If The French Think They’re Better Than Us, Maybe It’s Because They Are

We won’t have this type of culture in America again anytime soon

If, like me, you grew up in a working class environment during the ‘80s and ‘90s, you might have been around people who called the French snobs.

The mere mention of the French or another group of people with weird accents (don’t we all have accents that sound weird to other people?), who dress relatively well, often prompted the knee-jerk retort —

They think they’re better than us!

Politically, even more ignorant bull shit reflects and reinforces this sentiment. You might remember the freedom fries inanity from 2003 when France opposed the Iraq invasion.

Of course, the people with these views typically can’t cite actual experiences to back up their opinion that the French are assholes. That they think they’re superior. Same goes for most other stereotypes and associated angst, discrimination and xenophobia.

Nothing comes from actual experience. We love to shoot off our mouths when we have literally no idea what we’re talking about.

That said — if the French actually do think they’re better than us, maybe they have good reason.

Now, bear with me.

I’m in France right now. I just left Lyon.

I’ve never been before. Maybe you have. So, please pardon this wide-eyed view from a first-timer in the country.

Lyon is an incredible city. From an urban planning perspective, yes. But it’s bigger than that. Though, you can likely thank good urban planning for much of what I’m about to say.

Every few blocks it seems, throughout good chunks of this city, there are playgrounds. With actual children playing in them.

They’re clean and inviting. No needles on the ground, drug addicts lurking or homeless people sleeping under jungle gyms. Instead, parents assemble on the outskirts sitting on benches talking to one another or reading books.

Walk around here and you’ll typically see small groups of kids — elementary school age and up — traversing the city before and after school. They’re enjoying this place, even if they might not consciously classify it this way.

Sometimes, you see a kid walking to and fro alone. A young kid. We’re talking like a fifth grader or something. Doing likewise. Or just headed home after a long day hitting the books. Or participating in art class. Something it seems is still a staple of the curriculum here.

I could keep going, but, in the shell of a nut, Lyon seems like a nice place to live. And one you don’t feel the need to move from if you decide to have a family. It’s everything a great city should be.

When I mentioned all of this to my Mother, she said —

Like the good old days.

I’ll take her at her recollection of events. Apparently, this is how it used to be in the United States.

You hear it come up from time to time on the campaign trail. A politician longing for a return to how it used to be when we were kids.

I don’t know if they mean pre-voting rights days or kids being able to hit the streets to commute solo by foot. For the sake of further debate, I’ll just hope they mean the latter.

Anyhow, those days in America are long fucking gone.

Today, the prevailing environments we call neighborhoods are either not easy to navigate, hardly enjoyable, uninteresting, downright dangerous (usually because of cars, not predators) or one or more of the above.

There’s no way you’d let your kid wander in these places alone.

Whether your fear of violence and crime is founded, unfounded or somewhere likely in between, we simply don’t have pleasant environments in this country we feel comfortable and confident sending our children into. If nothing else, there’s a decent chance they’d get hit by a car.

So, newsflash, we’re never gonna be like this — like Lyon — in the United States again. If we ever were in the first place.

Our mindset, public discourse and overall framing of life has gone so far astray, I’m not sure it can ever come back.

Take the recent Super Bowl for example.

For political purposes, it should have been —

• Guy from a Midwestern (or is it Northeastern?) suburb becomes NFL star.
• Starts dating a girl, who, as a childhood musical phenom, moved from Pennsylvania to Nashville to become a star. And, damned if she didn’t become the biggest star the world has ever seen.
• This all-American girl races from Tokyo — on her private jet , after playing four sold-out shows — to watch her all-American man win the freaking Super Bowl. The most American of American things.
• You, too, can be Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, if you just work hard and set your mind to it.
• They even love Taylor Swift in France, because … America!

Instead, it was —

• Roughly 20% of the country thinks the whole Super Bowl thing was a political conspiracy.
• And we had some run-of-the-mill gun violence at the Super Bowl parade.

Just another day in in the life of America.

I don’t care what your political persuasion is. This is just reality.

The way the Super Bowl story got spun versus how you thought it would have and probably should have been spun. And the comparison between Lyon, France and the United States.

I’d love it if life was like my Mom says it was when she was young in this country. I’d love it if it was more like the little slice of life I got to experience in France this week. Where, by the way, the people are incredibly friendly, contrary to what we’re conditioned to believe.