Thanks for all the input, folks. When I started this thread, I didn’t know a lot about what was going on over there. I did read some stuff on the internet, but one of the main reasons I posted here is because I was sure in the reactions I would learn something. People generally don’t post on forums unless they have a very strong opinion on the topic, and I find that there is no learning experience like listening to strong opinions, whether I agree with them or not. Some of you have said things that it would have been difficult for me to hear anywhere else, just because you are so passionate about your beliefs.
A few points. Someone noted this is not really about the retirement age, but a protest over a deeper, more long-term problem. I think that’s like saying the student protests in America (and Europe, to some extent) of the 60s were not about the Vietnam War, but the military-industrial complex, or still more fundamentally, the capitalist system. It’s true the leaders of these protests had larger issues in mind, but the masses of people whose bodies lent the protests serious credibility were drawn in mostly by antagonism to the war. And I believe that’s the case in France wrt retirement age. A focal issue that draws in the crowds. Surely if Sarkozy caved in on this issue (which he won’t, and I would say, can‘t), most of the steam of the protest would dissipate, but that would not signal much change in these deeper issues.
This leads me to another lesson from the past (history does repeat itself in many ways). One of the great failings of the so-called New Left in America in those days, IMO, is that it was unable to connect to most of the middle class (other than mostly white students). There was a lot of mockery of the middle class, which is echoed today in mockery of the Tea Party (“cultureless idiots“). I am not a supporter of this movement, but it should be pretty obvious that you don’t advance your cause by suggesting that people who don’t agree with you fail to do so only because they are duped and deluded (no matter how certain you are that that‘s the case). Believe it or not, most Tea Party members do have an IQ of greater than 80. If all the articles, books (e.g., What's Wrong with Kansas?), etc. trying to "enlighten" them have not swayed many of them, maybe it's not just because they're dense or evil.
The Left in America today (such as it is) is making this same mistake as it did back then. The more they criticize the Tea Party as ignorant, the more elitist the Left appears, not just to Tea Party members, but to others more in the middle. I don’t know how much of a problem this is in Europe, where the political spectrum is considerably left-shifted from what it is in America, but over here it is helping to shift the spectrum much further to the right. Setting fires in the streets is easy. Sitting down to talk with people you don't agree with is horrifically difficult and frustrating.
As far as economics goes, I think there is blame enough to go around for everyone. I have lost my shirt on a house that I own, but I don’t blame anyone for that but myself. I took a chance, I knew there were risks, and I got burned. I don’t blame a bank for pushing this mortgage on me, I understand math well enough to know what a mortgage is, and what it implies in terms of my responsibilities. I also knew that by buying at the time I did, I was contributing to a bubble that had to burst sooner or later.
And though I think that major financial institutions have gotten away with crimes, so have many “ordinary” Americans. I know a few people, and have heard of many more, who have simply stopped paying their mortgages. Some people have walked away from properties because their value is less than the mortgage, which I think at the least is unethical. Some have continued to live there, getting away with not paying anything for months because the banks are so overwhelmed with paperwork that they can’t pursue the default (my experiences with banks strongly suggest that this is the major cause of all these "robo signings", not from any evil intentions). And there are major movements in the U.S. now of people who have been foreclosed on who refuse to move out. These are people who had to know when they bought the house the risk they were taking, and now they want to be excused--at the least, they want to pay less than they were contractually obliged to pay (short sellers, who sell their house for less than the mortgage, and aren‘t obligated to make up the difference, are doing the same thing). Please. For some of these people the alternative may be to live on the street, so I can understand that, but most of these people have other options (which they managed to exercise before they bought the house). If ordinary people will engage in dishonesty like this, why is anyone surprised that people who were in positions of much greater economic power would also be dishonest?
Which brings me to a final point. Someone (who obviously doesn’t know me) suggested I was an academic who had sold out the cause (or words to that effect). Actually, my life since the 60s has been far harder and more dangerous than it was then. It’s one thing to be behind physical bars, knowing someone is going to spring you soon and you will get off with a misdemeanor that’s soon forgotten. It’s quite another to become convinced that the “system” that all of us are embedded in is far more encompassing than a government or cabal of industrialists, and that the only way to free ourselves from that is a life that, in effect, recognizes that we are always in prison. Some of the posters here, e.g., rubroma, imply that life was beautiful at some point in the past (but when exactly I’m unclear--maybe sometime between the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and the Reagan/Thatcher era? Or was it between the end of WWII and the defeat of Mitterand?). All I can say is my major lesson in the late 60s was that it doesn’t matter whether the chains are made of gold or steel, they’re still chains. And once you understand that, your life changes in unimaginable ways. The enemy is not the state; it’s you, though your understanding of “you” is very different from the conventional one.
The price we pay for failing to see this is to face the same dilemmas, again and again. E.g., is it right or ethical to resort to violence to overthrow a government you consider oppressive? If you say yes, as some posters here suggest, you sanction actions from people you may disagree with profoundly--from the OKC bomber to a Republican congressional candidate in Texas who recently said that violent overthrow of the U.S. government is “on the table”. If you say no, maybe you feel you are condoning a government that engages in what you deeply believe are criminal actions.
People have grappled with this problem, and many other, similar dilemmas for the entire history of civilization. How much longer it will take before people recognize that there is no solution to such questions within ordinary humanity--that they are built into the species--I have no idea. It’s certainly much more comfortable to believe that everyone will live happily ever after in some hybrid capitalist/socialist state where all are taken care of from cradle to grave. The fact that such states never last long (and even while they do exist, only with major inequities) ought, it seems to me, to clue us in to the notion that the problem goes far deeper than what the system of government is.
Peace, everyone. But also war, because peace only emerges through waging war.