EXISTENIALISM??? OH SHIT, HE'S NOT GOING TO BLOG ON THAT. is he?

OK, JUST FRANCE and Sartre plus Communism and strikes. I lived in France and Germany for a while and there is a very weird Communist vs French relationship. Reading Sartre helps understand it, but more of him later. The way it has always worked out is that the Communists ALMOST get power. It's like every French person always votes 51-49 (49 Communist), like they can't really bring themselves to make a total decision about anything.

After WWII the French almost defeated the Marshall Plan, I believe it passed by five votes, with the Communists (actually the Soviets at that time) dam near beating something that would obviously save the country. The Communists rioted back then to stop the Marshall Plan, going so far as to stop ships from unloading food for a starving country. The French dislike for us manifested itself way back then; they banned the sale of Coca Cola inside of France; "Coke" was viewed as a plot to get rid of French wines and replace it with a "poison" (shades of genetically engineered food today). They didn't want to do business with any American firms at all, and resented the Marshall Plan from beginning to end. They have NEVER liked us, and we delude ourselves when we think otherwise. The French, Left Right and Center, viewed the Marshall Plan as a Wall Street plot to take over all business in Europe. After WWII France was more interested in sacking a defeated Germany (by the U.S); grabbing all the coal in the Ruhr area of Germany; looting the Saar and stealing all the German factories they could piece by piece and bringing them into France. They didn't like us for the Marshall Plan, didn't like us before WWII and blamed us for not coming to their aid in 1940. As far back as 1947 they wanted to create a "Third Force" to counter the U.S. and balance against Russia. This is the reality that is now on the front burner. This crap about long time allies is total bull.
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In my opinion the best way to understand the French ambiguity about dam near everything is found in the widely read "Roads to Freedom" a trilogy of books by Sartre in which everybody runs around "getting it;" thinking about "getting it;" wondering what "it" really is; and giving up trying to "get it" because it won't do any good to "get it" anyway. Even the war against the Nazis is treated as a warm up for the "real war" against capitalism later; killing Nazis is only practice, not the real thing so don't get too worked up about it, just kill them so you can be ready.

The Communists are a real force in France but only if there is no real chance for them to actually take over. Everybody seems to want them around as a threat to everyone else. If the Muslims ever join with the Communists WATCH OUT. The current strikes in France can only be "won" by the strikers if they are joined by other EU unions and it could happen. But "winning" to the French doesn't mean the same as "winning" to everyone else in the world because in the existential world of France winning is always a relative term having to do with the inner person, his relationship to "it", and "it" itself. Meaning they could destroy their own country but not destroy it because there is a deeper "it" than country. Get it?

Think about all of that and you may understand the French seeking to keep everyone undermined and fighting with each other so France can continue in their eternal search for "it" without ever having to deal with "it". One of the "its" is that they don't like us. They never have. And forget about the French helping us at Yorktown, you don't think King Louis XVI wanted democracy, do you? He wanted England to lose so he could keep French colonies in the New World. It wasn't a year later that the French started attacking our shipping. They have NEVER liked us.