Difficult Days Ahead

An Urgent Message to the French People: Difficult Days Ahead

From the Office of the President of the Republic

Dear Citizens of France,

Please prepare yourselves. The days of comfort, of wine flowing freely, of leisurely debates in quaint cafés, of living in a republic underwritten by invisible labor, may soon be coming to an end.

Why? Because Africa, the wellspring of our unearned prosperity, is walking away.

For generations, we convinced ourselves that our standard of living, our robust welfare state, our modern infrastructure, our four-day workweeks, was the fruit of French ingenuity, of revolution, of reason. What we refused to admit, and what history will not let us forget, is that this comfort was built atop the suffering of others. It was subsidized by colonized lands, enslaved peoples, stolen resources, and policies we cloaked in civility but executed with brutality.