NY TIMES’ FRANCOVILE HYPOCRISY
Now they tell us: The big mistake of American deplorables and irredeemables is that they were born in the wrong country and have the wrong accent.
If they had the good sense to be French, The New York Times would have had sympathy for their plight. It might have approved, or at least understood, their votes for Donald Trump.
The Gray Lady, in a recent editorial, expressed tender sympathy for the heart of the protest movement roiling France. It said President Emmanuel Macron’s fuel-tax increase was an “insufferable insult” to people who believe that “government ministers, bureaucrats, trade unions and especially the political class . . . are deaf to their economic struggles.” Hmmm. The paper, while noting that it supports Macron’s general approach and abhors anarchic violence, cautioned that “high-minded policies” on emissions “need to be explained and mitigated for the many people struggling at the borderline of poverty.”
This is remarkable because the words and tone stand in stark contrast to the paper’s demonization of Americans who reject those very same policies. And Trump is the devil himself for pulling out of the Paris climate accord.
To say the Times is obsessed with climate change is an understatement. It publishes one, two or three stories seemingly every day warning that the Apocalypse is coming. Dissent is treated as heresy.
The paper champions carbon taxes, wants to limit coal mining, opposes most pipelines and generally backs schemes favoring renewables, no matter the cost to taxpayers or industry.
Yet it offers little respite for Americans “struggling at the borderline of poverty” because they lost their jobs when Barack Obama pursued those policies.
There could be complex reasons why the paper takes contradictory approaches to similar problems, but I suspect a simple one: prejudice. No doubt Times editorial writers get to Paris more often than to the Rust Belt and Appalachia.
And why not? The food and wine are better and Paris is beautiful. Except when it’s burning.