{"id":12007,"date":"2016-07-26T13:33:25","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T17:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=12007"},"modified":"2016-07-26T13:33:25","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T17:33:25","slug":"the-mandibles-on-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/the-mandibles-on-france\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mandibles on France"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing my posts about\u00a0Lionel Shriver&#8217;s\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2a1gWz3\">The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047<\/a><\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>One of the family members is living in France when the U.S. begins to truly fall apart:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cMaybe you should stay in France.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t. For an American, anywhere in Europe is physically dangerous. We\u2019re being assaulted. And not only with cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche.\u201d \u201cStay in nights, then. It\u2019s sure to blow over.\u201d \u201cBesides, this country\u2019s hardly one big wine-swilling soir\u00e9e. At any given time, half the population is on strike, and what good is a great train system that never runs? They\u2019re apoplectic that they can\u2019t all retire at fifty-two. They all expect their child benefit, their gold-plated pensions, their token-pittance healthcare charges, their truncated workweek, and two solid years of unemployment at a salary most lawyers don\u2019t earn\u2014all of which is a human right. Along with so many holidays and vacations that the fuckers put their feet up for a third of the year. Oh, and everyone wants to work for the government; most of them do. Your basic all-cart, no-horse. So the whole country plops into the hay wagon and wonders why it doesn\u2019t move.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s got to be better than here,\u201d Carter said. \u201cFurthermore, the whole Muslim thing is out of control,\u201d Nollie bullied on obliviously. \u201cIf I walk down the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, I\u2019ll get thumped for being a deadbeat. If I walk anywhere less central, I\u2019ll get thumped because I\u2019m not wearing a trash bag. Even in France, they\u2019ve given up on the assimilation shtick, and gone for slavish appeasement instead. Whole tracts of the country are effectively no-go areas for actual French people. It\u2019s the same all over Europe now, so there\u2019s nowhere to go.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>More: Read <em><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2a1gWz3\">The Mandibles<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing my posts about\u00a0Lionel Shriver&#8217;s\u00a0The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047&#8230; One of the family members is living in France when the U.S. begins to truly fall apart: \u201cMaybe you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Mandibles on France - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/the-mandibles-on-france\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Mandibles on France - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Continuing my posts about\u00a0Lionel Shriver&#8217;s\u00a0The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047&#8230; 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