Hollyhocks

Here?

Crossing a busy street, every inch pavement, you come across

Hollyhocks.

They dwarf the fire hydrant and give parallel parking an extra challenge. They shouldn’t be growing there. There’s no water source, the barest of soil.

I read a piece in the NYT: From: David Wallace-Wells <nytdirect@nytimes.com>
Subject: Jean-Luc Mélenchon believes the time is now for the left
Date: May 7, 2025

An interview with the leader of the French left, who unexpectedly won the most votes in their recent elections. It says a lot about what we get for news in this country, and maybe my own nationalistic myopia, that I had never heard of Jean-Luc Melenchon. (Neither has spell-check).

So far as I knew, his winning the most votes in a French election, was as unlikely as Hollyhocks blooming on that street.

So far as I knew, there was far too little nourishment for either to flourish.

David Wallace-Wells, who conducted the interview, pushed hard to get Jean-Luc to agree that the whole world was turning right-wing conservative, and the old left impotent.

Melenchon pointed out that market capitalism has a meltdown crisis every decade. And is exploitive of the people who aren’t part of the market trading floor. So it provides fuel for cynical leaders who blame the “elite” for the woes people suffer.

He identified himself and Bernie Sanders as the two most visible politicians carrying the socialist banner. “Have you noticed,” he asked, “that we’re both old?”

That observation perplexed Wallace-Wells. “So?”

“We’ve lived through the worst of right-wing fascism. We know what a terrible thing it can be. And we know that, when people have suffered the worst of it, they become willing to turn to compassionate socialism.” (not direct quote).

Then:

“Capitalism has always been a crisis. It has a crisis every 10 or 12 years. The socialist movement has been built as an attempt to try to understand this crisis. That’s not new either. But what’s different now is two things. First, crises sometimes lead to wars, and if they lead to wars in our time, they are likely to become nuclear wars, with all the irreversible consequences for humanity that entails. And second, there is the ecological crisis, which is irreversible. We can no longer stop it. All we can do is try to work out how to confront it and deal with it.

“That’s why I insist so much on warning about the current crisis. From now on, the question facing human beings is more a question of what it means to survive, rather than what are my ideological preferences.”

His French left party has directed its efforts to the huge number who aren’t involved in politics.

That population decided our last election.

Most of all, it triggered my thought that Melenchon winning the most votes in France, was like the Hollyhocks sprouting where no gardener would every plant them. They are like phenomena.

For those of us who feel under assault by the bullying government we have now, we might consider looking where we have failed to pay attention for the past 50 years.

And we might begin with some un-American willingness to sit at the feet of those we have regarded as our minions. We have a lot to learn. They have a lot to teach us.