I’ve lived in paris for 5/6 years, I was fluent when I arrived (years of international school) and my mom had already been living here for several years. Still, it was a big culture shock and adjustment and absolutely levelled up my French to the point where now French people usually assume I am from here.
The problem is even with all that, I just don’t feel at home. Some cultural differences feel insurmountable, the blasé and critical attitude is difficult for me, I’ve always been very high energy and jokey and have a hard time finding people in everyday life who match that energy. Whenever I go back to the states I feel so fulfilled and like myself and it really makes me question why I’m here. I have a very cool job in the non-profit sector, so not super well-paid, and a very stable loving relationship, my apartment, my mom… there’s still something where I feel like I’ll never fully be accepted here. I feel like my American-ness immediately puts me down in peoples’ eyes, I feel like I will never write perfectly or totally grasp codes and it will always take me a slight extra effort to understand things that are easy for people here. I don’t get cultural references and I don’t know the clichés of every tiny town and region.
I’m from New York so I liked living here because I felt that Paris was such a better cost of living/quality of life ratio, and I love the work-life balance and accessibility of culture. However, what use are my 5 weeks of vacation if I spend half of them going back home? And probably, I always will, because my missing home will never go away, my friends and family there will keep getting married or getting sick or just being there ?
And France’s descent into xenophobic fascism is not helping. I know all the issues in the US, but it’s different, I am from there and always will be, whereas I am actively choosing to live in France and contribute to its economy.
Just feeling like the jig is up and I did what I had to do, and now I can leave. This is just venting, don’t know if anyone here can relate, if this is a bump in the road or a red alert.
I mean, we have a minister who literally told the face of the extreme right was too soft, while she was saying she could have written his book. But that’s just the minister in charge of our police and internal security, nothing important, no link at all to potential fascism.
Dude, America’s former president is talking about crushing his political opponents like “vermin”, shooting shoplifters in the street and overriding elections. The stuff in France is just small beer. If Marine Le Pen was in America, she’d be center left.
Comparing our politicians with American ones to say “but we’re not progressing into fascism” is kinda weird. It’s not an argument about the actual progression to say “but they’re worse elsewhere!”. Also it’s very much not small beer if you’re part of certain communities. C’mon, we’re the current champions of institutional islamophobia. They’re down to forbidding kids from wearing long skirts. We’re on the UN’s watchlist for police brutality and freedom of expression (and that’s under Macron, not a still somewhat hypothetical future in which Le Pen gets elected), as well as racism in policing (not that we would acknowledge it, given the convenient illegality of race-based statistics). Sure, the US has their problems (never lived there so I only get my impressions from the web, but it does seem very shitty), but it’s nonsense to point out theirs to deny ours. Especially given that the issues are very different (racism in France presents in a different way than in the US - doesn’t mean we’re not racist in France).
Agreed, I would argue it’s more dangerous for people to be saying “oh look how bad US is, at least we’re not like that”, because it makes people complacent.
Never mind the fact that Steve Bannon is friends with Marine Le Pen; it’s the same fascists making both countries worse. CNews acts like a copy of Fox News in the US. There is the same issue with conspiracy theories, covid denials, and populism. People attacking doctors, conspiracies about birth/c-section, not wanting to vaccinate children. All of these things are the same in both countries and seem like signs that people don’t trust institutions and are vulnerable to dangerous misinformation.
Americans seem inclined to think that their country is the hub of racism in the world, and no other country does it as much. They’re taught that the very founding of America was evil and racist and therefore America today is evil and racist. They also seem to have no idea what fascism is considering America is one of the few counties with actual freedom of speech (whereas places like Canada prosecuted comedians for “hate speech”). Useful idiots.
Edit: typo
She’d not be center left in the US. You have a very skewed view of US politics if you think that