David Frum in (sad) France

From David Frum's Diary on National Review Online: 12/9/2005

...Adam Gopnik had a piece in The New Yorker about three weeks ago about the all-pervasiveness of the sense of crisis in France. Any doubts I had as to the accuracy of his perceptions have been dispelled today. I have been on French soil now for less than 12 hours, stumbling along in my miserable high-school French--and in that short space of time, three different French people--one a defense intellectual, one a teacher and translator, and one a cafe owner ...initiated conversations about the utter hopelessness of France's condition.

The only available consolation seems to be the hope that maybe things are even worse somewhere else--and it is on that hope that French television pundits make their careers (...by criticising the US...). It's irritating at first. But on second thought, it's rather sad.

France is a country that wants to be great. ...much about France truly is great...Certainly it is true that France stands with Britain as the only western European country that does not treat its own national defense with careless frivolity.

It makes me wonder: Maybe there should be some kind of American program to cheer the French up, help them regain their self-confidence, develop their self-esteem. ...while the French may be difficult when they feel successful, (...perhaps...) it is their sense of failure and disappointment that renders them hostile and aggressive.