France still beats the USA
France still beats the USA

Photo by Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash

I give France a hard time, and I plan to keep giving it hard time. It’s a deeply flawed country, with an aging culture, where idealism and absurd logic breeds ignorance.

I believe it is something of a duty for me to criticize my country, to help fend off the rot that would make it worthless.

“But the bread! But the cheese! But the wine!”

I know, France has so much to offer, and I am not going to go on record denying all the wonderful things my compatriot have given us.

But there are plenty of glowing travelogues to tell you about all that. Wine guides, cheese pairing advice, Eiffel tower porn. That stuff is great — go find it elsewhere.

I’m here to cut through the fantasy, talk real about my country, and hopefully make it 0.0000001% better for all of us.

That said, I’m also American. Being half yank also has its advantages, its benefits. There are good things to say about America.

But here, on Christmas Eve, I want to offer you this confession as a gift (even if you don’t celebrate this commercial-Christian holiday):

I may give France a hard time, but I will always prefer it here to my other country, the United States.

Why? There are ten thousand reasons why. I could talk about credit cards, gun enthusiasts, racism, bleached white teeth, evangelical Christians, and much much more.

But today — and I say this with a bit of hope that the era in which this is possible or relevant is drawing very soon to a close — I will answer with the single word that ends so many arguments. To explain profoundly with a single syllable, like a rune spoken aloud to magical effect, is all I need. A word pregnant with nearly infinite meanings, and addressing everything now and everything that has been, if hopefully not everything that will be.

Why do I prefer France to the United States? It’s simple. It’s complex. It’s everything.

Trump.
['Frankie Faunet']
['Christmas', 'USA', 'France', 'Culture', 'Politics']