In what decade was the following written by a member of the French Académie française?
“I accuse the United States of being in a permanent state of crime against mankind.”
Highlight the following paragraph to see the answer.
[
The 1950’s. It was written in 1955 by the French novelist Henry de Montherlant in his novel, Le chaos de la nuit, and is placed in the mouth of a journalist. Pretty typical Gaullist anti-Americanism—the degeneracy argument. Similar examples can be found in French writing going back at least two hundred years. If you think that electing a different president will suddenly raise the standing of America and Americans in the eyes of our European cousins, think again. Anti-Americanism is a fine old tradition.
]
Oh don’t be a bloody child. Anti Americanism is indeed an old tradition, that is not the same question as the collapse (versus prior baselines) of American standing.
Such superficial childish, no one likes us, whinging on is idiotic.
Of course some % of the world will always be unhappy, but taking prior standing (like to like, not like to magical world of adolescent standards of approval) as a baseline, one can well expect a reasonably competent, engaged president of either major party will substantially improve US standing.
Bloody hell, your brain is going to mush, or you’re actually an idiot.
I’d like to see the U. S. taking a stand against torture, preemptive war, and other things the Bush Administration is accused of or has done. But I don’t think that taking those actions will do much to “restore our standing” nor am I much concerned about standing.
I believe that France, the UK, and Germany will look after their own interests as we should look after ours. That means that they’ll cooperate with us when they think it’s to their advantage and won’t when it isn’t.
“Competent” is in the eye of the beholder. I thought George W. Bush was an awful candidate in 2000 and, obviously, little better in 2004 but I also thought that John Kerry was an idiot, too.
I don’t know that we’ve had a competent president in my lifetime other than, possibly, Eisenhower. I certainly don’t expect the next one to be particularly competent. Of the likelies, John McCain has taken the most unequivocal stand against, for example, torture which I think is quite right. However, he continues to defend the invasion of Iraq which I opposed. It’s hard to discern what she actually supports. Competent? Not unless being married to Bill Clinton for 30 years is a qualification for the presidency?
The only candidate that knew anything whatever about business was Mitt Romney who held no chance of being elected and he’s withdrawn anyway. Is Obama competent? He’s certainly smarter and more articulate than GWB. I’d very nearly settle for that.
We really don’t have a training program for presidents. It’s OJT.