As I write it is Bastille Day!
Fuck the Bastille!!
I don't think they call it Bastille Day here in France though. It is more July 14th around here, quatorze Juillet, or even La fete nationale. And more's the pity. I'm beginning to think the rest of the world is more admiring of the vision of the French as feisty rebels, tearing down the ruling class's evil and unjust prisons (The Bastille) and then tearing down the ruling classes themselves, than the French are.
It is not hard to find monuments and tributes to the French Resistance of WWII even in my rightwing city. And what a vision that is, of a country bravely fighting tyranny from within and dying for the cause. There is the only value I can see to all this worldwide Nationalism. But I suspect these resistance monuments are all an indication of a charming and different era now in France. They have lost the thread of the ultimate evil of Nazism as much as they have lost it in Germany and America and Israel and across the world. When I see the far right wing mayor of this city on some glib newspaper here I think just one word, and I think it every time:
Vichy.
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