VIA Times Online

There are several people we know, all of whom grew up very comfortably in nice suburban homes, who have a particularly middleclass bougie disorder that makes them believe everything is so much better in Europe, especially France and Italy for some reason (despite all those Europeans who continue to immigrate to America, as these clowns want to leave the States and head to Paris or Rome). 

All these people ever talk about is how they want to move to Italy, or to France, and take cooking classes or horse riding instruction or spaghetti harvesting workshops there. Because Europe is such a wonderful place and France and Italy, in particular, are so much better than America. 

One particularly spoiled and overindulged American princess we know was tired of working her $85,000/year job and living in her beach house in Florida (because she sometimes had to work weekends and her house wasn’t as close to the beach as others she knew), so she just quit one day and signed up for Italian lessons in Milan — but came back pouting after just a few weeks because, “The whole place smelled like garbage.  They haven’t picked up the garbage in months because the garbage people were on strike.  And everyone was mean to me because they were in such a bad mood about the garbage.  Nobody paid attention to ME.  They were all so mad about the strike. I hate Italy.”

Welcome to European socialism, fools.  

We’re sure you have anecdotes like this too, but every time we think of France we think of a high school trip we took for college art and history credit, where half our fellow travelers had never been to Europe before and expected some sort of glamorous amusement park (the rest of us were more realistic, and knew what to expect in socialist countries).  The transit workers were on strike in Paris at the time, so there was no transportation to speak of.  Half of us lucked out and made it to the Louvre a day before a museum workers’ strike closed almost all the cultural sites around Paris.  There very well may have been a garbage workers strike during that trip, too — or else the sanitation department’s job-for-life workers just couldn’t care enough about their positions to keep the streets we saw clean.  It was a mess, and about 30 of Greater Cleveland’s best and brightest came home to Parma Heights and Independence, Ohio rereshed in their appreciation for all things American. 

We’re not saying America is perfect or infallible, but it sure as Hell is worthy of our respect and appreciation.  There’s a reason people keep wanting to immigrate here, and why they are not beating down the door to get into France and Italy (unless they are spoiled 33 year olds who want to do yet another study abroad instead of working a responsible job like the grown women they are). 

So, it’s yet another strike in France: this time the electricity workers who are randomly shutting off power to various cities on the Paris grid, hoping to force the government to capitulate to their demands. 

For those of you who voted for the current President and believe these are effective tactics to get what you want, or bring socialism to this country, we once again admonish:  be careful what you wish for, Hope and Change Gang, because you might not want it when you get it.