Pointdevue returned to Paris this week after nearly two years in Covid exile without any conscious a priori expectations apart from major changes and signs of damage. What would be left after the repeated, months-long strict ‘confinement’ to living quarters? Torture enough to drive significant percentages of the population out of their minds, especially those […]
I I live in France, but am not now in France, my Boston-Paris flight having been postponed for a promising professional event which, like the flight, is now indefinitely on ice. But as across the world everyone’s physical and social range shrinks, constricted by fear and necessity––narrowing here in the waffling patchwork of US measures […]
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “You’d generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. […]
Last year, reacting to the escalating turmoil of the Gilets Jaunes movement, Emmanuel Macron launched a campaign of Great Debates – country-spanning town meetings, if you will, led personally by the ‘who needs sleep?’ President. These were billed as invitations to the forgotten, especially those outside urban areas, to voice their ire and perhaps […]
After days of staggered voting, the results are in today for both France and Europe. With some surprises: – At 50.13% participation in France far exceeded expectations. Hooray! – ‘Rural’, a category assumed to be more Euro-skeptic, turned out more strongly than ‘urban.’ – That said, the pro-European center can be considered to have held […]
Starting Next Month, How Will the World Spell Europe? For folks living on other continents, or in the farther eastern reaches of this vast Eurasian land mass, the upcoming EU elections may look as compelling as a snail race and as comprehensible as a long-form tax return. Won’t Europe hang together anyway, now that […]
Part 1 It is desperately unfashionable to spare a good word for President Emmanuel Macron. You may call him elitist, aloof, politically deaf and dumb, an imperious windbag or vacillating introvert, a conservative in progressive clothing or vice-versa, or all of the above. Just don’t give him any credit. The current global nationalist/populist movements have […]
POINT de VUE: PARIS 
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