What was supposed to be a celebration for some quickly turned into a nightmare for everyone. Starting with the early stages of the Olympic Games where we witnessed one of the worst so-called French artists bellowing the national anthem in electro mode.

It should be noted that Arielle Dombasle is married to a so-called very influential French philosopher who has been scheming in political circles since Mitterrand… You will also notice in this video that the audience is barely shown, and for good reason, there were hardly enough people to fill the front rows, but with tight framing, it can still create an illusion.

“Give them games and bread!” Yes, but President Macron, obsessed with security, has chosen with his teams to transform Paris into an open-air prison, even worse than during the COVID crisis. During the games, if you are lucky enough to have a QR code, you can throw peanuts to the Parisians who will be behind the bars. Moreover, the management of these QR codes is a reflection of the management of France, which is to say disastrous: Olympic torchbearers who cannot invite their families to follow them, difficulties everywhere, police everywhere. Paris shows the true face of the current presidency today.

But since President Macron has little culture, the rest of the celebration will be as bad as the beginning, with a list of artists that is a true insult to French culture and paid like kings. I am talking about the Francophone artists who will be present, including the very artistically criticized Aya Nakamura, whose lyrics are akin to the ramblings of a 6-year-old child.

Restaurants, bars, and hotels have lost more than half of their revenue. It is true that working behind bars hardly inspires anyone to spend an afternoon or evening on a terrace, just like the extreme difficulty of getting from one point to another in the French capital. One cannot say that the newspaper Le Monde is an enemy of President Macron. This newspaper, like most media in France belonging to one of the president’s friends, can be read in French:

Paris 2024 Olympics: 4 hiccups a few days before the opening ceremony

Paris 2024 Olympics: Up to 70% Attendance…

We are unhappy, but we need to be allowed to work.

And this list is as long as a dictionary. Once the Olympic Games are over, tens of millions will have been spent in vain, adding to all the money squandered by the current governance. In a country where the level of poverty has never been this high for a long time, adding to this the metro ticket prices which have tripled in anticipation of the Olympics, the almost total impossibility of getting around, enough to anger both tourists and Parisians, let’s also think of all those people who have to work in Paris but do not live there due to high rents, who will have to struggle for over a month to come to work in particularly deplorable conditions.

If you are Americans and are in Paris right now, there are many other things to do than being surrounded by fences. For example, the châteaux of the Loire, with vineyards and romantic landscapes, are places that traditionally have festivals everywhere in the towns and villages of this region, far from this sad celebration and that will give you much more pleasure and positive images than this sad French capital that is now just a shadow of itself.

signed by the editorial team