Tuesday, October 21, 2003
WHEN THINGS ARE GOING BAD, BLAME THE FRENCH -- at least according to a wayward conservative electronic acquaintance of mine who brought the above Fox News link to my attention. Both he and Fox News seem to have a real problem with the French... In a nutshell, this article would suggest that the French are morally despicable secularists who reject Judeo-Christian doctrines and are all-in-all an ignorant, clumsy lot of cynical orgiasts. Hmmmm. A little touchy are we that everything the French predicted would happen in Iraq has indeed come to pass? And yet my conservative email acquaintance continues to accept Bush Jr.'s blatant and ever-more-widely-acknowledged lies, his inability to articulate a coherent sentence, his undoing of the past fifteen years of diplomacy -- all in the name of besting the purportedly degenerate and morally corrupt French. It is quite disturbing, really, and I can only surmise that this gentleman at one point had some Franco-traumatic event occur in his childhood that he should probably enlist the services of a psycho-therapist to resolve.
OK, perhaps Marquis de Sade was a bit over the edge but all in all the French have a marvelous way of balancing noble causes with the realities of human nature. The Americans, on the other hand, place everything on impossibly high moral pedestals (thanks to the repressive Puritans) and so are forced into a lifestyle of hypocrisy, dichotomy, and impossible-to-fill-shoes.
If there is an upside to Arnold becoming Governor of California, it is that perhaps the American electorate will be finally able to acknowledge that you can be good at one thing and imperfect at another i.e. you might have stellar qualifications to run a city, state, or nation but have flaws in other aspects of your life (not that I am sure that Arnold has any stellar qualifications other than to make blockbuster B movies). Welcome to being human! The French have long been able to do this.
One of the more arrogant, presumptuous, and oh-so-utterly-American-centric quotes in this French-bashing article contends: "French nation-building assumes the values of secularism, with all its rosy assumptions and real politick. It seems an especially clumsy strategy in countries such as Iraq, in which the utter blackness of human nature held sway for so long -- and threatens to return. For all their noisy humanitarianism, secularists tend to have a deaf ear to the religious sentiments that animate most people in nations around the world."
First of all, the French have had DECADES of experience dealing with Arab countries (hence their warnings). The Americans, for all ostensive purposes, ZILCH, save for a botched relationship with the corrupt, American-supported Shah of Iran (followed by a botched relationship with the corrupt, American-supported Saddam Hussein). So why we would call the French 'clumsy,' as opposed to the US (particularly in light of our post-war Iraq record), is just a tad baffling I think. And the notion that the French are 'turning a deaf ear to the religious sentiments that animate most people in nations around the world' is hysterical quite frankly. If anything, the French are hearing the religious sentiments of the world. So what this quote should really say is something like this:
"American nation-building assumes the values of idealistic, at-present-right-wing self-righteousness, with all its naive and rosy assumptions. It seems an especially clumsy strategy in countries such as Iraq from the standpoint that America would be so naively insolent as to assume that a nation 'darkened by the utter blackness of human nature' would submit to another nation equally baggaged with its own utter-blackness-of-human-nature [please inquire should you want examples] -- one that would preemptively attack, occupy, and dictate a two-year plan over said country based on a pack of lies sold to the world by a hawkish administration. For all their noisy bravado and bully tactics, these evil-doer-saviors tend to have a hopelessly and dangerously oblivious eye to world sentiment that demonstratively objects to their strategy...."
OK, perhaps Marquis de Sade was a bit over the edge but all in all the French have a marvelous way of balancing noble causes with the realities of human nature. The Americans, on the other hand, place everything on impossibly high moral pedestals (thanks to the repressive Puritans) and so are forced into a lifestyle of hypocrisy, dichotomy, and impossible-to-fill-shoes.
If there is an upside to Arnold becoming Governor of California, it is that perhaps the American electorate will be finally able to acknowledge that you can be good at one thing and imperfect at another i.e. you might have stellar qualifications to run a city, state, or nation but have flaws in other aspects of your life (not that I am sure that Arnold has any stellar qualifications other than to make blockbuster B movies). Welcome to being human! The French have long been able to do this.
One of the more arrogant, presumptuous, and oh-so-utterly-American-centric quotes in this French-bashing article contends: "French nation-building assumes the values of secularism, with all its rosy assumptions and real politick. It seems an especially clumsy strategy in countries such as Iraq, in which the utter blackness of human nature held sway for so long -- and threatens to return. For all their noisy humanitarianism, secularists tend to have a deaf ear to the religious sentiments that animate most people in nations around the world."
First of all, the French have had DECADES of experience dealing with Arab countries (hence their warnings). The Americans, for all ostensive purposes, ZILCH, save for a botched relationship with the corrupt, American-supported Shah of Iran (followed by a botched relationship with the corrupt, American-supported Saddam Hussein). So why we would call the French 'clumsy,' as opposed to the US (particularly in light of our post-war Iraq record), is just a tad baffling I think. And the notion that the French are 'turning a deaf ear to the religious sentiments that animate most people in nations around the world' is hysterical quite frankly. If anything, the French are hearing the religious sentiments of the world. So what this quote should really say is something like this:
"American nation-building assumes the values of idealistic, at-present-right-wing self-righteousness, with all its naive and rosy assumptions. It seems an especially clumsy strategy in countries such as Iraq from the standpoint that America would be so naively insolent as to assume that a nation 'darkened by the utter blackness of human nature' would submit to another nation equally baggaged with its own utter-blackness-of-human-nature [please inquire should you want examples] -- one that would preemptively attack, occupy, and dictate a two-year plan over said country based on a pack of lies sold to the world by a hawkish administration. For all their noisy bravado and bully tactics, these evil-doer-saviors tend to have a hopelessly and dangerously oblivious eye to world sentiment that demonstratively objects to their strategy...."
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