If americans had any sense, France would be their role model.
would be??! The french are full of fear and disgust and bigotry. they're either a dead or dying empire. Most of us wish France would not be our model for anything. Unfortunately, there are far too many parallels for us to claim that they aren't. France now is us in fifty or a hundred years. they're a bloated festering corpse of an empire, growing more smelly by the day. Just as the USA will one day be. Take a hard look at the irony of your last post, si'l vous plait.
I got a postcard just yesterday. from a friend vacationing in paris. He's having a grand time, and commented on how Louis, my son's eponymous, is considered one of their good kings, according to a display he saw in a museum. He didn't mention which Louis though. I don't buy the bit about the french being haughty and arrogant, but then I've lived in Boston and in Texas, which are full of, respectively, haughty and arrogant people, so by comparison no one seems haughty and arrogant any longer. But then I really don't think Bostonians are as haughty as people say they are and I don't think Texans are as arrogant as people say they are. Actions and words often get taken out of context by idiots, I think. Anyway my buddy says they're having a grand time. Even with their two toddler children in tow.
But I do know that the French economy is in a slump, with aggregate GDP growing by only 1.4 percent last year. And unemployment in France, already high by american standards, has edged up in recent years and is around 10 percent. For les français under 30, the unemployment rate is about 23 percent. comment le mauvais!
By every objective and measurable standard, the French economy is faltering. Between 1999 and 2004, the French share of the world export market for wine declined from 25 percent to 19 percent. And haute couture is showing signs of stress as well, with french art exports in serious decline.
And they're every bit as arrogant as we are, but without the clout that we anglophones have. Even recently Chirac and his two deputies walked out of an european union summit in Brussels because the president of a French business association addressed the session in English rather than French. Apparently Chirac interrupted Ernest-Antoine Seilliere's presentation and demanded to know "why on earth" he was speaking in English. Seilliere simply replied, "Because that is the accepted business language of Europe today."
Oddly, their college students, which in most societies are the standard-bearers for paradigm changes, have become the strongest advocates of the status quo. They are trying to cling to the social security blankets that have protected their parents' generation but which many economists say are crippling France's integration into a new world economy. The cradle to grave welfare system has crippled the machine, and everyone knows it. Think we're full of false bravado yet inner fear, opebo? Ask the average Frenchman about "globalization" and they'll quake. They love pushing their culture on everyone (sound familiar??? it should. We do it as well.) Yet, perhaps hypocritically, when Ipsos recently asked 500 people between the ages of 20 and 25 the question "What does globalization mean to you?" Forty-eight percent of those surveyed responded, "Fear." Fear of everything. Everything, that is, except telling the world what they should think. (And surely at least this must sound familiar.)
I suppose technically, the French Empire died the day an uneducated, inferior, poorly trained, but patriotic, force of hillbillies from Dien Bien Phu kicked the french army's ass on a hot, humid day in 1954. But rather than dying gracefully, they enlisted the Yankees, a burgeoning, but as yet unsophisticated, world player. Like getting your stronger, but less mature, younger brother to fight your battles. So at the request of the French Government, we sent "advisors" to Viet Nam to save them. Except that we didn't save anyone. Just killed off about fifty four thousand of our own. And a boatload of dollars. Maybe two or three boatloads. But at least it got us to thinking about how an empire should and shouldn't properly function. We owe the french our thanks in that regard.
anyway, dead (or dying) empires are a bit like old people. we love 'em, but they sure don't smell very good. n'est ce-pas? It's like, I really do care for you grandma, and I love your stories, but please don't make me come up there and give you a big sloppy wet kiss.
