Posted On: Tuesday - May 15th 2018 8:52AM MST
In Topics:   Immigration Stupidity  US Police State  Liberty/Libertarianism
(previous post on Paris and the Police State apparatus there here from last Friday. Again, topic key "US Police State" will have to cover France too now.)
While in gay Paris, doing non-gay things there, one must see this wrought-iron composed still-marvel of structural engineering built 130 years ago. Yeah, not quite "what we still can't do today!", per Neil Young. It' no simple sphinx, stonehenge, or coliseum; it is an engineering marvel. What I noticed is, contrary to lots of things and places I've revisited after a long while, the Eiffel Tower looked BIGGER than I remembered it.
The Securite/Police State business came into play during this visit due to, well you know who. A certain group of immigrants, mostly nice and harmless who still don't fit in worth a damn, but with a small but non-zero number of angry zealots among them who hate the people of their welcoming new land cause changes to life in Paris. They come from places somewhere to the east, but not too far, let's call it the Middle (of the) East to be PC about it. (Hah! - more on that riddle in an upcoming post on the meaning of "Oriental").Now, this writer had already read on, you guessed it, VDare, that things had to be tightened up at all the tourist sites in Paris. (Yeah, VDare covers ALL aspects of the immigration issue.) So, even with the embarrassment of my assumption of security procedures when that was not the point, as in that short post on our visit to the Notre Dame, I was well aware of what was going on lately, and prepared to be pissed off.
It wasn't everyone in our party who was well aware however. We found that we had to go through a security line looking for metal only, not nearly the strip-search-like procedures at airports nowadays. Yeah, OK, guns, I get it - except what are you worried about, someone shooting and making a small dent in the heavy wrought iron and bringing down the Eiffel tower? Ludicrous! OK, it's about some rag-head shooting up the crown up in the tower. OK, but then it's the usual disarm-the-good-guys procedure, a really bad idea. Looking at the "French" people running the security lines, I saw hardly one white person in there. Ever heard of an inside job? Anyone? Anyone? Buehlaiere?. Also, yeah, there's a crowd up there, but there are big crowds in all the cafes along the Seine River... all over Paris there are big crowds.
OK, it was something I was ready for, so we enjoyed the view and the engineering. The problem came in when we got out back at the bottom. True, I could have thought about it more thoroughly and left via the SE corner (or is it due south really?). We didn't, and then found out we needed to go basically across the footprint or around to get to the subway station, but the direct way along the river was blocked. No problem, I can navigate (no, no Artificial Stupidity needed). Then, the fences started. One couldn't go in a short route just to the north of the base of the Eiffel tower. There were too many security fences. At one point, I was willing to even go back throught a "security" line just to walk under the base of the tower, like someone's going to blow up the whole thing from down there. How strong are these terrorists, anyway? Can one guy carry enough explosives? Would he not be seen setting it up? Going back through was going to involve a big wait though.
Anyway, it was like one of those bad frustrating dreams, where you are trying to get something done, or get somewhere, yet obstacles keep getting in the way. Each time I'd try to turn us east, or even northeast, another fence would appear (yes, by myself, in my younger days, I would have jumped one). We ended up doing close to 1 mile to get around. At the 3/4 mile point or so, one in our party was getting so annoying - "where are we going? Why are we going this way!?" that I just lost it, thusly": "France imported lots of Moslems, and now they've got to fence off everything. It's all a waste of time anyway, but we've got to get around this thing. Do you want to get home, or not?!"
It may have been a little bit loud, as the French and "French" crowd looked truly pissed at me with some glares I haven't seen since I mentioned (erroneously) in Starbucks that Trump was gonna kick some ass. I just glared back as much as I had time to, and still look for that NorthEast passage around the fences. Plus, "hey, wait a minute, I thought you all told me you didn't know any English! Remember... when we asked for directions to the metro?". Not pleasant, readers ... not pleasant at all.
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