The Great Chocolate War

I want to talk about World War 2 and if any of you don't like that then you can suck it because I have a blog and that's more than I can say for about 5 of you. Sorry Mom, Dad, Grandma Bobby, Davey and my lamp that I put googly eyes on so that I could talk to it. It's just true.

ML, a World War 2 Memorial in Paris, is some heavy shit. It's probably really heavy partly because it has a lot of things about a war that took place around the world and the holocaust, which has anyone ever remarked sounds just like an obscure Jewish holiday? JNSP, mais c'est un truc intéressant. Anyways, WWII, a la ML. La Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale. With means in French, the 2nd world war. For some reason, their translation of the name sheds so much more light on how ridiculous the war was: we managed to over-complicate things enough to get into a World War once. And that is really ridiculous because it is literally a war that takes place around the world. DO YOU KNOW HOW BIG THE WORLD IS? Since I think in terms of fruit by the foot, let me paint you a 'lil pitcha. a Fruit by the Foot is 3 feet. The circumference of the earth is 131479713.54 feet. So, that's, if you round up, because better to have some portion of a Fruit by the Foot- even if you traded a half a foot of it for your whole sandwich, your powerade, your banana and your allowance for two weeks- is better than no portion, 43826572 Fruit by the Foots. OH NO, OR IS IT FRUITS BY THE FOOT? OR FRUIT BY THE FEET? I would still eat a Fruit by the Foot even if it were by my feet. Sorry Mom, Dad, Grandma Bobby, Davey and my googly eye lamp, it's just true.

Anyways, a war with literally the WHOLE world happened once. And then, not even like 400 gigayears later, like 20 years later, they accidentally had a second World War. And they also let one person start it. Did you know there are rules of war? How is that possible? I'm not against war because it's awful, I'm just against war because it's such bad logic. Like disappointing logic for dudes like Churchill and Count Duku. But I can't get mad about it, because judging from how easy it is, I could probably start another world war. Whatever, I just do what I do. Spencer put an ice cream on his status today that was called "Magical Brownies," and its a Dave Matthews Band ice cream with Black Raspberry and Sweet Cream ice creams, with full brownies. How?
I don't know. But it happens.

So. World War 2. This memorial was powerful. It took you through a relatively terse, but really authentic timeline of French WW2 history- all headlines from newspapers, leaflets, primary documents, flyers, essays, photos and propaganda. They really simply weaved in the aspect of the Holocaust, almost making you feel as if you were a non-semetic, neutral French citizen. That's hard to affect two Americans- Hiltzon and Me- with. I'm Jewish and well to do, I look Aryan. She is Catholic and could probably glare at the Gestapo and have them retreat with self-loathingly. It was unbelievable though. The idea of watching a war unfold infront of you on headlines, that are half the size of the paper- these papers were incidentally more expensive due to their urgent nature, but does this make sense? half the front page is the headline-, and slowly realizing that real danger is posed on not just your safety, but your identity. The French weren't the French when Germany invaded- that never occurred to me. I mean like, sure, yeah, in a ridiculous, romantic way they were always the French, but they weren't, because Germany staked out their hood, so they were techincally German. Dig? Anyways, they lived in captivity under the Nazis for four years, were indoctrinated, oppressed, repressed, blinded. They had no choice but to be submissive, brave, and, for a brave few, tacitly rebellious.
I've heard the stories about the Jews hundreds of times from the URJ, Larchmont Temple, my parents, the media. But the countries that were invaded, that's rough.
Of course, because I'm lonely in France and an American. I thought, what about us?
Well first of all, invading America, if you're not 30 countries, is infeasible if you're gonna be smart about it. We are 307,971,393 people. Let's measure that in Fruit by the Foot. That's 102657131 Fruit by the Foot, a foot for each person. Our country is also fucking huge. I won't measure it in Fruit by the Foot because space freaks me out and I don't want to think of Fruit by the Foot as a three-dimensional object. Let me be a kid please. "Funeral" has already raped my bright, beady 20/20 vision and turned it into Mad Dog 20/20 vision. So let's talk about this. Afghanistan, the biggest country that would practically invade America, would have to literally occupy every township in America to guarantee complete surveyance of our land. Sorry dudes. Non. And we would also have to be fought from 4 directions. We'd be able to fight a dope war in organized legions, and a dope guerilla war as well- we still have militias, maybe a reason why Amendment 2 should just chill as it is.
That's nice and comforting. But let's think here. Why aren't you realistically repulsed by the prospect of us being occupied. Because it could never happen, right? It could never happen? Why, because we're so goddamn enormous? We're so goddamn enormous? Oh, so there are a lot of us in a lot of different places. Oh shit. What's our identity? If someone invaded America, what would we be losing? And don't say liberty, freedom or justice, because we've always had that to some effect-- with that kind of thing, you don't really know what you have till it's gone.
If we were invaded, we would all feel it in different ways. I could get all worked up and self-righteous about that fact that this means we don't have a unified vision of what America means, but that in its own right is what America means. Maybe we need a threat to our country to pull everybody closer and winnow out all the poopy ignorance and Hatanism.
Allors, we ascended to the second floor to a 10 minute video, soundtracked with music that was jaw-droppingly evocative of the Dark Forces ambiance music. It was powerful. It pitched the war in stages, biding the audience through every step. Watching the city be taken over, women being shot in front of Versailles, Nazi planes flying over the Sacre-Coeur, watching a nazi flag hung from the Arc de Triumph, and an anti-Russian advertisement plated on the Eiffel Tower was stomach-turning.

And then America came! We really saved the day there. I know we came late, but the Germans were weak then, getting bombarded from both sides- EIFFEL TOWERED, IRONICALLY. Anyways, c'est vrai. We hit the Germans when they were crumbling, with that last blast of gusto that shut it down. We shouldn't be treated as the heros, but some heros. The smiling American faces emancipating the city, the fraternity between the French and English at Normandy, the music playing ath the chocolate bars, it was a new Era!

And then I realized something. This is happening. We are doing this. I just don't read the New York Times articles about it. I know nothing. I am educated, and cultured, and compassionate, and I act like i don't care. I love America. I swear I care! I'm not saying it because I need to believe it. I just don't understand.
But this is different. Our allies weren't over there. The tiff represents nothing that we are morally obliged to defend. If you argue terrorism, that's not that doing of a particular government. We are only inflamming the issue: everybody hates us and we're posting ALL OVER THEIR FACEBOOK WALLS.

So I am going to kick back and figure this war out in a way that makes sense to me. We're too big of a world now to have the privilege/curse of being unable to avoid the news. The internet, the masses of passing strangers, they make hiding easy. We all live in cities, because the city is everywhere. This is the real age of the city. This is also My era, and it is going to matter to Me in a way that my Dad cared about his Fathers war and Oliver Gant cared about his nations war.

I have two more full weeks of class, and it's time to visit the museums and all of that junk. But junk is cool- you can go diving for it and make things with it. I will miss Paris, i know, but it is wearing me down. It's also teaching me the most as I'm peeling away. Maybe right now I don't know if I love it, but I am attached to it. A part of me needs it. Tonight is Katie Hiltz's last night. We're going to dinner-picnic on the Seine and try new seasonal wines. We're saying goodbye to a time that we were in. We always are, in a way. But these goodbyes and the times that they are saluting also keep making us until we are unmade.

Bye Autumn! I got a free chocolate bar on the way into the train this morning.