My aunt married a Frenchman and so I've got some extended family over there. There is no anti-American culture in France. The whole America/France rivalry is entirely contrived. Its the same as the California/Texas rivalry or the Ohio/Michigan rivalry. Totally just a product of news media being messy bitches and politicians looking for a bone to pick.
The thing that urks Americans to no end about the French is that France doesn't consistently buckle under to whatever the US foreign policy happens to be. That's been true since De Gaulle at least. It flared up again during the Iraq War, when French capital (unlike the English) rejected the US entreaty to make war because they had too much invested in the Middle East. We're seeing it again, here, with Macron trying to calm the raging bull of American militarism in the face of a prospective prosperity boom lead by China.
But that politics has nothing to do with the general cultural exchanges between the US and France, which have been overwhelmingly friendly for literally centuries.
I think he's triangulating between the US and China, because he doesn't want France to get crushed when the two come to blows.
Ungrateful? Sure. But not to the Americans.
My aunt married a Frenchman and so I've got some extended family over there. There is no anti-American culture in France. The whole America/France rivalry is entirely contrived. Its the same as the California/Texas rivalry or the Ohio/Michigan rivalry. Totally just a product of news media being messy bitches and politicians looking for a bone to pick.
The thing that urks Americans to no end about the French is that France doesn't consistently buckle under to whatever the US foreign policy happens to be. That's been true since De Gaulle at least. It flared up again during the Iraq War, when French capital (unlike the English) rejected the US entreaty to make war because they had too much invested in the Middle East. We're seeing it again, here, with Macron trying to calm the raging bull of American militarism in the face of a prospective prosperity boom lead by China.
But that politics has nothing to do with the general cultural exchanges between the US and France, which have been overwhelmingly friendly for literally centuries.