From their complex/pride as a great young nation, Americans have always felt fascination, and also a certain anguish, for the relationship that the French have with their history and culture. You could literally say that they adore them, and a good part of the myth of the magnitude And the rhetoric of French nationalism (as cloying as that of any other European nationalism, but more powerful, with permission from Germany) is based precisely on the cultural milestones of the country's history. This impresses Americans: in the film The train (1964), Burt Lancaster played a hero of the French resistance fighting against the Nazi plundering of works of art, towards the end of the occupation. A curator at the Jeu de Paume implored him to stop a train loaded with paintings by great artists with impassioned arguments: "They've taken our country and our food, they're living in our homes, now they want to take our art. These paintings are France." The discussion about what is more valuable, the work of art or human life, hangs over the entire film. Moreover, the French are also attracted to Americans, and this has also been reflected in cinema: the New Wave largely consists of a reinterpretation of the codes established by classic Hollywood genre films, especially film noir. It should not be forgotten that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France to the United States to celebrate the centennial of its declaration of independence. They saw in the young country on the other side of the Atlantic that had emancipated itself with a humanist Constitution a new incarnation of the ideals of the Republic: liberty, equality, fraternity.
We are now at a time when the Fifth Republic is faltering, with governments that last weeks or months, a proud and stubborn president who doesn't apply even the slightest self-criticism, an increasingly powerful far right, and another former president who has been imprisoned because the courts have ruled him a criminal. In the midst of all this, a resounding robbery at the Louvre worthy of a Fantômas, Arsène Lupin, or Tintin story, with the crown jewels (the same crown that was, as we know, decapitated by the Revolution) as the loot. On the American side, today the president is a madman who makes AI videos in which he appears with a crown on his head (nothing more anti-American, nor more anti-French, than a king) piloting a fighter plane from which he throws havoc on protesters demonstrating against his antics. It's the same fool, Trump, who last Friday booed Zelensky again (this time behind closed doors, of course) because he wants to "pacify" Ukraine with as much skill and diplomatic and political common sense as he has pacified Gaza.
All of the above are certainly signs of decline. However, let's not forget that France has been ahead of its time in terms of democracy for many years and has the authority to teach lessons: a corrupt former president going to prison is something we're still far from seeing here.
