Which Is Worse? America or France?

French Fraud POITOU, FRANCE – ‘Which is worse? America or France?’ The question must be put in context. We were invited to dinner with local farmers last night. Jean-Yves and Arlette live in a modest house in the nearby town – an efficient and cozy place built about 25 years ago. They’ve added a solarium to the back, where we had dinner.
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Arlette operates a dairy farm left to her by her parents. Jean-Yves runs a cattle and cereal farm that was in his family. A son and his wife moved into the farmhouse in Jean-Yves’ place. Anticipating retirement, he and his wife moved into town.
‘You have Trump. But we have Macron,’ Jean-Yves said. On balance, France probably comes out ahead on that score. Macron is young, smart, and good-looking.
‘Yes, but he is a fraud,’ Jean-Yves continued. ‘He claims he will change things. But he is mainstream. Besides, I don’t think he can change things even if he wanted to.’
Over the years, we’ve commented on many public figures here at the Diary. We can’t remember one we didn’t consider a fraud in some way. And so far, we don’t think we were wrong about any of them.
French President Emmanuel Macron is hardly an outsider or a rebel. He is a graduate of France’s elite cole Nationale d’Administration. And he was finance minister under the previous president. So entrenched and unyielding is the French bureaucracy – France’s Deep State – that it would take a real firecracker to change it. Mr. Macron is not that kind of a guy.

This post was published at Acting-Man on July 18, 2017.