A Letter From Abroad

Dear Conférencier X,

Thank you for your kind note. Yes, it has been a wearying week, even for a Parisian intellectual accustomed to adversity. As I told my existentialist Star Trek discussion group yesterday, Sarte was certainly not far from the truth when he observed that "everything is gratuitous...when it happens that one takes account of it, it twists your heart and everything begins to float...that is Nausea."

Actually nausea is watching Americans, a people we took the trouble to liberate, celebrating Trafalgar Day. The only meaningful battle the British won for ten years! I hope you will join us next year when we celebrate Marengo Day, Hohenlinden Day, Ulm Day, Austerlitz Day, Jena-Aurstedt Day, Friedland Day, and Wagram Day. There is talk of wrapping it all up into an omnibus "Kicking Old Europe's Sorry Imperial Ass Day", but the Conservatives are opposed.

Seriously X, your founding fathers held no nation in higher esteem than France. Dinner at Monticello was half-French (and therefore half-good), and certainly no objective thinker can imagine Benjamin Franklin pining for Philadelphia during his time in among us. So do you not, perhaps, detect a bit of conspiratorial revisionism on the part of your, how do you call them, Neocon Bastards? Our idéalisme is at odds with their realpolitik, so we become Käse-Essen Auslieferungaffen, or something like that.

A quiet reminder to you that America is the only large developed country that has not experienced a Verdun or Stalingrad - a single land battle that erases a million lives or so. And until you do you will not understand that most things are not worth fighting about - certainly not the provocations of a tin-pot politician, or the fate of a small colony in Asia. But if you ever decide to fight for freedom, equality, and/or brotherhood, do call.

Your friend,
Jacques


PS, the ootleg-bay eese-chay is in the obacoo-tay ox-bay.