Back in the 1990s when we attended a non-Jesuit university in Washington DC, we had a German* professor positively baffled by American's dislike for the French. Americans seemingly have no problem with Germany and France is America's oldest ally. Of course we throttled the Krauts twice in the 20th century, so magnanimity comes easy.
Why hate the French, he wanted to know.
That's a really good question.
As we've previously noted, our hatred of France began in '86 with the whole Libya thing.
But there's a lot more to it then that. By the 1980's French rudeness was legendary as was their anti-English crusade. We've always been annoyed by French pretenses to greatness. The average Frenchmen thinks France helped win WWII. Sorry Frenchy, but you no more won WWII than did Denmark. Our own grandfather fought in France in the war as did millions of other Americans. A little gratitude would have been nice.
*He had a perfect English University accent and it took us half a semester to figure out he was a Bosch.
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