Morning in France

The Paris Blues column at pajamas Media is now Paris Lights:

This time it was hard to tear myself away from la France
nouvelle, la France sous Sarkozy. Like going on a trip when you’d just redone
the kitchen…or the bougainvillea is blooming in the window boxes. Paris was
alive with such long-delayed hope. Even if disappointment is just around the
corner the experience was edifying. The meaning of leadership sings out from
every inch of the land. This is the secret of community; individuals are supple
and distinct, they can rise and fall to great heights and depths, change in an
instant, fly off to incredible adventures or walk around the same block for a
lifetime, but collectivities can’t be dynamic without leadership. They aren’t
self-propelled.

France has been going downhill slowly for decades; the
last seven years were the worst. The society was in a freeze frame for all that
is positive, on fast forward for the negative, and boiling with obsessive hatred
of Israel, Jews, and America. An entrenched president and successive PMs
aggravated the domestic situation with a counterproductive foreign policy.
France crowed about peace on the international stage while people became more
and more aggressive in day to day reality.

France needed a leader like Sarkozy since the days of Louis XVI! (Thats before the French Revolution for you public schoolers!)