Speaking of Bush, after the election, does France see America as a divided nation?
I’m afraid they’re beginning to not see it as so divided. They see the red states as dominant, and they read the rhetoric of our policy to be almost like the rhetoric of jihad. Most Europeans are very concerned about this; our policy is God-besotted, in a way, and that’s what they’re trying to get away from. Interestingly, the view of America is so much more complex than this. In France, for example, even the extremists, the heads of the fundamentalist groups, talked to me about how they would really like to go to America, because the thing that America promises to immigrants is a chance of success. There’s the promise of a successful immigration—you can survive, begin to prosper, and difference is accepted. The myth of America holds among the same extremist groups that are at war with it.
