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.

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.