Empire of the Iguanadons

Today, French president Nicolas Sarkozy came to the US to give an address before Congress. When I first heard he was planning to do this, I was very skeptical of it given the poor relationship we've had with France under Chirac, and their obstructionism in the UN as well as their corruption regarding Iraq.

I've not been able to locate a transcript of the actual speech, but given the widespread press coverage and all of the headlines on every news service I can find, it appears as though Sarkozy is ready to turn a new page in US-French relations. Sarkozy is looking to renew our alliance, our friendship, and earn back the trust of the American people that was lost by Chirac. The best part though, is during this speech, Sarkozy went on to heap praise on our troops, express sympathies for those who have died in battle, and even personally thanked a member of Congress who served in WWII for liberating his country from the Nazis. Sarkozy then went on to express a very deep understanding of traditional American values and beliefs.



This guy gets it. He gets it all too well. What he said here is something I've attempted, probably very badly, to put across in my own postings. He's more or less speaking of the values of hard work, personal responsibility, educating yourself, and growing your own success. In short, traditional conservative values. These are values he campaigned on in France, openly and honestly. They won him the presidency with 53% of the vote there, in what is decidedly a very liberal country. But he goes even further, to speak of our forgiving nature, our compassion, and our moral integrity:



For expressing this viewpoint, some are already calling him "Bush's poodle". I guess some people just can't accept that the leader of an allied nation could actually be proud to have us as a friend and ally and want to express his appreciation for everything we've done for them in the past. In stark contrast to what a lot of media types and other left wing sites think, Sarkozy greatly appreciated what we did for them in WWII and genuinely seems to be thankful for what we continue to do now in the name of freedom:



Sarkozy has also committed to rebuilding the strength of France, both economically and militarily. There's been talk that he's planning to reinstate France's role in the NATO command structure again, after some 40 years of being absent from it. He has also publicly declared that Iran should not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons:



Sarkozy does go on to say that Iran should be allowed to pursue a peaceful civilian nuclear power program. Nothing wrong with that IMO, as long as he's willing to back strict monitoring of Iran to be sure they don't use the results to build bombs.

France still has disagreement with us over how we handled the resumption of the Iraq war, however it's clear that even though they disagree with our handling of it, Sarkozy has no intentions on acting out against us in the way Chirac did.

His speech before the joint session of Congress was laced with several instances of loud applause, and he got at least one standing ovation that I know of. Overall I come away with a very good impression of the man, and am cautiously optimistic now that he's going to be able to rebuild our relationship with France.

It's a shame that people like Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes thought that asking the guy about his divorce was so important when clearly the man has plenty of better things to be worrying about. Even there, Sarkozy did exactly what he should have done: Stood up, took off the mic, and told her "I have more important things to worry about."
.........................
"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

You know, Samson, the irony is that there are many more French people than you might think who share the same views as he does (even the economics: as you say, he got >50% of the vote). The country was stereotyped by the actions of relatively few. And hey, the same thing happened in the other direction. Some French people have a pretty nasty view of the USA due to the crazy actions of relatively few. The "Bush poodle" thing is mainly just people who shout loudest. (A minority that shouts loud enough will be heard the most...) I am very happy that people are finally coming to their senses about this -- in both directions.

And yeah, what he did with Leslie Stahl was just classic. He told her once that he had no interest discussing it at the time, and she insisted, so he said "forget about this" and left. You have to say, though, that the idea of a presidential divorce is pretty unheard of...

Dude. This guy may make the French not suck so much. I think I might like this guy.

I'm glad that I wasn't misunderstood in the other thread, David, I wasn't advocating we join forces with Russia, I think their current regime is even crazier than our own.. oddly enough, given how crazy the whole world seems to be of late, maybe they're just fitting in...

I still think we'll need more than just one speech to decide (hopefully, at least) that France has decided to be worthy allies.. but again, the world's gone a bit crazy lately, who knows what our governments will decide to do...

Didn't Hillary announce that she was considering divorcing Bill when the whole Monica Lewinski thing surfaced? It's certainly a rarity, and has been since the Dark Ages, for a national leader to divorce, but it's far from unheard of.. just ask King Henry VIII.

For those of you who might also have been looking, I located a complete transcript of his speech: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/the_frenchamerican_alliance_is.html

I must say, having read that, I would have voted for him in a heartbeat if I were a citizen of France. About the only thing I found any real fault with was the paragraph about global warming, since it seemed to be framed around the belief that we can "correct" it. Other than that though, the guy reminds me an awful lot of Ronald Reagan.

I was also especially pleased to see this part:




Unheard of, yes. But frankly I don't view that as significant enough to matter when you're talking about running a country. That's his personal private life and it should be left to him to handle how he sees fit. Considering the state of the world, all of the things Sarkozy has planned for France, and all of the incredible leadership and intelligence he has, you'd think Stahl could have filled a dozen interviews with relevant commentary. Instead she chose to go down the tabloid path, and he made her pay for it.

Or, maybe one speech was enough for some people to realize they shouldn't judge an entire nation based on one man's actions. A lot of feelings were hurt during the war buildup (as corny as that may sound) and it will take a lot of time for the deep wounds to heal.

Still, you need allies especially in today's world where problems can come truly from everywhere; would you rather have France as an ally, or Pakistan and Russia? :-)


For what it's worth, France, even under Chirac, always supported the Afghanistan war and has stood with the USA there since day one.


Oh, I wasn't trying to say the contrary. It was just a remark in general. If only more politicians would blow off silly questions like that, we could get more interesting coverage of politicians' actual views and not irrelevant details about private lives.

Hey, if more Politicians had balls like this guy, I might actually pay more attention.

Wow, that's sayng an awful lot, Reagan was probably the most recent president we had that I actually respected enough to feel deserved the title of Commander-in-chief... despite the great jokes that our comedians were able to generate from his tour in office.. *chuckles to himself remembering Robin Williams talking about poor ol' Ron...*


Ah, but you are failing to realize that I still think George Washington had the right idea and we should just practice isolationism.
Seriously, those can't be my only choices?!? I'd prefer none of the above.. let's see, as long as we're picking teams, I'll take England, Israel, Japan, Switzerland, and, of course, USA for my starting line up and see who else scampers to join us.. who are you picking?


They sure could've been a bit more vocal about it then...


Hmm, I don't know about being ballsy, but if politicians made more effort to be honest, take a single stand, and actually try to represent their people, I'd be far more interested in them.

My choice is pretty simple; I'd want any truly democratic country to be on my side. That's the best way to fight oppression and terror tactics. And I'm a little surprised that you didn't mention other countries that actually participated in Iraq, such as, say, Australia.


They were, some of them at least. But who was listening? (Were you?) And seriously, how would you feel about a country that was out calling your country a bunch of cowardly, traitorous scumbags? They preferred to quietly do their part in Afghanistan and not fight about other issues. That is what I meant about feelings hurt on all sides... the Americans weren't the only ones who felt like they were being treated extremely unfairly.

Although I am very happy to see this outpouring of pro-Sarkozy feeling, I'm a little bitter that people didn't realize before that maybe, just maybe the entirety of the French nation wasn't how they thought it was. This guy was elected with >50% of the vote, people... The point now is to put the disaster of the past behind us and move forward. Saying that France is no longer a worthy ally is exactly the kind of attitude that is not going to help move forward. :-(

Sorry, I forgot to reply to this:

Sure, maybe that would be best in some ways, but that only works until the world comes knocking on your door... be it militarily or economically. :/

Actually, I was tired (you can't imagine what I am now..) and just picked the first four countries that came to mind plus us.. but you can't pick the same countries that I did, unless you're joining my forces already.


Like the rest of the nation here, I was listening, but only to what I could hear, that which our wonderful international media (and the internet) provides coverage of. We all heard the French response at the UN Summits, we all heard the international news that followed about other problems in France, but not about protesters rallying against the decision rendered at the UN Summit.

As for how I'd react to a country that was out calling my country a bunch of cowardly, traitorous scumbags... I don't recall our country calling France that until this blog actually. I do recall hearing that France was calling our country and our leader warmongers and bullies and other such terms.


I guess you'll have to forgive me for not running to embrace France as my best ally after just one speech, no matter how good a speech it may have been and no matter how sincerely it may have been delivered. As has already been pointed out in the previous thread, France has demonstrated plenty of reasons they could use our help and guidance over the last 75+ years and frankly that haven't exactly been demonstrating a whole lot of reasons that we need them, so while I'm all for second chances, I'd still just assume we accept their olive branch with a watchful eye to see how they're going to actually conduct themselves over the next few years rather than how they say they'll conduct themselves. I'm sure we can all easily think of some situation in which someone has previously said they felt one way and then turned around and shown the lie for what it really was, I just was to be assured that we're not, again, hearing one man's opinion. And the fact that he was voted in by more than 50% is very nice, we've made similar mistakes in our own elections before too.


I think that Switzerland had the right idea. There's nothing wrong with leaving the rest of world to their own problems and devices. You can still trade with other countries without getting deeply meshed into their politics and you can stay neutral to others for most things. When someone comes to your door carrying a weapon, you defend yourself but you don't have to do so by jumping to the aide and defense of everyone else too. Our country is far from perfect, but its also one of the youngest countries out there especially considering how well we have done despite our mistakes. Quite an amazing number of other countries have reformed their governments to model them after ours even down to copying large parts of our Constitution, in many cases despite the fact that they were much older countries. I think that in itself speaks volumes for the wisdom of the gathering of gentlemen who founded this nation and one of their initial ideals was that we deal with our own problems before we worry about other countries, yet today we've got more than enough problems here at home... bah, this is a whole separate rant that doesn't belong on Samson's blog and certainly not in this thread anyway. Maybe one of these days I'll post it to my own blog where it'd be more appropriate. Besides, it's several steps far too serious for the tone I try to take when I come here anyway.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you sound like a Ron Paul supporter. Ron has some great ideas, and I'd have no issue supporting him for president if it wasn't for his dangerous belief in complete US isolation. Those days are past, and we're never getting them back. Islamofascists aren't going to care if we decide to withdraw from the world stage. Their stated goal includes the conquest of America. If we follow his model, we'd be sitting and waiting for them to come to us - and they would, right after they've wiped out anyone who could have helped us.

Also, if you think Switzerland would have been "left alone" by Hitler, you've got another thing coming. He might have ignored them at first but his stated goal was world domination. Including the Swiss. It was only because we came and beat Hitler's ass that the Swiss are even still here.



I was listening. But like Conner, all I heard was what the left wing media wanted us to hear - France hated the US. Chirac backed that impression with his actions, leaving many of us to have nothing but contempt for them. Sarkozy has taken a page from the Bush media plan - if they won't spread your message, go forth and spread it YOURSELF. Bush has had a lot of success in this country by bypassing the traditional media path and going directly to the people with issues he cares about. If Sarkozy is any indication, he's got the same plan. Go directly to the people with the issues he cares about. It's the only way you're ever going to see traditional conservatism get any press attention at all.

As I said, I'm cautiously optimistic. If our own country is any indication, Sarkozy is in for a difficult 5 years. But if he sticks to it, and stands by what he says, things will turn around.

Iraq was the big story, there wasn't much reason to talk about Afghanistan at the point -- even the US press seemed to have forgotten about it during the lead-up to the Iraq war. So like I said, nobody really was listening, including the press. That's why it's incredibly dangerous to make assumptions about an entire country based on such a short period of time during such a tense period where emotions run high and people aren't necessarily being entirely rational anymore.


Seriously? You didn't see any anti-French sentiment until this blog?


You lost me on that one, Samson... What would the left-wing stand to gain from telling you that France hated the US? (i.e., why would they want you to believe that?)


I guess so, kinda-sorta. It kind of bugs me that people generalize to an entire country based on one president or administration. It drove me nuts in France when people would generalize to the entire USA based on Bush... Sure, a country can elect somebody, but that doesn't mean that person represents the majority of views. Chirac was rather unpopular during his second election and only won "by accident"; the other parties couldn't get their act together during the first round of presidential elections and so he ended up running against the extreme-right, who had basically no chance to win. His 80% election was a total fluke in that sense: people weren't voting for him, they were voting against the only other option.

(The French electoral system is two rounds: first a free-for-all, and then you pick the top two from there and have them run against each other.)

For the same reason they're so intent on making us all believe that the Iraq war is lost and that it was one of the worst mistakes we've ever made, and for the same reason they think Bush is a scumbag. They want their power back, and the media wants to help them get it. If it's found out that Iraq is going well ( which it is ) and that France wants to rebuild their friendship with us ( which Sarkozy says he does ) then they've got no issues to use to attack the republicans and they'll likely lose the election. I know it sounds cynical, but that's pretty much all there is to it.

I still don't get it. If "they" want to make us believe that Iraq is lost, and France is against the war, then shouldn't they be glorifying France to make it look more credible, instead of vilifying it to make it look less credible? The French were being vilified far before Sarkozy came to power, so I don't see how your reasoning would have applied for the past ~4 years until just now. (I'm not sure it applies now either but let's assume so for the sake of the argument.)

You've missed my point. They're saying France hates us to support their contention that Bush has driven our allies away from us because of Iraq. Sarkozy smashes that all to shit provided he's not conducting some kind of massive hoax on us.

Oh. Well, I see what you meant, now. France has never hated the US and the news sources I read never said that they did. They said that everybody was pretty pissed off at everybody but that is a very different thing to say. And, well, the fact that Sarkozy has to come make this whole speech in the first place should be a sign that the general impression was that the alliance had been broken. (I mean, just look at what was being said on this blog not so long ago.)

It's interesting to note that you believed what the left-wing media said in this case: you believed them when they said that France hated us. :D I thought you didn't believe what the LWM had to say. :-)

I don't believe them, and didn't trust what I was hearing out of France either. But you try convincing people the media is wrong when you know they're wrong and have the evidence to prove it.... oh wait.

What I'm trying to understand is why you hated France so much if the evidence against them came from the "left-wing media" for which you have such distrust. (I say that because you were saying how much the left-wing media wants us to hate them, which suggests that the right-wing media doesn't. That might not be what you're saying, though...)

Actually, given what I do know of the current candidates, I am leaning towards Ron Paul, not because I agree with all of his positions (I don't really think it's feasible for us, at this point, to become complete isolationist anymore), but because so far he appears, to me, to be rising as the lesser evil for this upcoming election.

I never said anything like that, Samson, I know as well as you do that Hitler intended to take Switzerland too, but unlike most other countries, Switzerland has a very defensible geographic boundry and has trained EVERY citizen to be the military as needed so it would've been a tough fight that might not have yielded him any more than a hollow victory, not that that would've slowed him down...


Honestly, no, I really hadn't. In most aspects of my life, France was too insignificant to even come up. At least, after the very start of the Iraqi war this go around, prior to that, obviously I heard all sorts of things about the UN summits. *shrug*


Sadly, this is what most presidential elections in the country have become for me since I turned old enough to vote. The last good president we had was Reagan, and I wasn't quite old enough to vote for him.


Alas, call me suspicious, or just cynical, if you will, but I've been burned too many times to not be worried specifically about this facet. His speech sounds great, but let's see a little evidence before we unreserve judgement, that's all I'm asking.

I guess you weren't paying much attention. :-) (And I don't mean that as a slight or anything, just to be clear. From what you said, it looks more like you didn't really care about it since it didn't come up.)

But, well, there was the whole "freedom fries" thing very early on; then came the renewal of all the surrender jokes; it wasn't long until France was being dragged through the MUD pretty much every time it came up but not just in jokes. (And even for the jokes, if you were to tell those same jokes but about, say, a minority group and not France, you'd be considered downright racist... so it's unclear why it was acceptable to tell them about the French.)

And perhaps, yes, it is just because you simply didn't hear about France that much. But following what was coming out of Washington, e.g. Condi Rice's rather (in)famous remark, it was pretty clear that France was no longer at all popular...


I think the point Samson was trying to make is that it is not neutrality that would have stopped Hitler from attacking Switzerland. Even in your response, you (correctly IMHO) cite the terrain as Switzerland's main defense, in addition to a somewhat more trained population. So basically, isolationism wouldn't really have worked for them.

Chriac's actions are why I harbor hatred toward France. What their media said barely raised a blip with me. So when he backstabbed us in the UN and accused us of conducting an illegal war and telling the world what bastards we were, I looked back on their other past actions and strung together a pattern of behavior. And while I don't trust our own left wing media to tell us France sucks, EVERYONE in the media, right or left, were pretty much universally anti-French. There was no real reason to think otherwise until Sarkozy came along.



No. My point was that any nation who thinks neutrality, isolationism, their geography, and even trained citizenry armed to the teeth is going to do any good, they're delusional. Switzerland was delusional. Hitler had artillery, and a humongous air force. He could have reduced the Swiss to smoldering ruins without firing a shot on the ground. There was no reason whatsoever to take him at his word that he'd leave them alone. He was simply stringing them along.

By the same token, Ron Paul is delusional. Isolationism and retreat from the world won't help anyone. The muslims would seize the opportunity, take over Europe and Asia, then turn their sights on us. Without allies left to provide aid it would only be a matter of time before we'd be forced to use nuclear weapons and then it's Armageddon.

I really do try not to pay too much attention to current politics (some I can't avoid but...), because when I do pay attention to it I generally just find it depressing, this is why I find most presidential elections to merely be a choice between evils anymore as well. Our modern politics, not to be too, well, politic, suck.


Keep in mind that the only news I generally hear/see is what comes into my in-box (yahoo & CNN, but "breaking alerts" only), my rss feed (primarily CNET), and inews.. well, I catch the CNN news briefs some evenings on the radio too (but only when I happen to be driving while it's airing and it has to compete with the kids).. sometime Paul Harvey too (but usually only his "the rest of the story" bits...) ...in any event, those are more news than I can stomache some days, I certainly couldn't see myself going out of my way to listen to talk radio and such as Samson seems to enjoy. *shrug*


But I wasn't talking about Hitler or even the Muslims, I was talking about in general. And if either of you ever comes up with a truly ideal system of government, or even just an ideal political candidate, just let me know and I'll jump on your bandwagon gleefully, in the meantime, as I mentioned earlier, from what I'm seeing so far, Ron Paul's actually looking like the closest thing we've got to a good candidate for this upcoming election. Who would you prefer to see take the White House in next year's election? Hillary??

As for being forced to use nuclear weapons resulting in Armageddon.. could that be considered a system reboot for the planet? Might clear up all sorts of current errors, just like rebooting your Windows box every so often....

A reboot in a sense, except that you can't actually restart the system in a functional state for quite a long time... so it's more like a "long term maintenance shutdown". :-)


I guess it's unfortunate that you reduce an entire country to a single man. Would you like it if the rest of the world judged the entire USA based on just Bush or just Clinton? It wouldn't exactly be fair, right? Because the country is a whole lot more complex than a single president...


I think we are agreeing that it was not a good idea for Switzerland to think isolationism could protect them...

No. I would most certaily not prefer to see Hillary in office. If by some strange twist of fate it becomes her vs Ron Paul, then Ron Paul gets my vote. But Ron Paul has no chance in hell of being nominated in the republican primaries, so we won't have to worry about that. Right now my preferred candidate is Fred Thompson, but it's beginning to look like Guliani is going to take it.



I don't go out of my way to look for it. But I have a long commute both directions 5 days a week and there's very little in the way of anything decent to listen to on the radio, so I usually end up with talk radio. Personally I think both you and David would benefit greatly from listening to some an hour or so a week. All of the hosts I have links to are very informative and back up everything they say with factual evidence instead of "I hate Bush".

I read articles from three newspapers (two from the USA, one from France) almost every day, which I think gives me pretty good information. :-) I tend to be more interested in information rather than somebody's opinion on that information -- at least, for the first round of processing.

Well David, not to beat the poor dead horse some more, but when you consider the newspapers to be unbiased, that sounds like a valid answer. However, they are biased heavily in favor of the left, which might well explain why you see them as useful primary information sources.

Obviously as you know, I don't trust them. So I get my primary information from other sources. Just because a radio show commentator has an opinion on something doesn't make it a bad choice. It's no worse than the millions of people getting their information from the op ed section of their newspapers.

Don't they do that already?

Samson: well, ok, but why is a talk show going to be less biased? (And I don't read the op-eds all that much, incidentally.)

Kayle: sure -- and just how much scorn do you heap upon them for doing that? If you're going to hate it when they do it, you should try to avoid it yourself, right?

Most of my hatred for the french comes from being forced to take their language in high school. With some things from history backing that up, the more recent being their backstabbery in regards to Iraq, but most of it is scorn from having to spend 6 months to learn the phrase "Do You speak French?" and if I could remember how to spell it and not just say it, I'd have spelled it out. >.>

Sorry, folks, even I occassionally have to catch up on sleep now and then..


I don't know, I think the system would restart automatically and already be quite functional, the part that would take a long time to get back to "normal" would be the system corruption that humanity seems to represent... I suppose you could look at it as a system reboot with a antivirus and antispyware system wide scans and speedisk/checkdisk scans before the primary user interface came back..


Hmm, I guess I'll have to look into Fred Thompson's campaign a bit, but I really don't think I care very much for Guliani either.


Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I find talk radio boring at it's best so, no thank you.


Kayle's personal experiences with learning French (It's "Parlez-vous français", Kayle.. I never took french formally, but my mother spoke french from time to time at home) aside, I don't hate france, or french people, I just don't consider them to be a national ally at this point based on their recent actions or have a lot of respect for them militarily given their history, but I agree with Kayle that the rest of the world already routine does (and has for decades from my experience) judged us based on our president because like us with France, that's all most of them ever see of our country.

Well I was thinking of the nuclear fallout that would render the planet very difficult for almost all forms of life. I'm not sure how to put that in computer terms. :-)


I'll grant that their performance in WWII and Vietnam was most definitely not stellar, but I think you're being a little too quick to dismiss the history before that. (And even the 'Legion Etrangere' these days, but that's another topic.) During WWI, they did pretty good considering the kind of war they were fighting (trench war *shudder*), and before that there was this one time where the country sort of took over almost all of Europe and all... :-) That, and there was this other time when they were able to beat off the armies of nearly every neighboring country right after they came out of a terrible, bloody and destructive revolution...

The thing is that even in WWII, it's not that the French fought and fought badly, it's that Petain (the head of the Vichy government) decided to not fight at all. So it's just speculation as to whether or not they would have fought well or badly during WWII. The upside for us today is that we still have so much of the heritage; a war very well could have leveled huge chunks of Paris (e.g. the Louvre). The irony is that, as I recall, even the Nazis didn't really want to bombard Paris due to there being so much cultural value there (art, mainly), but there wouldn't have been much choice in the matter.


I'm not disputing that this happens. I'm also not disputing that it's wrong. What I am saying is that somebody shouldn't complain about other people doing it if they do it themselves.

Whether it's wrong or not, the fact remains that in order for the general public to know any better the leaders need to step around their own media before anyone can know there's another side being played. Imagine what our own image is like in other countries when all they have are things like CNN, The NY Times, and NBC News to go by. All Bush hating organizations who regularly publish bad things about our administration. Human nature extends that to the rest of the country when there's nothing else visible. Those of us who know how the liberal media works can find out the real truth, but it's very difficult when a country ONLY has a liberal media, as is arguable with France.

One must also realize, while Sarkozy got 53% of the vote of the French people, that doesn't necessarily imply they want friendlier relations with the US. One can only infer they wanted more conservative policies in place for their own government. Unless Sarkozy specifically mentioned the desire for greater US ties as part of his overall platform.

No, that's not true (in that, that is not the only option). Reading more news sources helps too. For instance, reading the news of the country you are trying to judge. And if you don't speak their language (fair enough) read the news of countries whose language you do speak and see what they're saying. The British press reports on the French events and gives a different perspective from the US press.

Basically, if you know that something is more complex than it is being made to seem, you should go look yourself instead of accepting whatever people are trying to spoon-feed you. And if you don't go looking for yourself, and you know that things are more complex than they seem, then you should suspend judgment instead of deciding one way or the other.


Repairing the transatlantic alliance was part of Sarkozy's platform, but not a huge part. As is usually the case with presidential elections (in France or the USA for that matter), domestic issues trump others.

But everybody knew from his past actions that he was favorable to fixing it, e.g. his 9/11 visit as a minister who was not supposed to be visiting abroad -- he was minister of the interior after all... :-)

In theory what you say about using alternative sources for media should work. But you run into problems if you're looking for alternative sources to French media, say, among other European media, and all of THOSE sources are also not offering a second side to the French hating the US. There's only so much time and energy people are willing to invest before forming an opinion based on available information.

The problem here is, most of the world media is slanted against us. Looking for favorable opinions of the US from Japanese media doesn't help much if you're trying to find out if people in France like you. Having the Israelis say you're great and wonderful offers nothing about how Arab nations feel about you. And good luck finding anything reliable on what Cuba thinks at any given moment.

It's also incredibly silly to expect me to need to learn French so I can dig for French conservative news sites to get the other side's perspective, as it seems only other French ever get to see that information.

Biased media reporting has a massive impact on getting both sides - all it takes is one biased source to spoil it for the rest who are accepting on faith the information they've got available.

Ok, David, we've prolly exhausted the nuclear/computer analogs anyway.

Yes, France has a great military background pre-WWI, but in the last century they've not exactly demonstrated a stellar maintenance of that history. I guess I should've included the word 'recent'...

Personally, as far as the whole idea of reading news sources from other countries goes, I do all I can to avoid reading the news sources from my own country for the most part, why would I go (way) out of my way to read the news from other countries just to get another perspective on the news I'm trying to avoid in my own country?

Parlez-vous français, huh? I'm reminded in this instance of a quote from Pirates of the Carribbean,



>.>

Jack was probably right.

Yes, I did that that it's fair enough if you don't speak the language. But what I also said is that if you know you are missing out on these sites, you should suspend judgment instead of solidifying your judgment.

It's like the following: you are in front of a hill. You can see a bunch of people on the hill. You can't see what's behind the hill. Should you conclude that there are only people on the hill? Well, no, because you don't know what's behind it...


Ah, yes, and that is precisely the point. People should not just accept everything they are told on faith alone. Whir has made that point several times.

That's fair enough, but you also usually don't go out of your way to make really big proclamations about the rest of the world. :-)

And ya, parley is definitely from the French...

Actually, yes, with no additional information you have nothing else to conclude BUT that there are people on a hill. I can't assume that they're just chillin in the park or if they're fleeing a forest fire, or they're running from an alien invasion. Not until I can see what's on the other side of the hill. And if some other external force is acting to prevent me from doing so, I can only act on what I can observe.

So by extension along this logic, if all I have offered to me is liberalized press information and nobody from the other side has made an effort to counter the information, and there are other news agencies actively omitting the information, how is anyone supposed to conclude anything other than what they read? Especially when Chirac himself was validating the general assumption that France hated the US?

Only now do we finally have someone from the other side of the hill coming forth to explain that the people on the hill were there just for the hell of it, and that there are a whole lot more people down behind it that don't think it's a good idea to be up there.

Well, if you conclude based on what you have read and you know that what you have read is not the whole story, then you are concluding something based on just the people on top of the hill. Until you've gone looking behind the hill, you just don't know what's back there. Maybe there's no noise coming from behind the hill because there's nothing there, or maybe there is something but it just isn't making enough noise.

So, to find out, you need one of two things:
(1) you go look behind the hill yourself
(2) you talk to somebody who has gone looking for themselves, and you have reason to believe that this person was able to get the truthful answer (maybe they are a bad observer?), and furthermore is actually going to give you the truthful answer

Without one of those things happening, you're really not in a position to say what's behind the hill, one way or another.

And arguably, if there is somebody for whom you have legitimate reason not to trust (in you case, say, Chirac), and this somebody is telling you something, maybe you should conclude that the truth is in fact not what this person is telling you. Now you have all the more reason to go find out for yourself.

The analogy is flawed.

The situation right now is such that when I try to go see what's behind the hill, the people on it are actively preventing me from getting there. Going through them doesn't work because they push me back. This leaves trying to climb over the mountains which surround this hill, which is a significantly more demanding effort because I first need to obtain climbing and camping gear for the trip.

Finding someone who has been to the other side of this hill appears to be equally as difficult, as the people on the hill actively prevent folks from leaving the area, even if they came from my side of the hill. Significant effort is made by people from the hill to prevent visitors from being able to speak about what they've encountered. If you do manage to get to the other side, the folks there might be too afraid to tell you what's really going on. You have to then expend more effort nosing around for yourself, and you might just get arrested by the local authorities in the process.

It's not nearly as easy as you're making it out to be David. Most foreign media is state run, so there's almost never another side to be had. They often actively prevent their citizens from being able to speak to you, or agents you've sent on your behalf ( foreign correspondents ). Even in Europe this can be the case. When you ask people who have been there to relate their experiences, they're often colored by the fact that the natives didn't really want to discuss it with them. This leads to the stories of how rude people are to Americans in Europe, especially in France. If you happen to be one of those ultra-curious types you might just stumble into asking the wrong people about something and get yourself busted for it.

So while I have almost zero trust for the French media, there don't appear to be any other sources for reliable information. Leaving me with the options of either asking people like you who lived there, asking people like Dwip who visited, or going there myself in an expensive attempt to get the information firsthand. In your case David, the information has been somewhat tainted by your extended stay. Dwip's information is incomplete due to the short duration of his stay, and I can't afford a trip to France. With all that in mind, you'll just have to forgive me for reaching a possibly wrong conclusion about the French people. If they don't want Americans to get the wrong idea about them, they need to step up and speak for themselves and get rid of those people up on the hill.

That is true enough. :D

Good grief, this discussion has become as complex and convulted as a french chef's recipes...

I never said that it was easy. What I am getting at is that it is in some sense your responsibility to get facts before making grand judgments about a whole nation. To run with the analogy, which is actually not flawed due to the very points you make, it would appear that you should have a problem with the people on the hill, not the others behind it.


What basis do you have for making that rather bold claim? Please cite examples of state-run newspapers in, say, France, along with some data regarding proportions.


It could be worth thinking why some French people are so rude to some Americans. I don't really want to go into the reasons but the French are just as human as the Americans are and will erroneously generalize just like everybody else. There are assholes everywhere, here, there, everyplace else.

One simple example is how many (not most, many) Americans who visit France kind of seem to assume that everybody speaks English. Even if it's true to some extent, some people take offense at the tourist not taking the basic effort to speak French, even just to say "I am sorry, I don't speak French". Seriously, saying even just that will cause very many people to warm up to you. Walking up and automatically speaking English will cause most people to dismiss you not too politely. It'd be kind of like tourists showing up in Southern California and addressing you in Spanish... I am sure you would love that, Samson. :-P

All that, and again, Parisians tend to be rude with pretty much everybody, including themselves. So most of the time it's really nothing personal or to do with where you are from. It'd be like judging the USA based on New Yorkers...


By that reasoning, everything you have to say about the USA is just as tainted. :-) So unless you agree to that, I think we'll have to agree that this argument needs a little more work.


Sure, like I said I am very happy to see the recent direction things have gone in. I hope that in the future people are less prompt to judge a whole country based on a single president. Given your thoughts about Clinton, how would you feel if the whole country was judged based on him? We all have a duty that is almost a moral duty to not jump to such strong conclusions about a whole country based on so little information.


Well, to some extent, they did, due to the election results. And they did in other places too, except that people weren't really listening (or weren't able to). What did you expect them to do, start advertising on American TV about how nice they are?


Ah, such is the nature of things, I suppose. Nothing is simple when it comes to issues this big.

I suppose.. though it really seems like this discussion could have progressed a bit more straight-forwardly. *shrug*

If you don't mind me asking, how?

It's elementary, my dear Watson, elementary. You see it all happened thus:

Samson: The French suck, but this Sarkozy guy looks like he might be sane.
David: I disagree that the French suck, but agree that Sarkozy does indeed appear sane.
Kayle: Damn them to the depths, those that thought of Parley!
Conner: I believe that would be the French.
Samson: Exactly why the French suck. But this Sarkozy guy seems sane enough. He wants better relations with America.
David: I see, I must agree on the Sarkozy issue, but disagree on the French sucking.

End of Discussion.

See? Elementary.

And this.. is what I get for going to sleep at 2am, and getting up at 6am. Apparently 4 hours of sleep doesn't agree with me in a sanity stance. :D

You left out my assertion that most foreign media is state run, and David going "WTF are you talking about? Prove it!" when I shouldn't need to prove the obvious considering how often it gets said. But hey. Maybe he was up late too?

*ROFL* Very nice Kayle..
Btw, the actual quote is, according to IMDb > Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) > Memorable quotes:

And, I feel quite honored that I'm being cast in the role of Captain Jack Sparrow in this exchange summary.