Fava beans and a nice Chianti

We English are constantly told there exists a 'special relationship' between the United States and the Untied Kingdom. It's a concept that puzzles and confounds for no one really knows what it means.

As someone born a mere seventeen years after the Second World War, I have a healthy awareness of the aid that the United States supplied and acknowledge, without hesitation, that if it wasn't for that aid, Britain had little chance of defeating Germany.

I also, occasionally, paid attention in History class and so was aware that, but for the help of the French, Britain would likely have won the War of Independence, as it is known by the winners. Damn! Do I have to admit that Dan Brown was right?

Wars come and go and make great movies, despite Hollywood's propensity to fictionalise so their hero doesn't have to be gay.

So, watching 'Piper Maru', I wondered about the depiction of the French. I'll admit to having the thought that, if I was America, I would have a sense of loyalty to the country that helped me win a war, as I have for the US helping Britain in WWII. The French don't actually pit themselves against America in this episode, they merely work for their own goals. Those goals, for some reason, include the finding of a lost American squadron. And by a Frenchman who lives in San Francisco, married to an American woman. Clearly, you cannot trust a Frenchman!

I know enough about politics to know that all relationships are a matter of expediency. Trust, in politics, is equivocal. One nation's needs trump promises made. England and France are 'traditional' enemies. England has no historical reason to expect support from France. And we have fought the Germans in two world wars! There is a reason for our recent withdrawal from the European Union, however stupid the reasons for the referendum and the blinkered voters who destroyed our future.

I wasn't aware of the difficulties in Americo-French relations, stemming from de Gaulle's distrust of America.

When the French refused to support America's Iraq war, I sided with the American view that they were unreliable. After all, didn't we, Britain and America both, sacrifice our blood for their sake? History will show that Jacques Chirac was right!

Then, on the 5th of November, 2007 at 13:09, the French Government sank the Rainbow Warrior. As a direct result of that action, I discovered the virtues of Italian wine. To this day, I'll give you my fava beans for a nice Chianti!

But that was an Englishman's view.

Why were the French depicted so duplicitously in an American TV show?

What it taught me was simply that America doesn't really have any allies, friends, or special relationships. What it has is a view of itself as superior to all others. It is, of course, the last remaining superpower after winning the Cold War. It could have used this position as a means of strengthening NATO, for instance. The US could have used its position of strength in so many beneficial ways. Instead, it elected a President to take it back to the dark ages.

America won its independence from the strongest nation on earth, a nation with an empire upon which the sun never set. What has it done with that independence? Nothing of any real importance.

Quibble about the British Empire as much as you like. But wherever we went we took Shakespeare, infrastructure and lots of other things the locals didn’t want, like legal systems, education, etc. What, for all its bloated sense of itself, has America given the world apart from an industry in Hollywood that can't tell the truth any better than its current President?