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Ask Me Anything
Here’s a confession. The hardest part of my job is deciding what I should write about every day. Every single day, I wake up and scour the news, trying to decide what’s most important. I take this responsibility (and myself) so seriously you’d think I was compiling the President’s Daily Brief. I worry non-stop that I’m going to fail to bring the most important news or the critically important argument to your attention, and that as a consequence of my negligence, the Free World shall perish.
I caught myself doing this today and decided this was seriously neurotic.
So today’s ask me anything day. Within the bounds of the CoC, I’m here today to answer any question you have. I’ll try to do that to the best of my abilities, which are in truth very limited and modest.
Go for it.
Published in General
In this supposed year of ‘the outsider’ why isn’t Carly resonating?
Because Trump sucked the media oxygen out of all the other candidates, I think. I reckon the GOP’s split between, “Let’s come up with the most sensible, plausible, responsible, and potentially electable insider we have,” and “Let’s go totally hog-wild with this crazy old coot who’s made politics fun again.”
Not much room for anything else.
Okay. Here goes. Since the time of the Enlightenment, wars have gotten increasingly vicious, bloody, and expansive. i.e., worldwide. Why?
Agreed, Trumps certainly altered the playing field, yet the 2nd polling is Cruz who also considered by many as an outsider. does that make Rubio the insider?
Carly almost always nails it at the debate and is a solid conservative. Wonder what the disconnect may be.
Okay, how about a not so serious question–I feel like sometimes we need a break from the serious.
Are you a wine drinker or a beer drinker? If wine, what kind? Ditto beer.
I’m throwing you a tough one, but I don’t mean to personally offend.
How committed are you to staying in Paris? Is it legitimately your most comfortable option or is there some kind of professional urge to have front-row seats to the unfolding destruction of Eutopia so you can write better articles with tasty eye-witness accounts (like a war correspondent would)?
Where would you move to next?
Not really, sadly. It’s a terrible waste, given that I live in France, but the truth is that I’ve discovered — at my advanced age — that even drinking a glass of wine with dinner makes me feel sort of slow the next morning. I was never a beer enthusiast, but I used to really enjoy a nice glass of wine with a meal.
Now, special occasions only. I love Sancerre (like everyone) and 2010 was a great year. That’s what I’ll usually order if I know I don’t have to do much the next morning.
I’d lay 20-1 odds Claire is a wine drinker. And 2-1 that it’s white generally but it depends on the meal sometimes. I humbly submit that I can’t guess the kind…
Shag, marry, kill?
(i) Emmanuel Macron, (ii) Manuel Valls, (iii) François Hollande?
Seriously though is Président Macron a possibility? (Le Point seems to think so.)
You just have to trust that I was posting before Claire posted….
My father’s here, and after losing my mom, I decided I wasn’t going to put off the chance to live near the only parent I’ve got left before it was too late. So … pretty committed. But I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay afloat financially, it’s a very expensive city.
I don’t see the destruction of Eutopia ahead, although I think it will change. But it might change in a positive direction: History’s hard to predict.
If I were ten years younger and unconstrained by personal obligations, I’d be in India, which is the wild, wild West: That’s where the biggest economic opportunities of the coming century are going to be — for people really willing to take risk and commit. That’s where I’d encourage anyone young and unencumbered to go.
Macron, obviously, but I don’t think he’s a real possibility. Valls v. Hollande? Valls.
He was. Definitely.
Because it was roughly contemporaneous with the scientific and industrial revolutions. More accurate guns, more powerful artillery and the mobility of railroads = more blood.
But Cruz is coming in a strong second, and most Trump supporters pick him as their alternate choice. Given that Cruz is a Princeton man and more thoughtful, more intelligent and classier than Trump, I’d say it may just be something different.
I don’t much like Trump personally. I think much of the divide has something to do with how one sees the Presidency and how much of their own identity people project onto their leaders. I feel a very distinct separation from a President. They want someone they can admire and look up to, while I , at this point, am prepared to sacrifice that for someone who can break through this madness and break out of this confining PC, as well as take the fight to the media which is the first bulwark of leftism. Without an ability to go through or around the Thought Police, our candidate, no matter how erudite, classy, measured, or reasonable, will walk right onto the media trap door to be sprung at will.
As for that one — as a journalist, I really want to be home right now and following the Trump campaign. But the market demand for yet another journalist on that beat is very, very low.
No.
Having travelled a fair amount, I’ve found myself immersed in local media, be it Ireland, Switzerland or Egypt and discovered that people’s views are a product of what information they are exposed to.
Now, I can ask someone what news outlets and shows they watch and I can pretty much tell what their political views would be on any given issue.
Do you feel that you are getting the same information in Paris or Turkey that you’d get if you were living here in this media environment?
To refine a bit… It’s not just information, but tone and urgency of the info conveyed. When you come here to the States, are you shocked by what stories predominate?
Huh? Claire’s President’s Daily Brief is one of the best things that Ricochet has going!
Hmmmm…. “Claire’s President’s Daily Brief “. I like the way that rolls off the tongue. I propose, henceforth, that Claire’s President’s Daily Brief is the Ricochettis’ name for your geopolitical alerts.
Who are your favorite French singers or bands, living or dead?
Would France’s problems with Islamic terrorism be better or worse today if the French had won the Algerian war and Algeria had remained part of metropolitan France with full civil rights for all?
We would certainly have a very different France, but we might also have a very different Islam…
At this point,who would you vote for in the upcoming presidential election, and why?
Should India focus on public sanitation or public education?
What should the Kemalists have done to really win that Turkish culture war?
How are the French reacting to the news of the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne and other German cities?
The Reoublicans long-standing communication problems….
What are the roots of it and what impedes improvement?
Just two quick questions:
Under what circumstances may the State justly place its welfare above that of a citizen?
And
Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?
Ah, Claire that is too bad considering where you are. I will try to find some Sancerre–I have not had it.
What have you learned about America by living abroad?
Okay, one more Claire because you are in France.
Do you like Escargot? Have you ever eaten horse meat? (I understand that is more of a Belgian thing, no?)