Warning - depressing post ahead!

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like my heart rate has been permanently elevated these past few weeks. I'm both waiting for and dreading the outcome of the US election all at once. Mostly though, I'm just appalled by how vicious this election cycle has become. Every day, I wake up to new, even more horrific, ads and insults.  The people at these Trump rallies...how can they also be Americans?  I just identify in no way whatsoever with these crazy white extremists. 

It has me wondering - have they always been there, lurking beneath the surface?  Or is Trumpism like a disease that's spreading across the US?  I mean, the US is by no means perfect, but the one thing I was always proud of was the people.  I just keep going back to what I was taught in school - we're a melting pot. We're a place where people can keep their language and culture and also be American. We're a country united by our diversity. Where has all that gone?

I also think the media has had a huge role in the negativity in this campaign. What's happened is that they spend so much time on Trump's craziness (and really, there's no lack of fodder), and that to appear fair, they feel they need to give equal negative coverage to Hillary.  And the only major negative thing she's got is the whole email fiasco, which is why we've been hearing about it over and over for the past six months.  I get it's a catch-22 for journalists - really, how can you cover Trump and not appear biased - but I still feel the media is largely in part responsible for the situation we find ourselves in today.

The other issue I have - and C and I actually got into an argument about this last night - is why aren't more people standing up to say that this kind of talk is not normal?  That it's unacceptable and hateful and not the kind of example that we want to set for future generations?  Why is no one saying "STOP. You've gone too far. You can't say someone should shoot presidential candidates, and you can't show up at rallies wearing a mask of our current president with a noose around his neck.  You can't say assaulting women is no big deal.  You can't lump entire religions or groups of people into one basket."  And on and on. Where are all the reasonable people?  I know they're out there. Why are they not saying anything?   Though maybe they're like the Minnesotans in the most recent This American Lift podcast, and they don't dare speak out for fear of offending family and friends. But the other side is not in anyway worried about offending people...

C's side of this was that you can't reason with the crazies, so it was no use trying to talk with them or convince them.  But if that's the case, how does it ever stop?  Where are the limits of society?  How do these people know when they've gone too far?  For me, it's similar to the gun control debate - there's no easy answer and both sides are so heated that they can't have a civil discussion, so we do nothing and people keep getting killed.   But how is that a solution?  I just can't accept anymore "Well you can't reason with those people anyways..."

I feel so strongly about this, and I'm starting to understand the expats abroad who feel the call to go back to their home country to fight for change because things are falling to pieces.  (Though this normally happens in third-world countries, and we're talking about supposedly the "strongest nation in the world" here).  With all the places I've visited, I've often wondered about the countries who used to be superpowers and who are now in ruins.  It was just so inconceivable to me - How did they go from being number 1 to the bottom of the list?  I'm afraid we're now going to see it firsthand.

The worst part is that politicians all over the world are starting to tow the Trump line because they see it brings in voters. It's happening in the UK, the Netherlands, France, etc.  What kind of world are we going to be 10, 20, 30 years from now if we all go back to being isolationist and protectionist countries?  If we only worry about protecting ourselves and not the greater good? 

C thinks I'm taking all of this way too much to heart and that it's not worth the negative affect it's having on me, but I just can't help but feel a sense of despair and a profound disappointment in my countrymen. It's really got me down and all of the above is what keeps me up at night, wondering what our future will be and how I can influence it. I just feel so helpless watching it all happen from over here.

Sticking it to The Man?

I don't pretend to be an expert on French politics by any means, but during my 11 years in France, I have had the chance to see a few elections come and go.  And what I've noticed is that most times is that each election, there is just a flip flop between the winning and losing parties.  ie the voters get disenchanted with the current president and fall for all the promises of the opposing party.  And then they are disappointed with the new president's performance, so the next time around, they vote the other party back in. 

This time however, it seems the general population has had enough of the two main parties, and the few people who did turn out to vote voted for the Front National as a measure of protest, to show their unhappiness with the current state of French politics. 

My FIL was here a few days this week to deliver our office & balcony furniture that he had lovingly handmade, so I don't want to slag him off too much, but a discussion we had about how their town (and whole department) voted overwhelmingly for the FN has really gotten my goat.  Given where they live, it's not really a surprise, but it's more-so his justification for it that has gotten my riled up.

In his mind (and the mind of many of my customers with whom I've also had this discussion), voting for the FN was the only way to manifest his unhappiness with the current situation.  I counter-argued that this wasn't the first round of elections, this was an actual election and they just voted a whole bunch of FN politicians into power.  Of course this was for the EU parliament representation and not a pure France election, but it is exceedingly frustrating for me that they cannot seem to understand how their actions can potentially affect France long-term.   The FN is for protectionism, anti-EU, anti-Euro, etc, and history has shown that isolating oneself from the world generally does not improve the economic situation of one's country.  Just take a look at Marine LePen's victory speech:  "The sovereign people have proclaimed that they want to take back the reigns of their destiny into their hands. Our people demand one type of politics: politics of the French, for the French, with the French. They no longer want to be directed from outside."

Granted, as I mentioned the other day in my movie post, there is a growing anti-foreigner sentiment in France and across Europe, but I do think the general French population is just so tired of political parties not doing much of anything that they don't really believe any changes will come about even if the FN was in power.  But that way of thinking still makes me angry.  If you're not happy with the powers-to-be, get out and do something about it or at least vote for one of the other parties that are out there (of which there are many). If anything, now's the time for those parties to really make a push for popularity.  But don't vote for the radical right-wing party just to "stick it to the government", because in the end, you're just sticking it to yourself.

Friday musings

Back in my early years in France, after I had finished my French classes and was starting to look around for a job, there was a statistic that shocked me:

50% of French people earn less than 1500€ a month.  

Of course at the time, I still had my American salary expectations and I hadn't quite understood yet how the French just pay up front for a lot of the things we pay out of pocket for (insurance, retirement, etc).  But the fact of the matter was, I was making more than that as a college student, and I could not wrap my head around the fact that half a country was making less than I was earning while in school.  And unfortunately, I just heard on the news the other day that ten years later, this fact is still true, and it still kind of floors me.

Because of the nature of my job, I spend a lot of time talking to your average French Joe (or maybe that should be Jacques). People who might or might not have their BAC, but who have most certainly never gone on to college.  The working class.  The ones who consider Paris to be far away and things like Paris Fashion Week and who wore what when to be alien.  But because part of my job entails convincing people to take good care of our equipment even though they won't be paid any extra for doing so, I talk to them. Not so much about family since family tends to stay out of work conversations, but about the weather, politics, differences between our countries. After all, it's a lot harder to say no to someone that you have a connection with.

I might not always agree with what some of these folks have to say - all foreigners should be kicked out of France for example - but I have learned a lot from them and it's been an eye into the mindset of a certain class of French people (and yes, IMO, there are still distinct classes in France).

One of the main topics of conversation as of late has been politics.  Those of you who follow French politics will know that François Hollande's approval ratings have been on a downward spiral since being elected. And I can tell you that definitely matches up with what I have been hearing while on the road.

A lot of these people seem so disillusioned by what he is proposing.  The increase in taxes, the likelihood that most of it will come from Monsieur tout le monde instead of the rich. But it always leaves me wondering - what were they expecting?  François Hollande's campaign was full of all kinds of wonderful promises - more money for schools, more money for students, more money for the poor, more fonctionnaires, etc.  And sure all of that is great, but the question I kept asking was - where is that moola going to come from?  Show me the money François!

There were vague answers about taxing the rich (many of whom are now planning on leaving France), but the truth of the matter is, the burden of most of it is going to fall on the average person, either through increased direct taxes or through an increased cost of living due to businesses being taxed more.  To me, it was almost to be expected, but it seems that most people didn't think that far ahead and now they are scared of what is to come.  Many of these people are living off of minimum wage and already have tight budgets, and the idea of having even less money to work with is not a fun one.  But this is the choice they made and they have to live with it now for the next five years. They didn't like Sarko as a person and they voted based on that, instead of his presidency. Of course I never say that to them, but it is often what I am thinking during these discussions. And I guess that is what scares me about the upcoming election in the US - that people will vote emotionally, and not rationally.  

When I was younger, I used to think "Oh, what harm can be done in just a few years?", but after seeing the changes that are happening after only a few months in office, I see how naive that was.  To Hollande's credit, he is at least trying to come up with money to fund all of his promises instead of just increasing national debt, but I still worry about the effect that it will have on France.  Contrary to a a lot of its Southern and Eastern neighbors, France has mostly been spared from the economic downturn, and I wonder if that will be the case five years from now?

Hey there Mr President

 

Earlier this week, I was in Rennes for a big industry trade show, and as I was chatting with a customer, we started hearing this buzz moving towards us.  We stood up and saw a large crowd of people slowly coming our way, and I leaned over to ask a security guard what was going on, and he said in a hushed voice "C'est le Président". 

The French half of me weaseled my way to the front of the crowd, and that is how I found myself face to face with François Hollande just as he was passing by.  I'm not his biggest fan, but he was shaking hands with the crowd, and I couldn't resist - so I quickly stuck my out and he grabbed it and that is how I found myself shaking hands with the French president.

Just another day in France I guess....

Passation 2012

I'm currently watching the swearing in of the new French President on TV.  One of the things that has really struck me in this campaign is how little François Hollande's female companion has been brought up.  For those of you who don't know, he started a relationship with Valerie Trierweiler back in 2005. At that time, François Hollande was still with Ségolène Royal, the candidate defeated by Sarkozy in the 2007 elections.  And Ms Trierweiler was also still married to her husband. And yet it was a complete non-issue during the campaign - the other side didn't even think to bring it up as a defense mechanism.

Can you imagine a couple like this ever even having a chance in hell of making to the White House in the US? Hell, Bill Clinton was almost impeached for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky - yet in this case, both spouses were full-on cheating on their partners and here they are, about to take over as France's head of state and move in to l'Elysée.

I'm not writing this to judge them, more so to comment on the difference in mentalities between my two countries. I find it interesting that Americans tend to feel that one's personal actions are also a reflection of how they will react in their public life. Whereas they are completely separate for the French - a politician can be sleeping around with anything that moves and yet still be considered a perfectly good candidate (example: DSK).

Historically-speaking, what French politicians have done on their own time has always been hush-hush, even though it was quite well known in the journalistic circles that many of them had mistresses (and some even had children with them).  But up until recently, they were never followed by paparazzi and those kinds of subjects were just left alone. 

That tide started to change with Sarkozy however - known as the "Bling bling" president, he was followed anywhere he went in order to find proof he was living the high life.  He and Carla were even photographed on a yacht in their swimsuits, which was quite the shocking revelation as no other president had ever been photographed in such a "private way" during his off hours.

I'm not sure what my feelings are exactly on this subject.  On one hand, I do think that if someone thinks it's okay to cheat on his wife, he might not have the best scruples and that does call into question his ability to make sound decisions for an entire country.  But on the other hand, I'm not sure if I agree with people's private lives becoming such public domain.

So let's put it to a blog poll:

               

Post office

While we were back in the US, I tasked myself with getting all of our thank-you cards done. It was a huge amount of work, but we finally finished and then headed over to the post office to mail them out.  The mail lady weighed all of our envelopes, including several that were set to go abroad, and told us our total.  I could not believe it how little it had come to, and asked her to double check.

We started talking about the prices of stamps to various destinations, and it turned out it was cheaper for me to mail letters from Minnesota to the UK than from France to the UK. It was also cheaper for me to mail letters from the US to France, than from France to France!  France is the size of Texas people - how is that even possible?

Oh wait, that's right, it's because La Poste has to fund all of the benefits their employees get.  And conversely, the United States Postal Service is not allowed to make a profit.

It just so happens that the day of our visit was also the day the USPS announced that they were going to close hundreds of post offices nation-wide, eliminate Saturday deliveries and get rid of next-day shipping. They "can't" raise prices because of the effect it would have nation-wide on deliveries and thus increased costs to the consumer (a big no-no during difficult economic times), so they are forced to cut services instead.

Apparently several people had come in to complain, so they had put up a sign talking about how first-class postal rates vary around the world:

And there's the US down at the bottom.  But holy cow Norway  - $1.22 for a first class letter?! 

The weights allowed for a first class letter also differed.  I wanted to include some pictures in some of the envelopes, and in the US ones, we could add in several photos and not go over the weight. However in France, if we put more than the card + one picture, it required an additional stamp.  So my advice to all the complainers in the US is to sit down & stop your whingeing - compared to the rest of the world, we've got it quite good.  It's still reasonable to mail a letter cross-country, you rarely have to worry about letters getting lost in the mail (*ahem* La Poste!!) and most postmen still make an effort to deliver your packages.

Rally to Restore Sanity

Saturday night, a few friends and I went to the Paris satellite of Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity". It was held at the Thistle Pub - it's really too bad they couldn't have found a larger venue because the place was packed to the gills and spilling out onto the sidewalk, which also made it hard to see and hear the broadcast.

But that said, I supported the point of the rally. So many Americans out there are apathetic about the direction our country is headed and this was one man's attempt to wake some of those people up. To give voice to some of the "normal" people out there, instead of all the crazy extremists that have been hoarding the airwaves as of late.

The rally got off to a bit of a rocky start - opening with a slightly awkward mix Cat Stevens' "Peace Train" , Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" and The O'Jays "Love Train", and continuing on with a strange back-and-forth between Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But the highlight of the event for me was Stewart's speech. I thought he pretty successfully combined humor and politics - but take a listen for yourself:



Lastly, this has nothing to do with the above rally, but it is English Sunday and this is too funny not to share. This morning, C told me "Oh, your new tooth pasta smells really good". Me: ??? C: Teeth pasta?? Me: LOLLLLL, it's called toothpaste my dear. C: I was close enough, non??

Could the man be any cuter?

Yesterday, as I was waiting for C to meet me at St Michel, I came across some people holding this banner:
How random is that? You can check out their website here.

And then we were off to profiter du beau temps at the first BBQ of the year chez Ms Juliet. She's one of the best hostesses I know, and we all had a fantastic time lounging around in the sun, catching up with friends, and, most importantly, EATING. Roll on Summer!

I'd been meaning to post about some of the advertising differences between rural America and cosmopolitan France, but Jasmin beat me to half of it here, so go check out her post first.

And then take a look at the one I saw on my way to work one day:
Yes! People, that is solution! You can't pay for your car or your mortgage and you probably can't afford health insurance, but go ahead and HAVE MORE BABIES ANYWAY! After all, the new estimates have come out and it *only* costs $204,060 to raise a child to the age of 18 today (college not included). That's only a 15% increase since 1960 (when it cost $177,440), so it's practically a steal!

Copulation is the answer - why hasn't President Obama thought of this before? It's certainly been the French motto long enough, ie "you should have one for yourself, one for your spouse and one for your country". Though I wonder if they would eschew it knowing they're now copying the French?

65th D-day Celebrations, Normandy

Through a contact at the American Presence Post in Rennes, I was able to get a last-minute invite to the D-day celebrations in Normandy this past weekend. I'd already been planning on going to visit Karina that same day, so the timing was perfect. And so worth catching that early morning train, even though I'd gotten back around 9pm the night before from my work trip.
There were special navettes waiting at the train station to take us to the cemetary. I was expecting security to be a lot stricter than it was, but they just gave us a cursory glance at my invitation and my passport and off we went. Since we weren't supposed to bring any food with, they provided us with a sandwich and a bottle of water on the bus. It was kind of surreal going there since the highways had been closed off and our buses had a special military escort to take us there. Not to mention the numerous police officers stationed basically every kilometer along the route.Upon arrival at the cemetary, we went through a metal-detector and then we were free to roam around the grounds for a few hours until the ceremony started. We made sure to get seats first though, since they were already filled up to about half-way back.There were American and French military personnel everywhere. It's not the first time I've been to the cemetary, but it is still humbling when you see the view again. It's so calm and peaceful now, and you have a hard time imagining all the horrors that took place there so many years ago.
I always try to find a cross with a Minnesota soldier on it while I'm there - unfortunately it's not a very hard thing to do, with almost 10,000 American soliders buried there. As a side note, in a video they showed before the ceremony, they said there were 24 American Cemetaries world-wide, acting as the final resting place of more than 125,000 soldiers.
And then we all took our seats for the ceremony - my camera has a pretty major zoom, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get a clear shot because of all the journalists in front of the podium.There were four speakers - first up was French President Nicolas Sarkozy, then Steven Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, then Gordon Brown and finally President Obama.Gordon Brown made a slip-up during his speech that caused quite a bit of twittering (and probably tweeting) in the audience. He referred to Omaha Beach as "Obama Beach" - which I imagine would be really easy to do since on paper, they look almost the same. Then we had a 21 canon salute, and then a fly-over by Canadian, French and American military planes. Four remaining soldiers were inducted into the French legion of honor. There was supposed to be a fifth soldier, but he passed away the night before, after one final visit to the landing beaches.And then all the dignitaries took off in their helicopters - they did a quick fly-over along the coast before heading back to Paris, where the Obamas toured Notre Dame and then went for a quick dinner at a small local restaurant.

Even though a lot of people have complained that Obama's presence (and accompagnying media-circus) at the ceremony over-shadowed the importance of the day itself, I'm very glad to have been able to attend. There are fewer and fewer remaining D-day soliders left, and most are in poor health, leaving us to wonder how many will be around for the next celebration 5 years from now. And it's always a moving experience to visit the American cemetary and its surrounding area.

Lastly, I wanted to explain the title of the FB album I made - "Si les Ricains n'étaient pas là", or "If the Americans hadn't been there". I just realized that many of you out there may not be familiar with the song it was taken from, and in that case, how arrogant it must sound. So here's the background - Michel Sardou wrote a song called "Les Ricains" back in the late 60's, talking about how all of these young American soliders fought and died in a foreign country for people they didn't even know or care about. It's one of my favorite songs, and it's also one of the first French songs I was able to fully understand.

Les ricains
envoyé par sonia205. - Regardez d'autres vidéos de musique.

And it also comes in handy to be able to sing a line or two of it when talking to particularily anti-American Frenchies.

Not that I would do that or anything....

Well isn't that neat - I wrote a letter to my congressman and he actually wrote back!

Thank you for sharing with me your support of H.R. 1798, the Working American Competitiveness Act. I appreciate hearing from you.

The Working American Competitiveness Act was introduced on March 30, 2009, and has been referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means. It would allow taxpayers to exclude from their gross income, earned income from sources within a foreign country.

Rest assured that I will keep your support for this legislation in mind should I have an opportunity to vote on the bill.

With best wishes and apologies for the delay in responding to you.

Sincerely,

James L. Oberstar, M.C.

A while back, there was a website circulating that would help you formulate a letter to your congressman/representative encouraging them to support the Working American Competitiveness Act. As stated above, this act would stop the double taxation of Americans living abroad and earning a fair amount of money. I obviously don't fall into this case, but I don't think it's fair for Americans who are making a good living to have to pay taxes in both their home country AND in the US on anything they make over 80,000€ (give or take a few euros).

But I think it's cool that he (or probably one of his aides) took the time to read my letter and respond back to it. Now that he knows someone in his constituency is potentially affected by this, maybe he'll take a bit more time to consider the bill. And who knows, if it's a close vote, one vote could really make all the difference. People often think "Oh, I'm just one person, what difference would I make?" But you just never know!

So today's the big day, huh? It's hard to believe that the Bush years are *this close* to being over. But yet here I am feeling torn in two - part of me wants to get caught up in all the celebration. Yet the other part wonders how much change he will actually bring? His administration choices just seem to be more of the same, there's very little fresh blood in there.

I also have some reserves about the 150 million they're spending on inauguration day. I realize this is a historic event, but is it really prudent to be spending that much money, in light of the sacrifices he's asking us all to make? Shouldn't he be leading by example?

But malgré tout, tonight I will celebrate - maybe more so the end of Bush's 'reign' rather than the beginning of Obama's, but I will celebrate nonetheless. And I will try to remain cautiously optimistic about the changes Obama will bring.

One of the things I don't really like about being here is the mini-Republican enclave that is W-town. Minnesota in general is a blue state, but there are counties here and there that are hard-cord Republican, and The Company just happens to be located in one of them. This means that the majority of my co-workers are as well, which has lead to some testy conversations over the years.

The right-wing tendencies manifest themselves in other ways though - there are anti-abortion signs everywhere, people are not really very tolerant of foreigners (or even non-white Americans for that matter), and don't even get them started on homosexuals. It just kind of comes with the area though, and I've gotten used to it while here. But that doesn't mean my mouth didn't fall wide open when I saw this on my way home tonight:
I mean, what the hell? What on Earth is "Jesus" doing written on a McDonald's billboard? I pondered that the rest of the way home, and it's still bothering me today. I'm a huge believe in the separation of church and state, and I don't see how religious affiliations of any kind belong in the public domain. Or could one argue that since McDonalds are franchised, the franchise owner is free to put what he likes on his billboards??

Seen on my way home from rhumrhums last night...

Anyone know what this is all about?

People, WE DID IT!! After a sleepless night of waking up roughly every 30 minutes and then telling myself to go back to bed because it was still too early, I finally woke up for real to some excellent news. I still think it's too soon to say that change is a sure thing, but the need is there, the hope is there, the possibility is there, and that's already a good start.

I'm off to work now, but before I go, I wanted to give a public shout-out to my friend Alisa. She's donated so much of her free time over these past few months to the Obama campaign, canvassing neighborhoods, calling, doing what she can to get just one more vote, and I am so very proud of her. I strongly feel voting is a devoir, and that every vote counts, so I hope you are enjoying the fruits of all your labor my dear!

Minnesota Nice

I'm really touched - I'd sent the lady in charge of absentee ballots an email the other day, thanking her for all of her help, and in it, I happened to mention that the only downside of voting by email was that I didn't get my little "I voted" sticker. I received an email from her yesterday saying "You know, I was thinking about you all last night, and while I can't send you out a sticker, I decided I could at least scan one and email it to you."

So while it's not exactly the same, I now have at least a virtual "I voted" sticker:

Just a reminder that it's time to sign up for your absentee ballot if you haven't already. And actually, that's another reason I'm leaning towards taking the place I talked about yesterday - I'm running out of time to register and I need to come up with a permanent address to give them ASAP!


Check out the Vote from Abroad website - and thanks to Emily for the link!

I was going to post today about how my friends were *this close* to getting scammed by someone on Craig's list but didn't thanks to Leesa's post...but I'm going to save that for tomorrow now.

The big news today is that Ingrid Betancourt has finally been rescued after six years and four months of captivity (along with three American hostages). I'm not sure how much her ordeal has been talked about elsewhere in the world, but here in France, it's been a pretty big deal. Her family has long fought to keep her on the radar, to keep her name in the media, to continue pushing the government to do something.

Ingrid has dual French-Columbian citizenship, and she was campaigning for the Colombian presidency when she was abducted by the Farc. Her children and some of her family live in Paris though. I can't even imagine what a relief this must be for them - there hadn't been any communication from her for quite some time now. I'd been thinking that the probability of her still being alive after all this time was slim - I mean, what were they going to do, keep her forever?

Anyways, if you want, you can read more about it here (in French) or here (in English).