Ego-centricism

There's been a lot of coverage of the presidential election in France the past couple of days. See this in the New York Times for example. One of the things that peeves me about alot of the coverage is the assumption that a) the previous French government was anti-American and, hence, b) that the Sarkozy administration will be much more pro-American.

No! The French have not been anti-American. They have been anti-Bush policies, particularly Iraq. And, no! If the new administration signs on to Bush's Iraq policy, that doesn't mean they've become pro-American.

The second thing that peeves me about the coverage is the assumption that France's foreign policy is the most important thing this election was about. No! Neither candidate had beans' worth of experience in foreign policy. This election was all about French domestic policy, particularly the economy, jobs and dirty-brown colored immigrants from Eastern Europe and North Africa. In fact, many of the Sarkozy talking points sounded alot like the anti-Mexican Republicans here.

We Americans are alot like the French in some ways. The French think Paris is literally the center of the universe. Every world map found in France centers on Paris. The Americans think America is the center of the universe, and that nothing that happens in the world has any importance except in-so-far as it affects America.