Whose Streets? Our Streets!
I’ve long been aware of the difference between the French view of their government, and ours of our own. In the pas de deux of governed to government, the French lead, while we follow. The French government is cowed by the power of the French public, while we Americans are intimidated by our own civil servants.
Maybe it’s foreshortening of history, with the French Revolution seeming like last week (to them) and ours seeming prehistoric. They live amongst monuments of the last millennium while barely a brick from that period exists in our own.
Or it might be the French workers’ ability to shut the nation down at the snap of a general strike. Americans don’t see themselves as worthy (or synchronous) to execute, much less voice, that brand of national threat.
Our conspiracy theories, and films, imagine a supremely able deep state capable of any covert response, while the French are essentially variations on The Pink Panther, or Jacques Tati, so it’s not hard to see how that plays out as a cultural trope.
They have Les Miserables, and we have Hamilton. So maybe we win on Tony awards.
