Chris Cohlmeyer
Sep 5, 2018 · 2 min read

Followed your link from Stepen’s piece. Appreciate your responses to others. For myself, I am an American/Canadian that now identifies as a Newfoundlander that lives on the French Shore. Complicated! But unlike most Americans you most likely can place the location if you followed your history classes.

I learned French in the 1960's in Vichy during the height of the pure language push to eliminate anglicized words. Also did some traveling learning that Canadians are respected while Americans would often be taken advantage of mainly due to their disregard of customs and protocols and general belligerence. Back then I had difficulty reconciling deGaulle’s resistance version of France with the fact of the Vichy government acknowledged by Germany. Then again I was getting doused by the US version of history which casts the US as the super hero. I suspect that deGaulle well knew the difference but was more concerned about unifying the country.

For a long time now I have had the opportunity to watch the US from the outside. Adding in cable TV has made things very interesting being able to see the US take on world events as compared to Canada and other countries views. Now with the internet you can become easily overwhelmed.

As an American living abroad I get the threat alerts from time to time. I find many to be rather silly as traveling in the 1960's and 70's in America and Europe was actually riskier then traveling today even after 9/11. In Paris you kept an eye out for the Gendarmes massing and got out of the area. In London you had the IRA setting off bombs here and there. In the US you had daily bomb explosions. In many other locations you had pitched battles between students and police.

Today the US has the Trumpet as POTUS. While the rest of the world has been moving ahead, the US has been stagnant or falling backwards by many measures. Can only hope that they can turn things around before too much more damage is done. Then again democracies/republics have a bad habit of imploding around the 200 odd year mark.

    Chris Cohlmeyer

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    Janitor, leather craftsman, saddler, Forester, retired almost. Abuse survivor, former alcoholic addict, dad of three, skiing, nature, camping. life is good