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112 Gripes About the French

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11–20 of 365 posts

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#11
post #5

Interesting. I always had the impression, the US citizens and french citizen where buddies. Because of the independence war and the statue and everything.

One of the 'gripes' is:

"One Frenchman told me the French practically gave us the statue of liberty. How do you like that?"

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#13
post #5

Interesting. I always had the impression, the US citizens and french citizen where buddies. Because of the independence war and the statue and everything.

Not sure if you are joking?

> France is the country with the deepest, most sedimented reservoir of anti-American arguments. Its long genealogy has been well documented over the years, most recently by Philippe Roger, who argues that French anti- Americanism is older than the United States (Roger 2002).

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/meunierces...

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#15
post #10

This whole thing is amazing. It still reads really well today, like there's no tone of racism and nothing seems inappropriate (which is a hard thing to achieve with time). I wish we had such a book currently on how arabs and the muslim world are different, but not so different than us. > We didn't come to Europe to save the French, either in 1917 or in 1944. We didn't come to Europe to do anyone any favors. We came t…

And one day, successive iterations of OCR, copy & paste, and machine learning will have us remembering the events of Peary Harbor.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#16
post #8

I'm guessing such a book exists in south korea at the moment? I've heard that there's a lot of tension between the US army and the locals. One soldier even raped some local girl back in 2011. The problem is that people in the army are not the most educated people, and thus they're not the best ambassadors when abroad.

Military personnel on average have more formal education then the general public. High school drop outs aren't even allowed to enlist anymore without a special waiver. Almost all officers, and many enlisted, have Bachelor's degrees. Senior officers usually have Master's degrees.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#18
post #10

This whole thing is amazing. It still reads really well today, like there's no tone of racism and nothing seems inappropriate (which is a hard thing to achieve with time). I wish we had such a book currently on how arabs and the muslim world are different, but not so different than us. > We didn't come to Europe to save the French, either in 1917 or in 1944. We didn't come to Europe to do anyone any favors. We came t…

Hah. The first encounters between the French and the US in WW II were hostile: The US landings in Morocco against French resistance.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#19

The original is a delight to read. Sadly, I can't help but wonder how many would be "triggered" by the answers today. How do we, as a society, start accepting rational self-criticism again?

> How do we, as a society, start accepting rational self-criticism again?

A good starting point would be to stop using the word "trigger" when someone reacts in a way you don't like to something you say.

Personally I interpret it as a way to diminish the other side position by suggesting they don't have control over their emotions regarding some subjects. Not a good start.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#20
post #5

Interesting. I always had the impression, the US citizens and french citizen where buddies. Because of the independence war and the statue and everything.

Not sure if you are joking? > France is the country with the deepest, most sedimented reservoir of anti-American arguments. Its long genealogy has been well documented over the years, most recently by Philippe Roger, who argues that French anti- Americanism is older than the United States (Roger 2002). https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/meunierces...

> Surprisingly, polling data reveals that France is not drastically more anti-American than other European countries – even less so on a variety of dimensions.

ibid

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