Sixty million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong

As in NEVER. So stop asking, okay?

It’s not just Americans that many French have a problem with, it even with the world’s Francophones. It just isn’t cool to mention it in a social environment where only an American run civil prison where about a dozen rapist and murderers were illegally abused can be called another Auschwitz.

An alt-media paper The Montral Mirror’s Chris Barry interviews the authors of an “ethnographic analysis” of French society by Montreal based journalists Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow:

Montreal Mirror: I’ve yet to meet a Frenchman who didn’t look down his nose at the Québécois—usually accusing them of being unsophisticated.

[...]

Jean-Benoît Nadeau: In France it’s impolite to ask someone from out of nowhere their name or what they do in life. Which is a very standard conversation starter here, the lowest common denominator of conversation. The French don’t value the lowest common denominator.
JB: They definitely don’t like being asked what they do for a living.
Montreal Mirror: Maybe because half the population is living off the state.

[...]

Montreal Mirror: But getting to the truly important issues, how come those bloody Parisians won’t pick up after their dogs?

Julie Barlow: Because the thought doesn’t even cross their minds. Partly because the whole French system doesn’t rely on civic initiative. The government picks up after the dogs. It’s as simple as that. The French couldn’t imagine it being any other way.

What’s true at first blush about a socialistic society is that behind the good intentions to restore the dignity of a few badly off, they create a atmosphere of dependency that takes virtually everyone’s self-respect away. To one degree or another, when you think of bellicose popular cultures and optimistic ones, that “degree or another” is the degree of their collectivism leeching off of each society.

- h/t to astute reader Val.