(why) i hate my country 🇫🇷

As I mainly talked about Macron, and didn't have time to go in details on the rise of the far right in France (future video?) I want to emphasize here to French voters that as much as I dislike Macron, I clearly won't vote for Marine Le Pen and don't recommend anybody do so.

As an American, I feel for the French who are stuck between a bad choice and an even worse choice. It's not great.

Maybe it‘s not the point of the video, but it‘s such a strange notion that instead of paying craftspeople well, they should instead desire to get different „better“ jobs. A horticulturist probably is a horticulturist because he‘s more of a plant-person and likes the manual labor of the job and he might even be miserable in and not suited for customer service. It might be a bit romantic, but I sometimes think that a greater appreciation for crafts in the wider sense would solve a lot of problems.

Funny what Macron said about restaurants and hotels. As a Canadian with 10 years in the food service industry, I can confidently say there is 100% a shortage of labour. The problem is the working conditions. I do not blame people for leaving industry/ not wanting to join it.

As a french expat who lives in North America, it's staggering to notice how french culture has evolved to become an extension of what we see in the US. The hyper individualism, this cynical view of society and the world, the wariness of one an another, the cult of celebrities. It's no wonder politics are following this trend. French elitism and the shame/pride culture probably make the shift even more potent and sensitive to American influence, too

As a German, we barely made it to a center-leftist government last year in the national election, after 16 years of conservative-lead government under Merkel. I personally have only ever experienced Merkel as chancellor, i liked her as a person (her humour especially, it's really subtle but boy, she can stand up to the far right like nobody else) but with the war, in many ways we experience now how naked we stand in the face of renewable and independent energy sources, which are one of the biggest shortcomings of her government. I'm happy about the change, but our current chancellor has as much charisma and courage as stale bread. However I feel like there isn't as much of a personality cult here as it is in France, and i never realised that until now. The personality cult around the French President that is. Actually, shamefully, i have to admit that I'm much more familiar with American politics than with our neighbors, despite only living maybe 2h away from the French border. Macron is seen here as the only viable alternative, le pen would put the EU in a severe crisis, which I'm not sure it would survive.

As a Russian, boy do I understand the dislike for your own government.

As a young French person living in the UK, I've come to become proud of my country for everything but the elite. I'm proud of the french people, culture and way of life. That does not mean I like my State or take pride in the Government's actions. And to be fair, it could be said for every country. We need to distinguish nations from States.

Wow! I love the title and you’re fulfilling the French stereotype of looking casually fabulous with a glass of wine that’s part accessory, part weapon.

“What I didn’t know at the time was - that was the peak.” When I tell you I ScREaMED. I think part of the reason the Left flounders is because people have been so drowned in neoliberalism as a kind of economic pseudo-science. They either lost sight of the goal or are simply exhausted. In my heart I voted NPA.

Semi-retired prof here who was used to seeing students lose hope that the future won't be a climate catastrophe, class warfare and militarism. i don't have any advice, just sympathy.

One will always "hate" their country because of the connection and love they feel for their culture, their people, their home and they know there are so many thing that can and should be better, but it seems like it's never coming. It's like when a parent gets mad by the actions of their child - be it for getting a low grade at school or behaving badly. It's not that the parent hates their child, it's because they know they are capable of way better things, yet they didn't do it. So yeah, I see the relationship between a person and their country like the relationship of a parent and their child. You clearly see the potential, but getting there is so hard.

in all big democracies in the world right now we are having to choose between the horrible and the less horrible, hope democracy prevails these hard times.

To continue the discussion, after the results from the first round, melanchon's voters insisted that leftist should continue to believe and should vote during the "legislative" which is the election for the parliament. If there's a majority of leftist elected, than the prime minister would be from the left, and he is the one who choose the members of the government. This would be a BIG conterpower. Melanchon himself asked to consider this election as the third round and to make him the prime minister. The anticapitalist party already said that they want to join force with the Union Populaire (Melanchon's party) for this election. So yeah, maybe the future 5 years won't be as dreadful as it seems

As someone who is Swedish, I’ve never thought France was that politically um worrying to say the least. Thank you for such an amazing video, really helped me understand French politics better

Je crois qu'on est nombreux à être scandalisés de ce qui se passe dans notre pays en ce moment. Ces élections et les années à venir risquent d'être très difficiles, voire violentes. En revanche, je ne suis pas d'accord avec toi sur le début de la vidéo: j'aime profondément mon pays, ses paysages, sa richesse culturelle, littéraire ... C'est notamment pour cette raison (parmis tant d'autres) que je suis dégoûtée de voir des gens qui n'en ont rien à foutre de leur peuple à la tête du pouvoir... En tous les cas c'est vraiment chouette que tu parles de la situation de notre pays en Anglais, ça ouvre des perspectives de discussions avec des gens qui voient ça d'un œil plus extérieur. Merci pour ton travail!

5:09 Japan’s soft power agency (クールジャパン) actually works with France’s government for propaganda purposes. Shueisha (publisher of lots of popular manga) gave Macron a big One Piece print out signed by the author with him writing “pour m. le président et tous mes lecturers français”. It was very publicized especially within the One Piece community and I thought that it was pretty weird.

As a fellow Frenchie who studied abroad and came back due to the pandemic; your disillusionate take on France couldn't be more true 😣

I know that since our societies are so globalized, there is a lot of political overlap between countries. But I do feel the "cult of personality" aspect of French politics is quite similar to America's (from my personal observation). The idea that we basically seem to get only "two options" (aka our countries both have a semi-presidential system)-- though I would argue here in America we have FAR less of a chance for parties other than the two to gain political power.

Maybe you talked about it before, but would be interesting if you talked about the bubble effect around political elections... In our young people, "social-liberal" artisty interested sphere (don't know how to phrase differently), it felt like the whole French Internet was rooting for Mélenchon (or Zemmour for another part of the internet lol) and in the end they only made 28% of voters, I feel like people still didn't realized that bubble effect bc so many were surprised by the results of Macron still going first. In my opinion it plays some part in the resentment people feel, bc it kind of feel like we were "betrayed" by other people (like "hey, didn't we all agree that we hated him during the last five years???" ), by the election as we saw no one around us giving different feedback an. Same thing in the US with last election