I spotted this article in a Luxembourgish daily paper. It is a transcription from an article in the New York Times, in which the French are considered ungrateful to Macron for handling the corona crisis well. For those who do not know, Macron has been heavily criticized by his compatriots. Some of the memes, jokes, and Internet stories I’ve seen are really pretty nasty.
Back to the point, there’s a comment in the article by a French sociologist Olivier Galland who says ,,that the French are in any way incapable of being ever satisfied”. This made me think about meetings with my French work colleagues and how much I sometimes struggle with their Cartesian style of discussion. The fact that they always seem to be on a conquest for a “polémique” that sometimes turns into almost “une engueulade“. Simply put, no one agrees with nobody about nothing (and the triple negation is here on purpose, to better reflect the drama). I often leave such meetings with a feeling of having wasted my time, as no concrete decision is being made.
That being said, such articles are pretty passive-aggressive. To me, they are aimed at stirring up people’s anger and frustration, because an average Frenchman’s reaction would probably be “it is none of your business”. Anyway, I view it as a sort of “smirk” the Americans send to their French “friends”. Something that they often do, at best, usually there’s much more sarcasm or even mockery involved. I guess the love-hate relationship between the two is for life.
LANGOLUX 