The Sarkozy Displacement

In Washington, D.C. and in Crawford, Texas there lives a man who for the last seven years has been allowed to play the role of U.S. president, though actually in more than one sense that post has been vacant all along. This indicates that it and some other high government offices may not always be essential in today's world. That world, after all, is typified by the building of ever larger and more intricate structures and transport devices that defy management by a single or even a few human hands.

The other day this imposter, named GWBush, was in Europe, and while there, he effusively praised the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, because whereas Jacques Chirac, the French president in 2003, had refused to accompany Bush into the unprovoked and disastrous Iraq invasion, Sarkozy had just now pledged to add 1,000 more to the 1,400 French troops who are already opposing the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. The Canadians, long time participants in the Afghanistan struggle, had not been happy with the situation and had threatened to withdraw a like number of troops unless other NATO countries sent in reinforcements in this "War on Terror," as GWBush sees everything, though the European countries are thought to be in there more for humanitarian purposes. .

The imposter was so grateful that he told the world that Sarkozy had already demonstrated his sterling virtues to the American people on a recent visit to the U.S, so much so that they viewed him as being nothing less than an incarnation of Elvis, that is, of the long deceased singer, Elvis Presley.

That surprised me, because after all, even though I am far removed from it in more than one way, I still see myself as part of that American public, and, were it not for one distinctly undistinguished incident, I would not have recalled that Sarkozy had ever stepped on American soil, much less that he been hailed throughout the land as the second coming of the guy who became famous and forever revered when he sang, "You ain't nothing but a hound dog."

But with Bush's remark -- and with Google's help -- I finally did recall that Sarkozy's stay here last summer on vacation in New Hampshire was indeed marked by one event. Un-French-presidentially clad only in swimming trunks, he and a bodyguard were boating on a lake when they spotted news photographers taking pictures of them from close up. Sarkozy, apparently the feisty type, pulled his craft up beside the nosy photographers, jumped into their boat, and loudly berated them -- in French.

I'm sorry, but I don't remember that deed taking America by storm. If you're going to cuss out somebody in this country, you don't do it in French. I am sure Elvis wouldn't have.

A while ago, a scientist named Charles Hapgood postulated that. in addition to the tectonic plates, the entire top layer of the earth's crust, the lithosphere, also can move around in one piece relative to the core, much like the skin of an orange if somehow it could be completely detached from the pulp beneath. The molten layers inside the Earth plus the pull exerted on its crust by various external forces makes that possible.

It seems to me that quite often national leadership also involves this kind of "earth-crust displacement," as the theory is called. There can be an almost total disconnect, in which the leaders can think and do things that have no bearing on what the great mass of citizens is thinking, provided that the subject has appeared to be worthwhile enough to them to be considered at all.

I would put the Bushian 2003 decision to invade Iraq squarely in that class, but there is a more recent example involving Ukraine and Russia, as shown by this quote from an article in RIA Novosty. A senior member of the Russian Parliament, A. Ostrovsky, was threatening that if Georgia and Ukraine accepted the recent invitation to join NATO, Russia would feel free to claim the Crimea.

However, Ostrovsky admitted that Ukraine was unlikely to join NATO any time soon, saying that the Ukrainian president, prime minister and parliamentary speaker were the only people in the country seeking membership of the Western military alliance. His comments referred to recent opinion polls that have indicated that about 70% of the population is opposed to joining NATO..

Similarly, I'm sure the French feel intensely relieved that none of their feet are buried in the Iraqi bog. Is it likely that they're thinking any different about Afghanistan?