French road: Diagnosis 2 – part 8
Yapping dogs
By implying that all drivers of heavy goods vehicles are retarded and irresponsible, the media inculcate into them a hatred for society and all car drivers in general. This will lead them, if it has not already done so, in a number of cases to act as nothing less than murderers, in a vicious and underhand response to the attacks from the media. They know how easy it is to lay technical traps for the road neurotics. In the general environment, this often goes unnoticed, as everything seems normal to someone who does not live in this very strange world constituted by the French roads, with the result that violence continues its devilish progress. Many listeners to the radio in France and further afield were able, before the summer of 1999, to hear a radio «personality» literally insulting in every possible way a driver of a heavy goods vehicle who, according to him, nearly ran him down as he left a café with a colleague. He took advantage of his possibility of talking on the radio to a large audience to yet again trample a trucker, so as to arouse the anger of the population against these vehicles and these drivers. He had no trouble in yapping to his microphone for more than ten minutes. The microphone was his weapon.
If his aim had not been to arouse the populace that he subjects to his narrow-mindedness against heavy goods vehicles in general, in order to add still further to the lack of mutual understanding and the violence on the roads, why did he and his colleagues not make a formal complaint to the police? The answer is that his aim was not to deal with his personal problem like a responsible human being but rather to do so by manipulating the weak, by spreading tears and blood through the country through inciting a whole population to violence. This the journalists have been able to do in masterly fashion for many years without the legal system being able to put a stop to this problem — or even lift a little finger to do so. These troublemakers try — and they have almost succeeded — to take the place of the government and the decision-makers, with all the dangers of explosion this represents. The only thing they know how to do is to preach hatred and discord in order to give themselves more power. The movement they have launched will in the end be a boomerang that will hit them full in the face; not only them but also those who blindly follow them. This type of behavior can be witnessed at least every day in the French media. Can this be a normal situation? Is there not a form of racism lurking behind such pronounced subjectivity? Those who are not subjugated by the media should recognize the merits of the truckers in continuing to do their work under these conditions — and without any help from the government.
This is all the more true in that road transport is one of the crucial elements in the present economic and social situation. What exactly lies behind this unacceptable situation, affecting workers who have at least as much right as others to go about their work in peace? This question should be put to foreign observers and especially those who have noticed that this situation has gotten worse in the past ten years, when the wages of all those working on the road have tended to diminish rather than increase, with all the many problems this entails. A heavy goods driver is on the road for himself, but with an acute sense of observation for the road environment. These people may have their faults and it is true that they tend to live their own way, but is it necessary to humiliate them simply because in many cases they do not come from the more favored social classes and in addition, are obliged to maintain their dignity and also a certain form of freedom in carrying out work which is itself entirely respectable, but will end by destroying their health because of the number of hours worked as part of the materialist dictatorship? It is easy to see the value of those who insult them directly or indirectly in the media, attacking them treacherously by using the lack of knowledge on the part of the public, who ought to try to be more sympathetic and comprehensive towards truckers in general.
The yapping dogs of the media interview them when they have spent more than ten hours in their cabs, meaning that they are no longer capable of maintaining a balanced and sensible conversation — let alone being smartly dressed (which for them is part of their working life but which, for the monsters of subjectivity, leads to snide remarks). And yet they are behind the steering wheel at a time when other families are at the dining table and eating what they have transported. Those who are so inclined to criticize heavy goods vehicle drivers and accuse them of being responsible on their own for the French road carnage may well entrust their children to a coach driver when they leave for summer camp saying «get in, dear, and take care»! Yet another paradox in a society which claims to be advanced and civilized.
Their motto is “divide and rule” over those who should come together in order to enable society in general to progress. In fact, society is building up a dangerous deficit in its tendency to submit human beings to materialism, when instead society should be capable of accommodating the materialism. But this the assessors of things and money, and hence of society, do not want at any price because it would mean that they could no longer dominate others and live like gods — although they are far from being so in reality. Some will see a certain pro-Americanism in this philosophy, but they would be wrong. In fact, I do not find myself at home with any current political tendency. But it is almost certain that a woman will one day, perhaps soon, be President of the United States. This is likely to usher in a period in which the United States sets the example to the world of improved distribution of material goods throughout the planet. Yet again, the United States will be the trendsetter, as it has been in so many fields, notably a better distribution of labor, implying virtually full employment, overriding the narrow-minded attitude to what the French disparagingly call «little jobs».
This the French media hacks cannot abide, so that for some time they have been giving free rein to their hatred of the Americans, well aware that they have been on the right track for a long time. Just another example of «the dogs bark, but the caravan passes by». The leaders of American society have managed to combine theory and observation of the past, which, paradoxically, they sometimes tend to refute but which at the same time they apply with moderation and adopting the «happy medium», using objective thought and analysis as well as subjectivity, but carefully selecting only what is best in the latter. Their motto is one of security, moving into the future through anticipation and analysis based on recognition of past errors committed by themselves or others. Granted, their world is not perfect. But let those who have no direct knowledge of it make no mistake, it will become perfect much sooner than in the Old World. No one should overlook the fact that we are at the dawn of civilization and of this new materialist world which in fact has only just begun. Like young children envying each other’s toys, the protagonists in this new world jostle and punch each other with shouts and tears to grab each other’s possessions. Could it be that the French car drivers or those who suffer most in blood and tears from the road throughout the world return to being children as soon as they get in a car, as some psychologists have claimed? Is this arrogant and pretentious French nation (with, as some people say, its national emblem the cock because it sings with its feet planted in its own dunghill) not the symptomatic child-adult through its intolerance on the road? We have the situation in which the very big toy upsets those who have little toys, the result being that the little toys are driven at totally unsuitable speeds that are nevertheless tolerated or even approved.
There seem to be signs of a new road policy in France. It would already reduce the danger considerably for the owners of the little toys and those who benefit from the fact that all these toys go fast in varying degrees — lobbies and government together, hand in hand — were to apply the legislation and simply the logic of safety, in contrast to the government which has always claimed to want to improve the situation but which has never been able to, or wanted to do so to the extent that it is trying to do now.
The fact is that the government has always fallen between two stools and as politicians, not so much as leaders, unless they are prepared to be dictators, their powers are limited. Although in other times some have profited from certain weaknesses to exceed their true role. Some people have not understood how much the recent government measures, however unpopular they may be, to deal with the French road problem are in fact the most truly popular, in the sense of restoring the tranquility of the population in mind and body. Anyone who dares to say the contrary is an idiot who has totally failed to understand the situation or, worse, a misery.
I do not defend one political party more than another and shall never do so because of the complexity of these worlds, but I have slightly more respect for those who have themselves shown slightly greater respect for those thanks to whom they live. For the moment, the government is doing what it can to restrict the carnage on the roads but is having increasing difficulty in doing so, as was only to be expected. It has made a gesture but it is clear that it has not been able to kick over the anthill and has merely been pussyfooting. Even so, what a surprising revolution took place in a few months in 1999, merely by agreeing for once to look reality in the face. Only those directly involved on the roads can seize the opportunity they have been given as part of the new approach to road safety. They can do so by behaving correctly on the road, by respecting the Highway Code as far as possible, including the speed limits which are perfectly adjusted to the situation and the technical capacities of our vehicles, and by adopting a responsible behavior and not acting as immature children. In this way they might stop saying «it wasn’t me, it was the other guy». With this new awareness, French drivers will stop killing each other like Los Angeles teenage gang members and, in so doing, stop killing innocent people for a few yards of road. Perhaps someone who gets behind the wheel becomes like a dog itching for a street-fight.
Or should the French driver be compared to the contemptible characters from Los Angeles who are merely weaklings despite all the splendor — the reason why they behave as we all know they do? A large concentration of people in a place is incompatible with indiscipline, because when indiscipline takes over, men become aggressive deep down, as certain perverts have perfectly understood. Obviously, this does not mean moving towards dictatorship but striking a happy medium in the responsibility of each one for himself and others, based on a policing system and legislation to neutralize those who have decided to spoil everyone’s lives in favor of those who want to live like human beings and not like dogs fighting over a bone. I am coming to the end of this text, to which much information could be added (information I may return to later) and which will not cost too much in written form in relation to the contribution it will make to general well-being and particularly material well-being.
Are heavy goods vehicles responsible for all the problems on the road?
The figures speak for themselves. The French driver goes like a bull at a gate, with no anticipation, completely dominated by his stupidity and the results are as follows, simply for 1998 in France (Figures taken from the 1998 report of the road safety division of the Transport Ministry.):
- Number of dead in the 30 days following the accident: 8918; cost: 34.7 billion francs
- Number of seriously injured: 33496; cost: 13.4 billion francs.
- Number of slightly injured: 134558; cost 11.5 billion francs.
- Giving a total estimated cost of accidents involving people in 1998 of 59.6 billion francs.
- Estimated cost of accidents not involving injury (cost of repairs whether reimbursed by insurance companies or not): 60 billion francs.
- The cost of road accidents is estimated at 119.6 billion francs.
Frankly, having seen these figures, who could be so naive as to think that only the road professionals are responsible for the situation? The answer is, only those who refuse to look reality in the face and who prefer to put the responsibility onto others. If the professional drivers, as the media would have us believe, along with the weaklings of the road, were responsible for all these billions of expenditure and for this mini-civil-war, would the government not immediately step in to remedy a situation caused by these so-called professional “roadhogs”?
The real culprits are all drivers and road users who have not understood that the road is par excellence the world of the wheel. Consequently, all those who fail to remain humble vis-a-vis themselves, especially on the road, will merely be victims of the principle of the wheel which never comes down and, paradoxically, take into consideration the power of money, as the wheel is itself a form of divine and interstellar power which has probably materialized on earth in the form of the wheel. We are descended from the universe and not from apes — although the latter, too, come from the universe, like all things on earth.
