Over the last few days of the terrorist attacks on Paris, I
had many exchanges with friends in France, from all different parts of the
country. My dearest lifelong friend
Denise lives not far from Montrouge, the Parisian suburb where a terrorist shot
and killed a policewoman in the street.
In fact, the site of that attack isn’t far from the famous
spot where a native-born Frenchman attempted to assassinate Charles de
Gaulle. I was too young to remember that
moment, but just old enough later to be profoundly affected by the assassination
of Kennedy.
I grew up in a time when bullets were used against important
figures, targeted as symbols of something greater than their personal, private
selves. In the United States, decades
have gone by without any acknowledgment of the significance of Kennedy as a
target. We are told over and over that
it was the work of a single fanatic, nothing more.
In reaction to the shootings in Paris this week, one of my
friends in the South of France wrote to me that “all of the West has to go to
war against these fanatics.”
My reaction to this remark was immediate. “We Americans went down that path to war
after 9/11 and it did not provide us with a very satisfactory resolution. In fact, it was ruinous.”
I remember one cold spring day before the war, before Shock
and Awe, when I had gone to a friend’s house to go horseback riding in the
woods. There were four of us in the
barn: three women tacking up our horses
and the farrier who was fixing a shoe or trimming a hoof. He had a Semper
Fi patch on his jean jacket. The
conversation, usually very collegial in a barn, had turned to the looming
prospect of war with Iraq.
I spoke up and said “Invading Iraq will be our greatest
mistake since Viet Nam.”
I quickly learned that this was not the sort of thing one
should say, smack in the middle of Republican DuPage County. The response to my outburst was on the order
of “Do you want our way of life threatened?
Do you want to see gas go up to $4.00 a gallon, threatening our
economy?”
I felt very alone that day.
But I have never regretted voicing my opinion.
Fast forward to a more recent time. I received a Facebook message from a woman
with whom I had worked and remained friends for thirty years. “Politically
we are on opposite sides but that is okay because that is why we vote our
personal choices but don't shove it down anyone's throat. It is almost like you
are an activist.”
The message here was that I should NOT discuss religion or
politics, particularly my left-leaning French ideas. In order to keep everything “friendly”, those
subjects are taboo, and Political Correctness is more than ever a requirement
for social survival. Me? An
activist? Posting something pro-Obama on
Facebook is activism? He is the
President.
While we in the U.S. are conditioned not to rock the boat
with our opinions, the French relish a good heated discussion. It is a national sport, on a par with soccer,
except that nearly everyone plays.
One way of understanding the differences between French and
American thinking is to look at how students in each country are evaluated. In the U.S., the SAT and the ACT are multiple
choice exams where only one answer is
right! Unthinkable in France. The baccalaureate exam in French is in essay form. The grading system in French schools is on a
severe numeric scale, where no one ever achieves a perfect 20 out of 20
points. Americans strive for that A+,
but in France, there is always “room for improvement”, and nothing is ever
perfect. If you want to pay a Frenchman
a compliment, “pas mal” or “not bad”, uttered with the appropriate
uplifted tone of voice, would be more prized and more believable to him than an
exuberant outburst of “wonderful job!”
In a country where the esprit
critique is the cultural heritage of the Enlightenment , where nothing
escapes doubt and examination, an attack on freedom of expression is
particularly hostile. And yet, the
French terrorists this week, unlike those who hijacked the planes on 9/11, were
not foreigners attacking a nation who had invaded their homeland. They were French nationals attacking what
they perceived to be an invasion of their beliefs, which were not to be
questioned. They attacked the satirical
press precisely for being French, with the sometimes biting, saucy, challenging
components of French humor.
These guys were attacking the very culture in which they
lived.
Is France “at war” as my friend suggested? What happens when a culture is attacked from
within? In all wars, boundaries are
disputed and set. The boundary in
France’s conflict is not geographic. It
is a fragile line between Fraternité
and Political Correctness, secularism and religious indoctrination, cultural
assimilation and cultural resistance.
Americans are usually much more obvious than the French with
flag-waving patriotism, but this week, I have seen countless French flags on
the news, and everyone singing La Marseillaise
at the top of their lungs. So I have been flying my French tricolor flag on my
front porch, against the attack on the culture that gave me the literature, the
poetry, the music, the pleasures of the table, the style, and, most of all, the
people that I love. My heart is with
them.
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