I read Salon from Europe, and sometimes I have longed to write in order to tell you how people feel this side of the Atlantic. I am happy to be able to do so from now on, as soon as something happens which prompts me to express an opinion,

The real question here is: why do people believe him?

Why did people believe Bush and the outrageous way he depicted Gore, who had shown 8 (EIGHT) years long that he wasn't that man? Why did they believe that Bush would be compassionate, he was the governor of a state who sentenced more people to death than any other? And so on and so forth...

So why would people believe David Cameron after he used “compassionate conservative”. To me he was branded the minute he uttered those words.

So, after we have seen what Bush has done of HIS compassion, the answer to this question is, for me, something of a mistery.

Maybe the problem lies in our education. We are tought to believe too much of what people say, we forget what they do, we are politically uneducated - and we fall for the first guy (or gal) who's telling us he will love us more than his or her rival.

The great majority of us will suffer, after the “compassionate” conservative is elected. But we still vote for him.

WHY?

I find you admirable: you expose lie after lie, day after day.

A compelling question comes to mind, though: where is the proverbial American common sense, where is the critical public eye which pursued so relentlessly Monica Levinsky's maybe stains: what is happening to the collective consciousness of your country, which I love very much, but understand less and less?

In other words, why don't people come to conclusions, realizing all those lies?

Surely no politician is an angel. But this bunch has gone beyond every pale. By all standards, the Republican Party should be paying a heavy political price.

How come this isn't happening?

The queastions that are being asked here are the one I have been asking, and asking myself, forever. How can the American public realize ONLY NOW what has been happening in Irak for three years, in Afghanistan, in America and elsewhere for five years - how is it possible that a normal member of the public as myself was able to see what was going to happen BEFORE the invasion (yeah, I know, liberation) of Irak took place, and so many American politicians, whose job it should be, didn't see it. HOW?

I am European (but not French), and have been wondering for a long time how Americans accept what is called “flexibility” and how one can say that it works, except for the rich. In the US too there are more and more poor.

CPE has been focusing a feeling which has been growing for years. The fight against it embodies the refusal of people to be treated as commodities which can be taken or thrown away, the need for dignity, not only for the young, but for everybody.

It has NOTHING TO DO WITH “A JOB FOR LIFE”. Wanting a stable job does not mean one wants to hold it for life. It means one wants to have time to be interested in it, to feel one counts as a person. To plan ahead (because who is going to lend you money to buy a dwelling or a car, if you can't show you have a stable job? No one). Half the workers change professions during their working life (I myself have changed twice), but they want jobs that give them time to become proficient, to count. The CPE does not offer that to young French workers - on the contrary. It accentuates instability. It was high time someone said aloud what these people (young and older) have been saying in the French streets for weeks.

It is rather amusing to read this article when one has one's roots in Venice - my mother comes from there, and I visited old aunts and cousins of hers rather often when I was a child. The younger generation has left, to work somewhere else in Italy. From my experience as traveller, I think that there are cities which one can understand while being a tourist for a few days or weeks. One cannot get to know what I call the inside of the population, but one gets a feeling. And there are cities which are one thing for the tourist, and a completely different thing to the inhabitants. Very few people who are not Venetians get the inside of Venice. Neither Thomas Mann nor Henry James, nor many others in your list did. For them, Venice is just a scenery. I recommend a film, “Pane e tulipani”, there is a hint of the inner Venice there.

As for Venice disappearing: it will, of course, some time. But my grandmother already believed the city would cave in before her death (and I suspect HER grandmother had already believed as much), she had even prepared her relocation, but she has been dead these 40 years and Venice is still there.

... where one would read this kind of article.

It goes nowhere, doesn't tell anything - it is pointless.

I agree with those who say this is by far the worst article ever written in Salon.