On Bastille Day, the Perfectly Aloof French Dismissal of an Utter Fool
On Bastille Day, the Perfectly Aloof French Dismissal of an Utter Fool
Bordeaux Red in Paris
It’s Bastille Day Eve here in Paris, and… he’s here. “He” being the (I still can’t believe I’m typing these words) President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. Yes, that basic reality-TV-show clown. Time for a glass of wine.
I’ve lived here with my girlfriend for more than six and a half years now, and one advantage to living in Paris is that as two Americans can almost live our lives without thinking about Trump. Yes, it usually crosses our minds at least once a day, but it’s not forced upon us by our workplace or local restaurants blasting cable news from morning until night.
And then we had our own election in France, which went really well. The extreme-right-winger lost in humiliating fashion, and we feel pretty safe from the broader nativist trend sweeping the globe. So we don’t feel the daily crush of it. Honestly, escape from the daily crush of U.S. politics is one of the main reasons I moved here in the first place.
After Trump got elected, there were some protests here in Paris. They were significant, but not so much so that anyone paid attention. Although American ex-pats made up a majority of the crowds, it was the French protesters who ran the show. They have much more experience in protesting. We had a few chants, but they had dozens. France has a much broader and deeper culture of protesting than we do in the U.S. I’ve seen protests here in Paris made up almost entirely of little schoolchildren. Meanwhile, our students pledge allegiance to a flag every single morning! It took living in Europe for me to appreciate just how insanely fascist a ritual that is.
Which is to say, I expected French people to prevent this visit from happening. Press accounts suggest that Trump has at least twice postponed a visit to the U.K. because of the fear of massive protests dominating the media coverage. And the U.K. has nothing on France when it comes to street protests, right? So, given the circumstances, it seemed to follow that the French people would threaten to mount such an overwhelming demonstration that Trump would be forced to cancel his trip.
But they didn’t, and he came. He’s here. And, honestly, I’m feeling a little resentful towards the French. I suspect that they’re not protesting because it’s a holiday weekend, and their summer vacation plans take precedence over demonstrating against the biggest threat to world peace and global survival yet. Bastille Day falls on a Friday this year, so everyone’s booked long weekends in Burgundy or Normandy or the Riviera, and nobody, no matter how much they hate Trump, would want to give up their holiday weekend. It’s disappointing.
That disappointment, though, fades away after some drunken reasoning. Maybe the French aren’t so motivated to take to the streets because they don’t perceive Trump to be all that much of a threat. Maybe it’s become clear to them that Trump’s utter incompetence is going to prevent him from doing anything truly terrible. And maybe they’ve determined there’s about a 50 percent chance of most U.S. presidents starting a war, and that governmental attitudes ranging from hostility to indifference towards the poor, ethnic minorities, the disabled, LGBTQ communities, and other marginlized groups are the norm. Maybe they know better what the U.S. is than we progressives do ourselves. Because we are blinded by our own patriotism, we don’t see that Trump and his worldview have always been deeply ingrained in the American culture, and they will be until we stop denying it and admit it and actually do something about it.
What I’m trying to say is that the French might not be going all Hamburg-during-the-G20-summit in Paris on account of Trump’s visit, but maybe that’s because Trump isn’t as far outside of the American norm as we naive, patriotic Americans could ever really admit. His pretending-to-be-a-billionaire ass just isn’t worth passing on a few glasses of crisp rosé and the charms of southern France. It’s a perfectly aloof French dismissal of the fool.
By the way, it was a 2015 Chateau Haut-Mondain that fueled the above blabber. Purchased from a supermarket. Not usually the best place to get wine, but our tiny stash is down to only really nice bottles at home, and I got home too late to go to any of the quality wine shops on my street. The trick I use when I have to buy wine at the supermarket is to find a bottle that says mis en bouteille au château. This means it was bottled on the premises of the vineyards. By no means does it guarantee high quality, but it usually saves you from the worst of the bad bottles, the mega-industrial alcoholic grape juice industry. Tonight, I drink. Tomorrow, I protest.