this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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Middle aged American here, and when I was a kid the culture around me regarding france was basically "lol they surrender." And that whole stupid thing probably peaked in 2003 with Freedom Fries.
But now?
I honestly wonder if any other nation's population has their heads on straight as much as the French. The only place in Europe where I have spent much time though is up in Sweden, and the nords seem pretty good at life-ing too.
Historically, the French really only surrendered once, unfortunately evocative of the "but you fuck a goat one time ..." joke. It didn't help that they surrendered to one of the biggest monsters in history, at a time where they arguably didn't need to surrender. TBF, the main reason their biggest ally (Britain) didn't surrender at the same time was the fact that they were able to run away.
As an European, I still can't believe you guys did that
They've been flirting with far-right government like most everyone else, but their protesting game is on point. The whole country being smaller than Texas helps, too.
Yeah, the average population density of the US is a lot lower than many people realize. Protests are seen as city-based things, both geographically and culturally.
And then you have eu-nation-sized red states that can hold many many trumpers who are unable to play nice with others because they don't have to have neighbors.
How on earth the fact that your country also has was swats of empty land stops you from doing effective protesting? Or any, actually.
I didn't really finish my thought there. Apologies.
It was starting to get at why we don't really see "the americans" protested like we might "the french." And our media doesn't help in how they report it. It enables the republican populace as well as the entire government to more easily ignore it. It's always "protests broke out in cities across america in response to X.
The physical separation is also part of it. it all helps feed into this "divide" where the republican voters can seemingly give no shits about human suffering or the rise of fascism because it's all happening to "other" people far away. It might as well be the middle east.
People without neighbors are also less clued into to how policy changes affect entire societies of people, rather than just the price of gas for their truck.
And like the other reply said, this is just one contributing factor.
It's only one factor. The bigger factor is that our police are insanely militarized. If my black ass tried to barbecue at a protest, I'd get gunned the fuck down, then I'd be unnamed in the news stories (if there were any), and the cop would get a medal for killing a "terrorist".
It does seem they're suffering from the same rightward-slide that many other countries are facing though, unfortunately.
Copied from my earlier comment elsewhere:
explanation since the comm isn't History Memes this time
One post that I read somewhere else on fedi was in the lines of, you can't reasonably think French are cowards, they made snails into fine cuisine.