W.J. Astore
There he goes again. Donald Trump has insulted our French allies, apparently in retaliation for Emmanuel Macron’s sensible speech this past weekend that assailed nationalism as divisive and dangerous to world peace. In his retaliatory tweet today, the Trumpet had the following to say about France and its war effort in World Wars I and II:
Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia. But it was Germany in World Wars One & Two – How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along. Pay for NATO or not!
Suggesting the French were learning German because they couldn’t or wouldn’t fight is more than insulting: it reveals Donald Trump’s utter ignorance of history.
First, consider World War I. The French lost roughly 1.4 million men in that war. More than any other country, France should be credited for defeating German militarism. Indeed, France served as America’s “arsenal of democracy” in that war, supplying U.S. troops with weaponry and helping to train them for war as well. The French, after all, had fought the war for nearly four years before American troops showed up in large numbers. Yes, the U.S. military helped to stiffen French and British resistance in 1918 and contributed to turning the tide toward victory, but overall France deserves tremendous credit and deep respect both for its victory and for the enormity of its sacrifice.
Now, let’s turn to World War II. It was the devastation of France in World War I (along with interwar political divisions and an overly defensive mentality) that contributed to its relatively quick defeat in World War II. Because of this defeat, France paid a high price indeed under German occupation. Some French people collaborated; many more resisted and paid for that resistance with their lives.
Trump insults the memory of millions of French men and women who died resisting German militarism in both world wars, and to what end? Just so he can score cheap points with his base by tweeting ignorant insults against an ally that fought side-by-side with Americans in both world wars?
The French, of course, helped to secure American independence in the 18th century, a favor you could say we repaid during the closing stages of World War I. And while World War II was a disaster for French arms, there was no lack of fighting spirit among major sectors of the French populace.
Suggesting the French were studying German because they were militarily inept until Americans rode to the rescue does more than a grave disservice to history. It gravely insults the French people. Such is the idiocy of Donald Trump.
Bracing Views 
Yes, Trump’s tweets are disgraceful, but living in France 18years, there’s another side. Since the sensible Jacque Chirac, who refused to support US invasion of Iraq, France has had 3 losers, in morality and corruption: Sarkozi, Hollande, now Macron.
Truth in Disclosure (another!). WJAstore, I think you give France more credit than it’s worth. On the eve of 100th Anniversary of ‘The war to end all wars”, I’m now starting to – after much research – blame ‘Allies’ more than Germany for this travesty, and those that followed. This was a power play & colonial war: Britain & France had much lower salaries and workers rights than Imperial Germany. They were also inferior in manufactured products, (STILL ARE!) so it was a rich mans war. France & Britain invented the yellow press; stand aside Hearst.
In short, there was no need for it, unless you were Rhodes who wanted to enslave Africa, or France desiring the same in their colonies – no surprise they were allies.
I’m happily retired here, don’t get me wrong, but THANK GOD! I can’t vote! Macron deserves an insult; he fancies himself as a new Napoleon for France. He’s a spoiled brat from a rich family, who can’t leave a wife old enough to be his mother. I’m not being nasty or judgemental, but those are the conceited idiots who got Europe into WW1.
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We don’t have to adore the French — but we also shouldn’t insult them en bloc.
If I were Macron, I’d challenge Trump to a duel. Pistols at 20 paces. Trump sure offers a bigger target …
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Heh, doesn’t every French leader dream that he’s the next Napoleon? Just like Napoleon thought he’d better the ambitions of Louis the Whateverth, who looked back to Charlemagne and Caesar for inspiration on how to be an imperialist prick. The lineage of the imperial virus runs deep in Western ‘civilization’.
I’ve always felt the world would have been much better off if Germany had taken Paris in 1914. But I have to admit to a sort of genetic dislike of France and French culture, that I attribute to Catholic French oppression of one branch of my ancestors (some Huguenots from Sedan) a few centuries back 🙂
Still, the Great War was ultimately about a bunch of imperialist Europeans slaughtering one another at the behest of wealthy elites who could have chosen to end the conflict, but didn’t. And this European Civil War dragged millions of colonized people into the nightmare. Britain’s appropriation of food in India caused a famine that killed millions. France happily sent colonial Algerians into the trenches to die. The Russian Empire sent Kazakhs and Siberians to die. All those people sacrificed for, in the end, absolutely nothing. And then there was the Great Continuation of the ’30s and ’40s.
If there is ever a zombie apocalypse, I sincerely hope it takes a form where dead veterans rise up and take their just vengeance on those who sacrificed them.
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EXACTLY! AT. WW1 was not a war of “freedom”, but a Banksters War of profits. My grandparents were correct: it reached a stalemate. Both STUPID sides would go home, cry their eyes out, and go onto reconstruction of the mess the Banksters made.
But NO! We had ‘liberal’ Wilson who realised the ‘allies’ owed a fortune to US banks. Thus the intervention. His sins are with us today. To destroy him completely is a road to peace.
BTW, at the Treaty of Versailles “talks” was also How Chi Meh asking to speak to Wilson re: colonisation of Vietnam. This bastard of “freedom” Wilson refused to speak or meet with him. So add 58,000 more Americans who died in vain for his “freedoms”.
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“Lafayette, we are here!” A famous quote Trump is unaware of. Of course he never heard of Lafayette, and so it would mean nothing to him.
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Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! It was a spiteful war – to prove the French Aristocracy. American ‘Independence’ had nothing to do with it.
We see what happened…..
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We have been insulting the French people for nearly 20 years now off and on. Bush the Younger had his Freedom Fries and the name French Toast was banned. Hell, even the Dixie Chicks got hammered for anti-war statements. Love it or Leave you know.
President Agent Orange is a master of schoolyard insults and Pastor Pence stands by him with his Mr. Robotic Smile.
It does appear for all intents and purposes President Agent Orange has discovered a kindred spirit in Brazil.
Brazil’s new foreign minister believes climate change is a Marxist plot.
Ernesto Araujo has called climate science ‘dogma’ and bemoaned the ‘criminalisation’ of red meat, oil and heterosexual sex.
“This dogma has been used to justify increasing the regulatory power of states over the economy and the power of international institutions on the nation states and their populations, as well as to stifle economic growth in democratic capitalist countries and to promote the growth of China,” he wrote in a post last month. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/brazil-foreign-minister-ernesto-araujo-climate-change-marxist-plot
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Speaking of idiotic fanboy Fascists like those now in charge of the U.S. “government,” consider an entire ruling class composed of …
Leisure Class lemmings
The Hothouse Orchids, Special Snowflakes, Precious Peacocks, too,
Desire to dominate the deaf and dumb:
Themselves, the ones who will not hear, who parrot words untrue,
According to their single rule of thumb:
Receive The Rumor, then Repeat, as if the old is new,
Like children chanting to a beating drum.
The pre-pubescent pugilists at recess taunt their type:
“Mine’s bigger!” each proclaims of his small bone.
With no hair on the chest or groin or armpits, still they hype
Their right to perch atop the playground throne.
When frustrated by losing their entitled place they gripe,
Fueled by the flow of twerp testosterone.
This homone that a pair of tiny testicles secrete
Makes little schoolboy woodies stand-up stiff.
Yet many years must pass before the plow and furrow meet.
Till then they’re lucky if they get a sniff.
But, still, “heroic” movies send them strutting down the street
Like lemmings heading towards the nearest cliff.
Good luck, of course, when Dad-and-Mommy’s trust fund intervenes
To shield our little lords from bad and cruel.
Affirmatively actioned up the ladder thanks to genes
They’ll never have to fight or live on gruel;
Which life, should they bear witness to its grim and ugly scenes,
Would make them piss their pants or drop a stool.
They long to steer Titanic towards the iceberg dead ahead.
In fantasies, they save the ship and crew.
They yearn to split the muffin, push the parsley, but instead,
They choke the chicken till the bird turns blue;
Then beat the drowning dog to earn some “military” cred:
The spinal column’s famous yellow hue.
But lemming overpopulation, even at the top,
Requires reduction. Too much appetite,
Conspicuously wasteful, Veblen said, must surely stop.
So to the sheer cliff’s edge we must invite
The lemming divers of the leisure class to belly flop
Upon the rocks below, from some great height.
Or at the next Olympic Games, in Winter, somewhere cold,
(Again, with Russian athletes not allowed)
A U.S.-only demonstration of cliff-diving bold
Could entertain and mesmerize the crowd.
With flag-draped bodies on the ice, the U.S. wins the Gold.
The Stars and Stripes: failed parachute and shroud.
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2018
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