Tag Archives: Macron
when joie-de-vivre turns surreal
ONE RIDER DOWN With at least one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Trump, Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Modi et al.) knocked out of his saddle this morning, the world looks a little less damned. The Amazon can breathe! My intent yesterday was to ignore politics completely in this letter, but the defeat of Boss Bolsonaro […]
WAOU!
At a few minutes past 8 p.m., in Nice, the multiple knots in pointdevue’s tummy are unwinding. Around midday rumors were swirling (fed by Belgian TV) that the race looked too close to call. I wandered around town, restless and anxious, with a real touch of vertigo. Too much at stake to list here at […]
Election Fever–or Election Panic?
Only the speechifiers, with a p.a. system at their disposal, can make themselves heard over the deafening drumbeats and burst of song from hundred of militant throats. These are festive militants enjoying the national tradition of taking to the streets (thank god yesterday’s rain is over!) many in clownish costumes or yellow vests. But all […]
Sleeping Beauty – la belle au bois dormant
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 […]
Running in place from Place to Place
“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. […]
Back with a Vengeance?
Congratulations if you are already aware that the storming of the Bastille in July, 1789, was not the beginning of the French Republic. (Turns out that launch wasn’t until 1792, and it didn’t last long.) The storming of the nearly empty prison, by a crowd of less than a thousand, had mainly symbolic weight […]
The Day Before, The Day After
Day after tomorrow, whatever happens, all the posters, posts, demos, articles about the French election will be stale as yesterday’s brioche. That said… I watched Wednesday’s debate despite being sickened by the aggressivity and ad hominem insults of Marine LePen. The good news is that her nastiness, combined with a less than coherent program and […]
POINT de VUE: PARIS 
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