In an earlier thread yesterday, I called the US a “sewer” in the context of boycotting travel to that destination, and I wish to explain that comment, prefacing it with the statement that I, too, am an American citizen, who’s lived and worked in the US for 26 years.

My analysis is that, right now, about 1/3rd of the US population is basically Nazis or Nazi-collaborators, about 1/3rd doesn’t give a f*ck about what’s happening, and about 1/3rd are good people. This is a rough approximation, but, I feel, not an incorrect one.

While recognizing the existence of that last 1/3rd, praising and supporting their effort, I still believe that it is not wrong to characterize the US as Trump’s America, in the same breath as I once did with Franco’s Spain or Pinochet’s Chile, or historically others have done when referring to Hitler’s Germany or Vichy France.

There was a fair amount of debate in France when, during the campaign and more recently, President Macron blamed and apologized on behalf of France, first for the crimes committed during the Algerian War, and recently for the infamous Jewish deportation of the Vel d’Hiv.

The Nazi Front National, in particular, took umbrage, objecting that this were not the actions of the “real” France, which during WWII was embodied by De Gaulle’s “Free France” in England. No such argument can be made about the Algerian War, so their argument there relied mostly on all the “good Frenchmen” who only did their patriotic duty, etc.

(Like “hero” McCain who participated in Operation Rolling Thunder in Viet-Nam which killed nearly 100,000 civilians. My dad was in the French Military during the Algerian War and AFAIK, being part of the Medical Corps, he never committed any war crimes, but that wasn’t a period of his service he was particularly proud of, and I never, even once, heard him or anyone else refer to him as a hero. But i digress…)

All the FN’s arguments are true, and there were indeed a lot of good French men and women who not only objected to, but fought against these dark moments of French history, and some paid it with their lives — but even then, I must agree with Macron that the collective responsibility of the nation as a single, legally constituted entity remains, and it was indeed “France” (in an almost Gaullist sense) who was/is responsible.

So we’re back to short-hands such as Vichy France, Franco’s Spain, etc., — and de facto, Trump’s America, which, despite the Resistance and a great number of very good Americans (among which I count myself, and others here), is a sewer.

I will not set foot on US soil until that monster has been removed from power and our country cleaned up and returned to the values it holds dear.