Le (brave new) Monde

Lets open the pages of Le Monde… Which means, in one way or another, to be comfortable enough, to be wealthy enough, to allow myself a coffee in Utrecht, and time to peek in the sophisticated world of the world according to the french. Le Monde, for my background and education, is a window to the centennial europe, to the fashions of the fashionable france, to the stratospheric discourse on philosophy by elevated professors of La Sorbonne. This morning, alas, something rings untrue in my own petit bourgeois window. Looks like the walls of the french intelligentsia are cracking, letting rays of other lights come through.

And here we go. The first article that gets me is an english (english, for god's sake) disquisition into the future of the left in europe. The writer, a former labor minister in the laborite government of Tony Blair, explains why the dinosauric european left, akin to the communist party, has left this old continent with few chances of development, meanwhile a progressive left, funny and paradoxically enough, rekindle flags closer to the neoliberals, is the movement that holds the keys of a more human future. The original shock, of having in Le Monde an english savant, is slowly blunted in the recognition that this is, again, simple propaganda for the blairite third way . Ok, nothing new here.

But the blunting of the surprise sharpens again at reading another anglo-saxon savant, this time writing on public policy against global warming. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs the column. Excuse me? I beg your pardon? Arnie? The muscles and the heavy accent? Yeap. Arnie is back, giving to the readers of Le Monde an overview in the policy that the californian state pursue in the search for a greener future.

My brain stability is definitively shocked. Trembling I turn the pages and some of my peace is regained when I am able to understand a brainy review on some exposition on Matisse, or a mourning reflection on the choosing of London instead of Paris as home of the olympic games of 2012. Eventually I turn the last page of Le Monde, and with a gauloise in my lighter, I breathe the poison and regain some comfort. But the question remains. What is going on?

Today, as any other day of my last three years, I am an active member of the green party of the netherlands. A green party called groenlinks, green left. In a recent meeting of our campaign committee, responsible of designing the strategy for the coming elections, we define our voters as mainly postmaterialists and cosmopolitans. And I end my cigarette wondering how this universe will react to a world in which a blairite minister guards the progress of the left, and Arnold Schwarzenegger defends the future of the greens. Strange bedfellows, at least. But my coffee is cold, and my cigarrete is over. High time to get to the street and do some work.