Now or Never: Watching 2020 Insanity from the Seine

PARIS — The Seine, that lovely little river looping through the heart of France, offers an illuminating view on 2020, already playing out as the year that was, a defining point on whither humanity. The view is bleak, yet a few French lessons could help tip the balance toward hope.

The French have punched above their weight since obstreperous Gauls confounded Caesar, alternating between imperial glory and ignominious defeat. They’ve had enough idiot kings. Now a tumultuous, effective democracy can show America what “We, the people” really means.

Entente is easily defined: no good comes from a foreign policy that jabs sharp sticks into hornet nests. France has buried enough millions to know the costs of conflict. Tough commandos fight hard when they must. A nuclear force de frappe delivers a clear message: Don’t screw with us.

At home, that holy trinity – liberté, égalité, fraternité – rests on a concept Jean-Jacques Rousseau outlined in 1752: le contrat sociale. Money is not how you keep score. Pitched battles today in city streets recall the point of pitchforks at the Bastille: Rich people do not own poor ones.

Down on the Seine, metaphor amounts to fact. If everyone in a sinking boat fails to bail together, they all go down.

World leaders gathered in Paris during 2015 to head off an inexorable slide toward climactic doom. They made solemn promises to take modest first steps and build on those. Despite some progress, an overall assessment today comes down to the ever-popular expletive: merde.

America has 10 months to jettison a megalomaniac who heats troubled waters to a boil. He spurns human tides fleeing conflict and climate collapse. He upended entente with Iran to spark unwinnable war. He enables China, Russia and others to curb freedoms and cultural diversity.

Christmas was dark this year in the City of Light. Unions paralyzed France in a standoff with Emmanuel Macron over pensions and prices, joined by Gilets jaunes, a diverse of movement of pissed-off people in yellow vests. Freelance louts smashed and burned for the hell of it.

Riot cops weighed in with weaponry, abandoning past restraint. A Hong Kong TV crew, inured to mean streets, flew in to cover the story. A police charge put four in the hospital. Trains shut down. Holiday family gatherings, sacred in France, were cancelled. And the strife continues. 

One woman, not a protester, was crushed by crowds trying to get home on a rare running metro. “This is total hell, and I hate it,” she told a reporter, “but there is no choice. I’m doing this for my kids.” Like so many others, she fears Macron and big business will reduce workers to widgets.

The French watch Netflix, and “The Irishman” troubles them. They’ve had no Jimmy Hoffa, who lived high on union dues and power until he ended up mysteriously vaporized. Labor leaders, bosses and the government have always slugged it out toward reasonable compromise.

But 2020 is different. Refugees and migrants strain stressed budgets. Many from the Middle East resist integration, sparking far-right fear and loathing. Radical imams and terrorist recruiters feed on rising tensions. Facebook and the internet harden positions deep into rural France.

Elsewhere in Europe, what Samuel Huntington foresaw as “a clash of civilizations” pushes rightwing leaders to muzzle dissent as they plunder resources. Hungary and Poland, which tore down an Iron Curtain with help from America, have erected stout wire fences with “Keep Out” signs. Italy flirts with a new sort of fascism, with increasing ties to Beijing.

Yet this is still France. Even the rich get basic family allowances so there is no “welfare” stigma, but they pay higher taxes. State universities cost about $185 a year; good health care is mostly free. Courts prosecute former presidents on minor corruption charges. Ninety million visitors come here each year with nothing more untoward than a picked pocket or an iffy oyster.

And yet despite solid firsthand reporting, with news analyses by specialists who understand French complexities, exaggerated headlines and social media echo chambers feed Americans’ unfounded fears. Take, for instance, anti-Semitism.

At a recent party in Arizona, a well-heeled matron told me, “I used to love France, but I’m afraid to go now because they hate Jews, and it’s so dangerous.” I noted that my name was Rosenblum, and I’d reported from there for four decades. With a dismissive wave, she continued on, missing the irony of synagogue massacres and neo-Nazi marches in the United States.

Then I met Hamid, an Afghan toxicologist who sees the world as it is. Anti-Semitism is hardly new in France, but now it is about politics, like Islamophobia. Incidents spiked 74 percent in 2018 over 2017 as Donald Trump encouraged Benyamin Netanyahu’s one-state policy. For now, reported verbal and physical abuses number in the hundreds among 550,000 French Jews. If new settlements and repression continue, most likely there will be blood.

Hamid, a neighborhood Mister Rogers, is ready to help anyone with anything except during Friday prayers. His rug-merchant family lived well in Afghanistan’s better days. He survived Soviet assaults that destroyed half of ancient Herat in the fertile northwest, then came to America before warlords and post 9/11 conflict did the rest. With his Japanese surgeon wife and a book-loving young daughter, he blends well into the American melting pot.

“Islam is not a violent religion,” he said. “The Quran teaches kindness to strangers and respect for a world created by God. I have a word for what people preach when they deviate from this with their personal interpretation: Hislam.” Their fanaticism, he said, provokes hatred for a religion with well over a billion peaceable followers.

That struck a loud chord. Bigots draw few distinctions. Jews are Jews, even those who believe that Israel’s future depends on sharing land according to negotiated accords with equal rights for all. Ignorant xenophobia breeds fast. “What’s next?” Hamid asked. “The Chinese?”

I’ve reported in nearly every part of the Muslim world. I ran the AP bureau in Indonesia, by far the largest Islamic country, along with Malaysia. I roamed other non-Arab Muslim states in Africa and ranged widely in the Middle East.

Muslims, Christians and Jews were People of the Book. Even when war clouds gathered over Israel, I frequented mosques and visited homes on holy days across the Islamic world. Apart from run-ins with secular authorities, I was welcomed as a stranger at the door.

In France, I hung out in tough exurbs where Muslims from ex-colonies lived on the edge. Once, I joined a group slaughtering lamb on Eid al-Adha, which honors Ibrahim (Abraham), who was ready to sacrifice his son at God’s command. A few guys began to hassle me until they picked up my accent. “You American?” one asked. “You should have said so. We love Americans.”

That changed fast after George W. Bush invaded. Now, under Trump, I watch my back, not only in Muslim countries but also in those tough French neighborhoods. For hothead Hislamists, a Jew is a Jew, just as so many Americans make no distinction among Muslims.

For those who believe in signs from on high, flames rising above Notre Dame Cathedral on the Seine were as clear as Moses’s burning bush. The Almighty is not pleased. For others, simple reflection is enough. History, if ignored, does worse than simply repeating itself.

The last war Americans had to fight for their freedom started in 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland. Unchallenged by Washington, his tanks overran an unprepared France. The United States responded only after Japan left it no choice, late in 1941.

A wiser America helped Europe emerge from the remains. NATO and the United Nations held the line against a Soviet threat until, in the 1990s, the world had a shot at working together to find lasting peace and prosperity.

Back then, power was about nukes and naval fleets. Today, that is illusory. Afghans and Iraqis beat America to a standstill with homemade explosives and guerrilla tactics. Nuclear wars leave no winners. Peace demands skilled diplomacy led by seasoned heads of state who keep their word. Young voters need to understand that experience and earned respect matter.

In today’s diverse world, no one gets to say who is right or wrong. Societies do what they do. Empty threats and missile-rattling only worsen crises until they are unsolvable. Foreign aid, hardly largesse, is essential to security and cheap at the cost. Most people on the move would rather stay home in cultures they know with friends and families. If they can’t, they won’t.

People with the right to choose their own leaders can no longer take that for granted. Nothing today is more important than real news from reliable sources that allows citizens to make smart choices.

From the Seine, I watch deputies head to the National Assembly with furrowed brows. No Mitch McConnell stymies democracy, flaunting bias before evidence is heard. Coalitions form and shift. Voters hold toes to the fire. When outraged, they swarm the streets and hurl paving stones.

Presidential campaigns are short and cheap; no one can buy the office. Candidates get equal TV time, one after the other, drawing lots to determine the order. In a first round, people vote their consciences. Two weeks later, after the top two sandblast each other in face-to-face debates, a winner emerges with a clear idea of the national mood.

French-style democracy is hardly perfect, but it is worth a close look. At the very least, Americans might note the first words of La Marseillaise: “Citizens, On Your Feet!”