Imagine how successful they could have been if they had behaved as civilised people from the beginning! I personally like some of those ideas, but I'll never trust people who think that violence is justifiable.
1. We had a convention citoyenne pour le climat. Macron then mostly ignored it.
2. We have elected representatives who can vote on the laws for us. Macron then used article 49.3 to mostly ignore them.
3. Vote? For which candidate? None of them would cover all of the GJs' demands.
If you disqualify protests as a valid form of democratic expression, you also disqualify our famous revolution, the feminist protests that earned women the right to vote, the union strikes that earned us many worker rights, etc.
> I'll never trust people who think that violence is justifiable
Ah, that explains it. You only see violence in protesters who break windows, not in governments who enact laws on their people. Am I correct in assuming that you're ok with making people work 20 hours/week for the RSA as well?
The reality is: talking about CO2 emissions is talking about economy. That is the main job of the government.
> 2. We have elected representatives who can vote on the laws for us. Macron then used article 49.3 to mostly ignore them.
Macron did not ignore them. 49.3 means: "I'm ready to go on this point; are you ready, too?". And, by the way, you do remember that Macron was elected, too, do you?
> 3. Vote? For which candidate? None of them would cover all of the GJs' demands.
So what? This is democracy! If you can't, or don't want to, found your political movement, then you have to choose among the available candidates. Do you think Macron's program matched exactly my desires?
The revolution, the feminism and the union strikes were expressions of people who were oppressed and on the receiving side of violence. Gilets Jaunes was none of this.
- peaceful protest or "convention citoyenne" are not and should not be efficient
- We don't care what the vast majority of people want, and we don't care about the parliament.
- The only thing we should care is what think the President. The one who got the support of barely 20% of the French population on the first round, and them got elected on the second round because people voted against the far right... In a "presidential Monarchy"
What a nice conception of "democracy"
A government trying to manage a country has a ton of compromises to make every day; I do not expect to be happy with every one of their choices, but I think the current government is doing OK.
On the other side, I fail to see how breaking a window can solve the problem of the protester.
> If you disqualify protests as a valid form of democratic expression
I'm afraid you confuse protest with violence. The ability to protest is fundamental for a democracy to stay a democracy, but protest must not imply violence and, especially, expressing your point does not make it automatically right.
When even journalists from le Figaro (right wing newspaper) have to protest brutality against journalists.... the violence is only coming from the protester ?
In France the only way firefighter got heard the last few times, after month of peaceful protestation, is by doing violent protest, including throwing heavy thing on the policeman. Then the government accepted to negociate with them. If you don't use violence in France, in many case you don't get heard at all.
Gilets Jaunes, aslo because of their violence did manage to get the government to made some concession.
Millions of French people (more than Gilets Jaunes at their peak) marched several times peacefully against the recent Pension Law, supported by all the trade union democratically elected, supported by more than 70% of the population and more than 90% of the workers. Nothing happen. No concession. Not even a vote in the parliament.
For sure sometimes violence is efficient, sometimes violence in counter-productive. Justifiable ? that is something else...
