Tribune. This usually leads to an essay or two juxtaposing the American point of view against the Euro-reality this writer is thoroughly immersed in. There will be some element of that in this essay, but the comparative concept is less applicable than the purely unilateral commentary on the nature of the “Trib” and the ideological straight jacket it operates in. It has now become evident that its commitment to the current global economic system has somewhat tainted its ability for objective commentary. This devotion to modern corporate capitalism brings into question its definition of “good guys” and “bad guys”, as well as its concept of good or bad policy.

     The digital age has changed the mission of the “Trib”. In the past, it used to be a way for Americans abroad to catch up on what was happening back home, something our new communicative devices have made superfluous. It now caters to a different demographic, one I’d describe as the international business community interested in the American take on the world’s socio-economic theater. The “Trib” does not even provide results from the baseball season anymore, something that would be meaningless to the consumer it now targets.

     It can be said with some degree of confidence that this American view, summed up in what the Euros refer to as “savage capitalism”, is more conservative than many of the world’s other capitalist practitioners. The articles from the “Trib” I’m about to speak of show this.

     There were 2 pieces on the editorial pages of the May 31^st issue that caught my eye, mainly for their provincial, conservative tone of voice. (I will discuss the second one in the next essay, “The International Herald Tribune, II”). The first was written by one Roger Cohen, a regular contributor to the paper. His article dealt with the scandal involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his alleged rape of a maid in a luxurious Manhattan hotel. As head of the International Monetary Fund and, until this scandal, leading candidate to be the next president of France , DSK (this is how he is referred to in France ) could be considered a prototypical “big shot”. Many French people were put off by American law enforcement’s treatment of him and felt there was some kind of conspiracy in play to bring him down. Cohen, in a virulent, personal attack, has at it with the French in a way that goes beyond this particular case and into the realm of French bashing in general.

     From the Euro side of the Atlantic, the way in which DSK was treated did surprise me. As a native New Yorker, the words “Riker’s Island” strike a chord of fear. If we were to put it in terms of carnivorous cuisine, Riker’s Island is the spam of penal housing. Prison is not a good place to be, but many prisons seem like vacation getaways compared to Riker’s Island. The fact that the head man at the IMF, a man considered the most probable choice as France ’s next president, spent a few nights there, was almost incongruent for me. And that’s not to mention the 2 or 3 days he was paraded around without a change of clothes or a chance to properly cleanse himself.

     Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not for anyone getting special treatment under the law be it DSK or a tattooed drug dealer from Harlem. But the world generally does not work that way. For DSK to be treated like the tattooed drug dealer is --- well --- peculiar.

     And this is the jumping off point for Mr. Cohen’s article. Making reference to the fact that a majority of French people believe DSK was set up, he claims the French are overly prone to conspiracy theories. He talks about how some of his French colleagues are still skeptical as to Osama Bin Laden’s death, while others believe 9/11 was some kind of Zionist plot. He then goes on to justify his premise with the following bit of chicken soup philosophy:

     “A rough rule goes like this: the freer a society is, the less inclined it is to conspiracy theories, while the greater its culture of dependency, the more it will tend to see hidden hands at work everywhere.”

     This statement has about as much verifiable veracity as the tooth fairy. In dissecting it, let’s discuss the following questions: 1) Are French people more conspiratorial by nature? 2) If we hypothetically say they are, does it have something to do with them being less “free”? 3) Are French people less “free”?

     1) For me to speculate on whether French people are more conspiratorial by nature, is about as silly as Roger Cohen saying they are. Perhaps Mr. Cohen has sat in on some clinical study dealing specifically with this question, but in the absence of such a reference, I’d have to assume his opinion is based upon some personal vision nobody else has been smart enough to see. In spite of my own admitted ignorance in this matter, I can say this: when it comes to 9/11, the death of Osama Bin Laden, or the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, I’ve heard all of the same conspiracy theories many times over and I have not been in France for quite some time.

     2) OK, let’s say (for no good reason) the French are more conspiratorial. Mr. Cohen is insinuating the reason for this neurosis is that they are less “free” than us gun toting Americans. And now we get to the real nub of Mr. Cohen’s diatribe, that being his ideological rejection of the social contract enjoyed by French citizens. But his attitude seems to go beyond ideology and into resentment. He seems to resent the fact that France has one of the world’s finest health care systems, that its workers can retire earlier than ours, that their social services for working mothers are well developed, that their pensions and sick leaves and paid vacations and child care and --- etc., etc. How dare they provide these services in a cooperative rather than market competitive way. It’s almost in poor taste. How “gauche”!

     (Just as an aside, the global economic crisis, like everywhere else in the world, is putting severe financial pressures on the French social safety net. But, as I’ve mentioned in a number of previous essays, the costs of these social services did not cause these monetary shortfalls. It was the reckless-criminal greed of the most important private sector bankers and financiers --- most likely Mr. Cohen’s heroes --- who created this precarious financial situation.)

     Mr. Cohen claims this well developed network of governmental services has made the French dependent on these services and thus --- less free and more conspiratorial. It is hard to discredit such a thesis because it is so lacking in some kind of rational nexus. It’s like saying the Dodgers can’t win the World Series because their uniforms are blue. Like what? The best he can come up with is that the French rely on the government for so much, they see hidden conspiracies everywhere. This seems to suggest that private sector monsters like Exxon or Goldman Sachs are pristine pools of integrity that nobody could suspect of anything. Is he joking with this article?

     Mr. Cohen’s resentment of France ’s social contract would have more merit if its private sector were weak and antiquated. Nothing could be further from the truth. French free enterprise not only creates mammoth amounts of wealth, it sits at the cutting edge of technological and scientific advancement. The country’s well developed public sector has certainly not shackled the creativity or rentability of its capitalist engine. One only has to go there to understand this.

    3) Now, as far as being “free” is concerned, maybe Mr. Cohen would prefer us all to go back to the caves again. A caveman never had to worry about employment or pensions or vacations or penal codes or paying the doctor or --- really, just about anything other than survival. Maybe Mr. Cohen believes a modern, complex society of millions of people (and their pets) should be anti-organized like that. Just think how few conspiracy theories there would be.

     So the French have decided, over the years, to organize their wealth in a bit more cooperative way than the American model does. I’d suggest this well developed web of social services and pensions provide a sense of well being and security that could be considered more liberating than oppressive. But I don’t want to start sounding like Mr. Cohen here. America uses words like “freedom” and “liberty” as if it were some kind of advertising campaign with which it not only markets itself to the world, but to its own citizens as well. Unless Mr. Cohen has some kind of “freedom meter” he walks around with, like a Geiger counter, which conclusively measures such things, I suggest he stop making such absurd, idiotic, untenable --- I could go on --- assertions.

     There are a couple of other comments in this article I’d like to briefly dispute in this essay.

     Mr. Cohen correctly points out that the DSK case has highlighted some Franco-American cultural differences, including “--- attitudes to public figures’ private lives, sex and the gravity of a rape charge.” I’m not a novice when it comes to dealing with French people, so I will say yes, their attitudes towards sex, fidelity and adultery in general may be subtly different from the American view, but it is unfair to suggest their feelings with regard to rape are more frivolous. No right minded Frenchman would forgive DSK if he actually did what he is accused of.

     There is one other tidbit worthy of mention here. Cohen claims the French are surprised by the “--- hard knuckled application of U.S. law applied equally to anyone accused of a serious crime.” He obviously believes in that pure and virgin America , the America whose knights in shining armor ride off on muscular white stallions in an attempt to save the world from an immorality only it is free of. Sound the trumpets, ring the bells, let liberty and justice go forth --- get real, Mr. Cohen. In the last decade or so, the judicial apparatus of the United States of America has not bothered to prosecute some of the most criminal delinquents in its government’s history, leaders whose lies and deceptions caused the deaths and mutilations of tens of thousands of innocent people. The one person they did prosecute and convict, an underling fit for sacrifice named Scooter Libby, never spent a day in jail. Get real, Mr. Cohen, since the collapse of the world’s economy almost 4 years ago, the judicial apparatus of the United States of America has not bothered to prosecute any of the Wall St. practitioners that have perhaps stolen the most money in the history of mankind, in spite of the fact that their transgressions are now obvious.

     Get real, Mr. Cohen!