The French are coming! The French are coming!
Published by punkass marc April 9th, 2008 in Imperialism for Dummies, Lick My Jackboots of Love, McCainery
They’re coming for your ass. And they brought a red.
As we draw nearer to the general election, I expect we’ll see more of our media members and family members come *back* around to defending our occupation of Iraq. Why? Because they’ll seek to rationalize their irrational support of John McCain, the national icon of our colonialism. “The surge is working!” “We’re going to give these people freedom if you give us enough time!” And so forth.
Despite eons of historical evidence to the contrary, plenty of Americans remain convinced that foreign invaders can somehow force a country’s people to accept the form of government favored by the occupiers, especially if it’s got cool bells and whistles. ‘Cause, like, who wouldn’t want elections and stuff? Somehow the idea of “freedom” being forced upon a people seems perfectly logical to the war-backers.
So the next time somebody at your dinner table defends the delivery of freedom through invasion, pose them this theoretical scenario:
Suppose [THEORETICALLY] the French suddenly got militaristic, showed up on our shores with tens of millions of soldiers, and occupied the US. After the invasion, the French declared that they were here to give us true democracy. The notion of a Republic was born of the technological limitations of the olden days that prevented easy dissemination of information and collection of votes, but with the Series of Tubes, the power of real democracy has arrived. So the French decided to invade and give us all true democratic powers — and they’ll even give a citizen free wine and cheese every time s/he chooses to vote on legislation and so forth. Wouldn’t that be AWESOME?
Now, you probably won’t have made it through the first sentence before your local invasion apologist tries to call the French pussies or something, but see if you can get them to play along. The next thing they’ll likely argue is that we’d nuke them if they even thought about invasion. If you can get them to pretend that we didn’t have nukes, or that our Big Red Button was in the shop at the moment (Or that Bush pressed his car’s keychain panic button by mistake), the apologist will probably fall back on the sheer impossibility of conquering our territory, or that we’d battle to the death before allowing some damn Frenchie to take our soil, etc.
The point is, they’ll fight you tooth and nail on the idea that we could be invaded. The whole idea seems impossible to them, but more importantly, it’s wholly reprehensible. The apologist cannot ever conceive of any of us allowing it to happen. I doubt you’ll ever even get to discuss whether it’s worth being invaded to receive an upgrade in governance structures (plus free cheese!). And since you can all predict where this is going, you can see how easily you can use this example to turn the tables on the apologist. They feel the same way about invasion as anybody else — it doesn’t matter what else the invaders brought with them, or how much better the foreigners swear they’re going to make it for everyone. Nobody likes an invasion and most peoples will fight to the death for hundreds of years to rid themselves of one. No. Matter. What. The. Invaders. Promise.
Even Brie.
Yeah, I’ve had this conversation, but I tend to like to use “aliens”. But, they didn’t recognize that in Britian, and they still don’t recognize it in the United States.
I, for one, welcome our alien overlords. What sort of intergalactic governmental model do you think we’d be forced to follow? I favor the Ffurflglax system in which middle children have all the power.
Suppose [THEORETICALLY] that Hillary decides to become the next military dictator of the United States. She starts a long, WWI-style war with Canada where about a million American soldiers die. It’s a complete stalemate. Then, a few years later, she starts a war with Mexico over Baja California and invades. The world rises up and repels us from Baja California and slapa sanctions on us where most children have a hard time getting the food or medicine they need.
In the meantime, and just for fun, she brutally represses the Southeast and Midwest sections of the country, because the are red states and not part of her Tribe. She even gases a few cities just to make a point not to mess with Hill.
Chelsea Clinton is officially named dictator in waiting, and it turns out the Chelsea is even more sadistic than her mother, personally torturing athletes, for example, who lose games.
After 30 years or so, would we welcome the French invasion? Maybe. Probably in the Midwest and South. And we’d probably have an insurgency in the Northeast where the ruling Tribe just got ousted.
In any case, your hypothetical needs a little context to have much meaning.
“Chelsea Clinton is officially named dictator in waiting, and it turns out the Chelsea is even more sadistic than her mother, personally torturing athletes, for example, who lose games.”
I knew it! I never trusted Chelsea…
“After 30 years or so, would we welcome the French invasion? Maybe. Probably in the Midwest and South. And we’d probably have an insurgency in the Northeast where the ruling Tribe just got ousted.”
To make your scenario a little more parallel with Iraq, we’d probably be happy if somebody took out Maximum Leader Hillary. But after that was done, we’d want our cheese-eating overlords to GTFO and leave us alone. Then we’d be able to start in on the civil war we wanted for decades.
Iraq will go through a civil war. Whether Americans are there or not.
Which is where Cheney/Bush blew it, because the rule is whoever touches it last is responsible…
If the French brought Époisses, I would personally go to NORAD, shut down the WOPR, and do whatever else it took to hasten their arrival.
If the French were the ones providing the power and arms behind Hillary’s throne, are you SURE we would welcome them, kevin? Also, curious why you chose Hillary there…
“If the French brought Époisses, I would personally go to NORAD, shut down the WOPR, and do whatever else it took to hasten their arrival.”
Wasn’t it Benjamin Franklin who said: “He who would give up some of his freedom for some pungent French cheese deserves neither freedom nor pungent French cheese…”
Come on marc, you’ve seen kevin comment here before. There’s no question why he chose Clinton, and chose to call her “Hillary”.
I don’t think that in this scenario many Americans would welcome the French invasion, even leaving aside marc’s point. Most people would be at least vaguely aware of the atrocities perpetrated by American soldiers in Canada and Mexico. (Yes, only by those mad ‘Hillarists’, not by clueless, suppressed, ordinary Americans. But which Mexican who’d lost his family in some massacre or other would they trust to make this distinction?) They’d be afraid that they’d get back what Americans did in Canada and Mexico, and with interest.