May 28, 2004
Living on old architecture, family jewels, old money and an old reputation...
A reference to..? Come on, take a guess.
Came across an interesting interview just now. Here's an excerpt that refers to Abu Ghraib. (Emphases mine)
J-M H: What immediately came to my mind looking at how the media, and especially France 2, were hammering away at this, is that it took about 20 years and many scapegoats, among them Maurice Papon, before the torture practiced by the French during the Algerian war was made public. And this was something much more serious than mistreatment. In the case of the Iraqi prisoners it took a week before the perpetrators were brought to justice and the whole story was spread out before the media.NP: Would you say that this is one important difference between the way issues are handled in France as opposed to the US?
J-M H: Oh yes, an enormous difference. In fact, France is a monarchy disguised as a democracy. Power in France is occult; there is no doubt about that. Nobody knew that Mitterand had an illegitimate daughter; the secret was kept until after he died. The financial scandals connected to Chirac when he was mayor of Paris are still covered up. When I was looking at CNN and the live broadcast of these hearings I was thinking…it was a comforting thought…that this was real democratic action. It is something I never saw, not only in my country--my former country--but in Europe in general. I am thinking that at the end of the day when the story of prisoner abuse goes back to the second page of the media it may do more good than harm.
Well worth reading the whole shebang.
Posted by Valerie at May 28, 2004 05:33 PMWow, great interview. And it sounds like he has coffee with John Rhys-Davies
NP: That leads to my next and perhaps last question. Do you think that France today is in a state of distress?
J-M H: Totally. A state of total distress.Posted by: Doug at May 28, 2004 07:04 PM
Doug-san,
LOL. Yes, for a former French citizen, he seems pretty lucid.
And, you know, he's right. I admitted to myself a while ago that things were deteriorating here...but in the last few months, I have had to finally admit that the better word to use would be...disintegrating.
I just wish that more people living here could SEE it. People who could make a difference before it's really too late. Alas... there is no sign whatsoever of positive change. None.
It's the wait-until-it's-too-late eurosyndrome. When will they ever learn!
Posted by: Valerie at May 28, 2004 08:18 PMVal, don't you know that it's Americans who don't learn from history? Your problem is that you just won't listen.
More seriously, I have a sense of what you mean. One of the blogs I linked you to earlier (Cum Grano Salis) had an article on German cognitive dissonance a year or more ago that really rang bells for me. I very often have the sense that Europeans I encounter (and French in particular) are carefully sustaining a mindset protected from reality. Every so often, I take it into my head to challenge the will to sustain it, make it confront self-evident truths which contradict it, just to see how far I can push it. I don't think I've ever made a dent.
Posted by: Doug at May 28, 2004 11:34 PMHere's a link - if you have the inclination, read the preface on cognitive dissonance and see if it doesn't mesh with this 'refusal to see' that you note. I suspect it will.
Posted by: Doug at May 28, 2004 11:50 PMI've been calling France an under-developping country, pays en voie de sous-développement, for at least a decade and received furious looks and invectives in return more than once.
This ability the French have to deny unpleasant reality and/or to convince themselves of the demise of other nations (the US, for example) even when faced with blatant evidence of the opposite, is indeed amazing.
Posted by: Carine at May 29, 2004 09:35 AMWithin the article was a link to another article at Policy Review Online which at one point theorizes about this in France specifically. It sort of suggests that France never got over the revolution.
But hey! It isn't all bad news! France stands poised to make a contribution to computer technology for the first time in years. It would be nice if it took place outside the framework of France's comfort zone (wine, cheese, odor), but I say take what you can get. Stay tuned for the technology to be integraded with porn sites.
Posted by: Doug at May 29, 2004 12:06 PMDoug -
Interesting article. I've read about this before.
I've actually experienced the revelation of SEEING. I somehow managed to finish high school never knowing that 2 of my dearest friends were gay, that my minister-to-be boyfriend smoked pot at lunch and that many of the drugstore cowboys I'd been at school with for years and years had experimented with homosexuality...and this in a little town in Texas. When I became aware of it all, I so regretted not knowing!
And you? Ever had your eyes opened?
Have I! I'm flitting through memory from instance to instance, and trying to come up with a "top 100" or so. I'm only now realizing just how many of the more important lessons I've learned were the result of a belief being undeniably trumped by reality. Let's see, what are a few of them...
I've learned that people are not inherently good. In fact, high-minded benevolence is not uncommon as a thin front for small-minded malice - and it is not ironic that these are usually the people who would like me to believe that all people are inherently good.
I've learned not to trust the Hive Mind. It does not know and want what's best for everyone.
I've learned that people - even those I'd consider honest - lie daily. I doubt that many even realize it. So many are almost reflexive "white lies", but where they're not outright destructive they're at least obstructive. There seems to be some correlation between these "auto-lies" and intellectual dishonesty.
I've learned that I'm an idiot. I keep talking myself out of this one, but reality's persistant.
I've learned that when a woman ditches their SO for me or cheats on them, it's not a testament to my character - it's an indictment of theirs. There is nothing so magically dazzling about me that I can cause people to act outside the bounds of their own character (however appealing the notion may be). Maybe this is really a duplicate of the previous lesson.
And perhaps most damaging discovery of all - I learned that my dad was not really Batman. I'll bet you're not quite as crestfallen as I was.
I can't say that I regret not knowing any of these things - only taking as long as I sometimes did to figure them out.
Posted by: Doug at May 30, 2004 05:47 AMDoug -
How can you be sure that your dad was not deliberately leading you to believe he WASN'T Batman so that he could keep the reality a secret?
I'm not so sure that you're an idiot, either, but you know better than I! ;)
Posted by: Valerie at May 30, 2004 09:49 AM
