Vive Le France!

(Somewhere in the French countryside)

In 2011, I was in the middle of a four year American Indian Sun Dance commitment and the prior year a contingent from France attended, and then kept attending in years to come. Because it was an International Sun Dance for Peace, initiated by (and serving as intercessor was) Howard Badhand a/k/a Chief High Star Sun Eagle, non-Indians were invited to attend.

In any event, at a meeting the day Sun Dance purification started, everyone got a chance to introduce themselves and speak for a bit if they wished. Since most of the French in attendance spoke no English, they designated a spokesperson to speak for the French Contingent, a man oddly, but appropriately, called “Sexy Jesus” by the women (if you get the mental picture). Anyhow, he began speaking with a summation of sorts by saying, “Were it not for the French, you all might be singing ‘God Save the Queen’. However, if not for the Americans, we might all be speaking German.” That was a point well made, and harkened back to our respective countries improbable existence from inception though the present.

Despite whatever surface enmity there may be between the States and France these days, make no mistake. We both were born in bloody revolutions, the French Revolution shortly following our own. Surely there must be a bit of residual mutual respect for what happened way back then, even if only grudgingly admitted. I mean, c’mon, the French people rolled Royal heads. Further, a lyric in La Marseillaise translates as:

To arms citizens Form your battalions

March, march

Let impure blood

Water our furrows

Anyhow, the year before, at my second year of Sun Dance, a French woman I barely met invited me to visit her in France, the day after the Sun Dance was over and 1) having never been to France and 2) because I knew both her first and last name, I told her I would come to visit. I made a three week trip to see her twice, once in July and once in October of 2010. Although the relationship would ultimately prove short lived, it was a blast, but it was quite a commute by airplane.

I guess my point is getting out of France the second time was a nightmare, because while I was there a National Strike was called. This wasn’t like a mere USA airline pilot strike or dock workers strike or something similar, but I witnessed. almost the entire country of the workers just stop working. They simply stopped. About the only things still open were bakeries (boulangeries) gas stations and some transportation like trains and busses. So in about a week or ten days the whole country started to run out of gasoline and diesel because France only has/had one oil refinery for the whole country and the strike meant no fuel production anywhere. We almost did not make it back from Nice to Angers for want of diesel.

I have no idea how the strike played out in the end but getting back to Paris and de Gaulle Airport from Angers was a nightmare, with me only speaking a tad of French. I did make it from a rerouted train to a bus and then to de Gaulle Airport and my plane. On my flight back Stateside, I couldn’t help but think about us and them. Although both born of blood and insurrection, the French never lost their revolutionary zeal as I fear the American Empire has. The French are on their fifth Constitution. I read part of their current Constitution in 2010 and it actually carries both the memory and the words of Lincoln at Gettysburg in their constitutional text to the effect that their government was a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” Kind of like ours used to be, and may still be again, but I fear our window of opportunity is rapidly being closed by the Donald.

Our current Pussy Grabber in Chief, a true scoundrel, must go, and collectively we must clearly show him the door out lest we truly lose our foundational underpinnings and direction. We don’t need a National Strike to do it, but we do need some French fervency. The French never lost their revolutionary zeal and with whatever of ours we may still have left, We the People must save ourselves from the shadow of coming tyranny, from an unprincipled, narcissistic, criminal thug, especially following the “Russian Show Trial” engineered by the White House and “Moscow” Mitch McConnell. All we have to do is vote as if the future of your country depends on it to remove him, because it does, and help to get the vote out, no matter who the Democratic nominee happens to be. So please personally see to it that conscientious voters vote. Canvass on foot, hit the phone banks, and do it for the sake of those too blind to see. Do it for yourselves and your children. Do it before our experiment in democracy perishes from the face of the Earth.

https://youtu.be/HM-E2H1ChJM