Easter 2020
I knew that it would not take long before the Macron government went full-Vichy, but I did not ever envision the post-card — carte postale — that was used in Vichy France during the very early part of The Dark Years — making a return to France in the 21st century. The modern-day form is digital, but the effect is still the same:
The citizen is the enemy to be watched, patrolled, regulated, counted, categorized, fined, and, overall, mistrusted.
Chapter 7 in Book 1, Camille, of THE DAWN took place a long time ago for me in the French translation (sometime during early 2016) — and an even longer time ago for me in the original English version (Spring 2009).
There is nonetheless a stark similarity between the collaborationist Vichy snooping forms to fill out in 1940-42, and the Macron-meddling in the lives of the French citizens — who must deal with so many police and gendarmes on the streets to patrol the populace from public exposure to air. The poltroons in Paris are more alarmed about the spread of the invisible enemy of the latest imported Chinese virus, than they are about the Chinese invasion of their Loire Valley farms and dairies for purchase; or about the French jobs for sale to Chinese-labor imports; or even about keeping track of the numbers within the hordes of illegal invaders from regions outside of Europe.
The « attestation de déplacement dérogatoire » is the Official 16 mars 2020 French Government “derogatory travel certificate” to be filled out by any person, citizen or otherwise, in France who wishes to exit the maison, flee the domicile, or just plain get out of the house!
The word, derogatory, in English usually means disparaging or belittling, as in a derogatory term. The word in French, however, takes on the full verbal force of:
Detracting or tending to lessen by taking something away; that lessens extent, effect, estimation, with to, sometimes from.
I think, in this case, the English definition is the more accurate one, although the sense of taking away civil liberties is certainly conspicuous in this treatment of the rights of any man and any woman who must use a Permission Slip to leave-the-house. And the slip can not be re-used! But, please don’t take this indecent intrusion upon your personal rights personally, even though your personal data have been confiscated to the point of no longer belonging to you! Why, you, and your Smart-phone have been granted by your Government their own personal tracking system of You!
Code-names might come back into style!
The Vichy communication card offered a choice among 7 mostly grim conditions, along with the requisite Head-of-Petain Stamp. The Macron décret (decree) does not require posting of the Head-of-Jupiter Macron (although a nickname for the guillotine comes to mind, Le Moulin à Silence, or The Silence Mill). Only 5 possible avenues of escape are proffered to the personne imprisoned in FranceLockdown. He or she must still run the gauntlet of the on-foot police patrols and the police-vans. Failure to comply with the mandated certificate Mon-Père-puis-je ? (Father, may I?) is punishable through fines, all of which are ever-increasing.
The criminal offenders, however, need not fear for their heads. The guillotine was outlawed in France in 1981, ONLY, however, due to the abolition of capital punishment — meaning that if capital punishment were still legal in France, that standard method of judicial execution would currently be keeping avocats très busy with cruel-and-unusual punishment litigation over Le Rasoir National, the National Razor.
At least 100,000 police and gendarmes have been dispersed throughout the cities of France to enforce the lockdown and to make sure that anyone out there, on those deserted streets, is carrying a signed attestation. A “failure to produce” the proper documentation initially carries the penalty of 38 euros. Recurrent fines rise to 135 euros at that inevitable “later stage”. And, contrary to rumors, the French Army will not deployed during this attack, at this stage, on the rights of men and women in la douce France.
I’m placing my bets on the rapid rise of the old and cherished industries of counterfeiting official documents and of the black market, marché noir, for profitable compliance with the police state.
The gendarmes, or the gendarmerie, comprise the military force with police duties among the civilian population in France. The word is directly descended from the medieval French term, gens d’armes, which means “armed people” — something that is a foreign concept in those foreign lands whence we gun-toting Americans first came. It is long past time that the people of France, or of any nation in that bloated bureaucracy in a state of implosion, the EU, become armed with weapons of self-defense — guns, truth, and their rapidly vanishing civil rights. It is never too late to use time to your advantage, especially when the clock is running out on the frauds who flail while “ruling” over you.
Time is never on the side of tyrants, autocrats and idiots. Time is on the side of patient people who put up with the politics of farce, the politicians freaking out over the very real possibility of people finally finding out those greedy grandstanders are absolute imbeciles, placed “in charge” of their governments!
Plus ça change, c’est plus la même chose.
The following paragraphs are excerpted from Chapter 7 of THE DAWN.
Pour comble de malheur, to truly heap up the horror, to pile on the misery, and to crown it all, the Germans interfered with the mail, the post office, that sacred bastion of privacy which the Germans viewed as so fully ripe for exploitation and control. Only family members could attempt correspondence; and letter writing was verboten. A card consisting of thirteen lines was introduced to the French people, this refined culture which had elevated the art of letter writing to philosophical treatise. The French citizen was granted the choice of selecting from among these words to properly elucidate their emotions:
In good health
Tired
Slightly/Seriously ill
Wounded
Prisoner
Dead
No news of
It is true that in May 1941 there was introduced a blank card of seven lines. By then, however, the German decision to baldly interfere with letter writing in France may have prompted the first tremors of internal resistance among even the attentistes. It was one thing for the French to quarrel amongst themselves, and to then divide themselves in every way possible, according to taste; opinion; philosophy; politics; prejudice; choice of wine; and accent, to the point where unity was a quaint concept. It was quite another thing, c’était autre chose, for the invader and conqueror, especially the immortal enemy, the eternal enemy, Germany, to impose geographical barriers, and enforce time zones, and then to confine the individual to checking off the pertinent box to indicate the term most descriptive of one’s personal state of mind and body.
The French finger hesitated over which box to check on the postal card which had been provided by the German occupier at French expense. The postal card would first be read by German censors and then by Vichy snoops before ever reaching a loved one. The French finger then hesitated just long enough to decide that a form of this absurdity was going too far. When an enemy intrudes upon the mail system, it has clearly gone too far. This spark of indignation might also have helped to keep alive the flame of French resistance; and this spark may have begun in many domiciles with a match struck for the purpose of burning the official postal card.