Le Vote

People make fun of France for being a nation of grognard surrendur-monkeys who mince over little morsels of unpasteurized cheeses, can't even make a decent beer, and are bitterly envious of America. I went to Provence on vacation once, not far from where Richard "The Neo-Con Prince of Darkness" Perle lives. Yeah. Sometimes I still dream of the morning markets where they sell flowers and wild mushrooms and those little morsels of unpasteurized cheese. I was happy as a clam. Too happy. To pry me out of France they had to shoot me with a tranquilizer dart, and threw a net over me so I could be shipped kicking and screaming back to the Greatest Country Ever. But anyhow, where was I...oh, right: I wonder how Americans will be stereotyped 50 years from now if, ahh, Asians happen to run the world?

The turnout for France's Presidential election was 80%. Nicolas Sarkozy, a Hungarian immigrant's son running as an anti-immgrant conservative, led the polls with a 30% take. Segolene Royal, a hard-ass officer's daughter running as a liberal, took 24% of the initial votes. Now it goes to a run-off. Whatever happens, France will be going through a few convulsions, as in, this is not your father's Chirac-mobile. I'm rooting for Segolene, of course, because Sarkozy's solution is to turn France into a police state. France had to deal with German invasions twice in the the last century, so she should be able to handle diversity.

Speaking of diversity: can you imagine who America would elect if 80% of the voters turned out now? (Hint: rhymes with "Osama.")

Here's an excerpt from the Yahoo! news story, which I won't bother to link to because the link will be broken a week from now. Seems the French can be out-done in the condescension department:

But France also is a nation deeply troubled, still haunted by riots by young blacks and Arabs in poor neighborhoods in 2005. Decades of high unemployment, increasing competition from more dynamic economies like China's, and a sense that France is losing influence in the world made this a passionate campaign.

("Umm, is there a Kettle here? Call for Mr. Kettle! Ah, there you are, sir. Allow me to introduce you to Mr. POT!") Maybe, maybe someday sooner than we think, America will have 80% of its voters turn out for a Presidential election. Like France, this country needs answers, and on all the same issues. As for votes, if the Bush Dynasty has taught us anything, it's that you have to turn out in overwhelming numbers.