If anything it shows that authoritarians will choose what keeps them in power rather than what's best for the people. The left didn't get the majority, it was roughly a 3 way split between the left, center-right and far-right. The government would've been with the left and center-right or center-right and far-right. The former would've been better because it would've represented a bigger portion of the voters but the latter was also viable from the perspective of democracy.

However the choice was largely up to Macron (and his party) and he's definitely more autocratic than democratic. His decision is what ultimately threw the left under the bus.

Tldr: Democracy is fine, authoritarianism is the issue.

During 2022 the French left was saying "A vote for Macron in 2022 is a vote for Le Pen in 2027".

They appear to be right on schedule.

Calls snap elections right after the far right wins big in eu elections

That's the only reason they did that lmao. They were hoping the far-right would win, and ignored the results because they didn't.

It's not that rare in Europe actually, for example Poland have very similar government forming procedure, and guess what, after most recent elections Polish president Duda tried to do identical maneuver, but unlike in France the elections weren't this close so he didn't really tried to do de-facto coup like Macron, just mostly maneuvered to exhaust all his time-delaying procedures to give his party colleagues from ending term time to jump the ship safely, destroy the compromising documents (literally, the central security service ABW bought lots of large paper shredders right after elections)

France has a weird hybrid Presidential/Parliamentary system that no other country has and is really confusing.

Most other countries either have a diminished President whose only real duty is making sure there is a Prime Minister that has a mandate to lead or an empowered President that has a democratic mandate and has more leeway to run the government's administration.

It is, but that's also a defining feature of the presidential system as opposed to the parliamentary system.

I think it is designed this way since France is pretty pro Big Government

At best left, not remotely far left.

I'm hoping the Communists in France have been reading their Lenin. I can't think of a better gift Macron could have given the communists. "Left-Wing" Communism, an Infantile Disorder

...
This has stripped more and more active and engaged and hopeful people of their illusions about bourgeois democracy than even bernie-clinton 2016 nonsense. Which even that created a lot of communists; and that was relatively milquetoast compared to this huge national mobilization and upswell and coalition movement which was big enough to make international headlines no less. If the French communists have been reading their Lenin and agitating on this stuff even before it happened (as you said, very predictable) then the communist movement has gained 10x more than any eurosocialist thinks "the left" lost.

Link back any hilarious replies

Plenty of people are protesting for one cause or another, see the troubles at the olympics. You don't hear much about it on mass media anymore because governments figured out that it's better to keep silent about it or protests spread.

To be fair we're pretty tired and hopeless, most people are apathetic now because nothing seems to be working.

Strikes and demonstrations are vilified by the media, the left is not united enough to hit as hard as they should, the president is a child throwing tantrums to have it the way he wants, the media is owned by very few people so they control the narrative, etc.

It honestly feels hopeless, most people want change, but to a lot of people the demonising of the left has worked and the far right seems to be a reasonable option now.

It's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better unfortunately...

I’m not saying what they’ll do but the concept of the French being “revolutioned out” borders on comical. It may be beheadings or merely stacking trash in the street, but they aren’t known for staying quiet.

I think they will go increasingly Vichy just with Berlin replaced with Washington, through Berlin.

It took me a while to understand what you meant because we don't write anything on our ballots. There are piles of small cards with one candidate (or list) on each, we (are supposed to) pick one of each and put one in the envelope.
But yeah, I agree with your take.

France could use a new Republic. what're they on, six now?

If voting changed anything they wouldn’t let us do it.

Also to force privatisations on the member states who don't have the clout to just ignore the rules

Fuck CDU/AfD. Germany is already taking the wrong side of history.

They could but they won't have enough votes to go through with it unfortunately. The assembly is roughly 33% of the three big groups, the united left, Macron's party and the far right. With the united left having slightly more seats than the other two.