Liberté, Égalité , Fraternité.
Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood.
For the next few days you, the citizens of France, will host a man who holds none of these values dear.
To Donald Trump and his followers, a disturbingly large slice of the American electoral pie, Liberty means license, the opportunity of enjoying the freedoms of Democracy while feeling no compelling need to extend them to others or no responsibility to insure its security by paying for its continuation with taxes.
For the Orange Menace and his peeps Equality is a jealously guarded prerogative, a privilege grudgingly extending to those of like kind, rather than the universal right the founders hoped it would become.
Brotherhood, to this crowd, is bounded by familial and racial ties, and not a warm embrace offered the whole of the human family.
Though we share similar values, France has been more astute in observing them with care.
To France Liberty has meant subduing capitalism so that its workers are not reduced to the status of wage slaves.
The Equality France has extended to disenfranchised Americans has allowed them to grow both personally and professionally...ask Josephine Baker or James Baldwin.
Its attempts to extend Brotherhood to the people of its disbanded colonial system have been mocked and criticized by the very man that seeks solace in France’s adulation…. if only for a day.
Trump likes to tell a story about his friend “Jim” who will not go to Paris now because of immigration, because Paris doesn’t “look like” Paris anymore.
It never looked like an Iowa State Fair crowd, idiot.
In the next few days, Paris, you shall have the opportunity to show Trump and the world what Paris really looks like.
Bon Chance, brothers and sisters.
Send lots of photos.
Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité!
Vive la France!