Historical memory in France

  Man shrugging from Emoji Terra. The portrait of M.P. from wikimedia.

There are a few French institutions that warm your heart. For example, Boulangerie, bakery. They operate on the premise that people will buy fresh bread and pastry any time of the day. And guess what, they do! (Granted, boulangerie does close around 8 p.m., but that's good enough.)

Another one is the historical memory. While working in the office, you suddenly hear a sonorous voice uttering a calmly energetic invocation of an old historical character, "Oh, Pétain!"  You can only envy the French that they use wartime collaborators as a figure of speech. The trend extends to hard-core intellectuals as well: later in the day there was an alarmingly angry Pétain! from someone who got a letter from the tax office. Very appropriate choice of words.

I find it fascinating that darker characters from national history in the West get the same treatment as old pagans spirits and gods like Perún/Parom, Lempo and become swearing bywords. Wouldn't it be appropriate if we followed suite with our war-time collaborators as well? :)