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Speaker 1: Welcome to the ten Minute Storyteller. That's me Bill Simpson,

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Speaker 1: your host, narrator and author. We hear at the ten

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Speaker 1: Minute Storyteller endeavor to entertain you with tall tales or

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Speaker 1: rendered swiftly and with the utmost empathy. We pledge to

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Speaker 1: pack as much entertainment, emotion, and exploration into the human

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Speaker 1: condition as ten minutes will permit. Mini novels on steroids.

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Speaker 1: This week we meet Annette. Annette has had a lifelong

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Speaker 1: love affair with America, though she has only ever viewed

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Speaker 1: America from Afar. From afar, things can seem so tidy

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Speaker 1: and perfect, like a star through a telescope, all the

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Speaker 1: beauty but none of the heat or chaos. Well, now

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Speaker 1: Annette has finally landed in the country of her dreams

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Speaker 1: and fantasies. Will her love affair deepen or will disillusion

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Speaker 1: set in? A Frenchwoman visits America. Annette arrived from Paris

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Speaker 1: just a few days ago. She's been planning her trip

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Speaker 1: to America for years, a decade or longer, since her

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Speaker 1: days at university, when she read Democracy in America by

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Speaker 1: Alexis de Toauqueville. The book first published back in eighteen

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Speaker 1: thirty five, nearly two hundred years ago, when the country

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Speaker 1: was just fifty years young, detailed the lives of everyday

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Speaker 1: Americans and focused on why reresentative democracy had succeeded in

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Speaker 1: America despite failing in many other countries. The trajectory of

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Speaker 1: Annett's life changed profoundly after reading Detoaukville's book. Annette is

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Speaker 1: now an historian and an associate professor of American Studies

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Speaker 1: at the Sorbonne. Since her youth, Annette has been obsessed

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Speaker 1: with America, with its unlikely victory over the British Empire

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Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century, with the intelligence and foresight of

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Speaker 1: its founding fathers, with its expansion from the Atlantic to

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Speaker 1: the Pacific, and from thirteen original colonies to fifty semi

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Speaker 1: autonomous states, with its industrial might, economic growth, technological wonders,

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Speaker 1: and extraordinary standard of living for its three hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty million citizens. Finally, arriving in America with her three

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Speaker 1: month visa into Annette is about to experience a dream

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Speaker 1: come true, or so she thinks. All starts out well

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Speaker 1: in New York with planned visits to NYU and Columbia,

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Speaker 1: where Annette meets thoughtful well educated people who share her

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Speaker 1: keen interest in the American experiment. Many do voice alarm

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Speaker 1: over Trump's authoritarian bent and his control of Congress, but

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Speaker 1: most degree the country and the Constitution have been through

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Speaker 1: much worse, and this time too, America will survive to

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Speaker 1: fight another day. Annette meets numerous other historians, professors, and

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Speaker 1: authors who express similar concerns and hopes as she makes

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Speaker 1: stops in Cambridge, Princeton, the University of Chicago, Stanford, and UCLA.

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Speaker 1: In Los Angeles, Annette takes possession of a rental car

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Speaker 1: to begin a west to east cross country adventure that

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Speaker 1: she hopes will take her through at least twenty states

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Speaker 1: and dozens of different towns and cities. She intends to

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Speaker 1: take voluminous notes in the hopes of writing a sequel

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Speaker 1: to Democracy in America. As she clears the La sprawl

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Speaker 1: east of Riverside and heads across the Mohave Desert, Annette

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Speaker 1: records on a small device her early impressions of America

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Speaker 1: and the Americans she has met and broken bread with. Overwhelmingly,

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Speaker 1: she uses words and phrases like intelligent and open minded,

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Speaker 1: progressive and articulate skeptical politicians, but hopeful of the future.

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Speaker 1: She records the educated class, the philosophers, the thinkers, the writers.

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Speaker 1: Though somewhat cynical regarding the country's political and business leaders,

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Speaker 1: ultimately believe the ingenuity and work ethic of the American

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Speaker 1: people will move the nation forward in a positive and

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Speaker 1: progressive way that will mean good jobs and high wages

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Speaker 1: deep in to the twenty first century. Well, just a

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Speaker 1: few minutes later, Annette stops for gas east of Barstow.

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Speaker 1: She has a little trouble with the pump. It's not

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Speaker 1: quite the same as the ones in France. So she

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Speaker 1: asks a man wearing a red baseball cap for help,

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Speaker 1: and he says, Yo, lady, what's that accent? Use? Some

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Speaker 1: kind of Arab? I thought we threw your kind out

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Speaker 1: of here. And with that he climbs into his Ford

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Speaker 1: f one fifty with the twenty four inch wheels, and

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Speaker 1: he peels out, leaving behind confusion and the smell of

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Speaker 1: burning rubber. And so it goes over the next many weeks,

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Speaker 1: as a net slowly weaves her way across the country

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Speaker 1: on blue highways and back roads. By no means is

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Speaker 1: everyone she encounters as blunt and horrid as the pickup

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Speaker 1: truck driver, but a net is left slack jawed over

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Speaker 1: and over by people's anger, pessimism, and ignorance whenever she

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Speaker 1: broaches the subject of America, which she does everywhere she

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Speaker 1: goes in coffee shops and laundromats and post offices and

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Speaker 1: parks and motel lobbies and diners. As this is the

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Speaker 1: reason she came to interview Americans about America, Annette inevitably

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Speaker 1: gets an earfull. Just about everyone she talks to seems

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Speaker 1: to have a pent up need to spew their venom

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Speaker 1: left leaning and right leaning, liberal and conservative, Christian and

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Speaker 1: non Christian, political and apolitical. The Americans Annette talks to

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Speaker 1: in California and New Mexico and Nebraska and Wisconsin and

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Speaker 1: Mississippi and Tennessee and Maryland and Maine are almost to

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Speaker 1: a person, pissed off and worked up. But maybe maybe

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Speaker 1: most of all, what they are is stupid, just plain old,

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Speaker 1: in your face stupid. Yep. Annette hates to think it,

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Speaker 1: and definitely she's not going to say it, but that's

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Speaker 1: what strikes her the hardest, the stupidity, the deep and

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Speaker 1: absolute lack of understanding about their country's past, present, or

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Speaker 1: potential future. All they spew is blatant lies and misinformation,

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Speaker 1: junk news they heard on Fox or Instagram or MSNBC

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Speaker 1: or TikTok. For God's sakes, Americans, a net records near

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Speaker 1: the end of her coast to coast sojourn are by

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Speaker 1: and large overweight, if not obese, with bloated stomachs and

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Speaker 1: red puffy eyes from staring at their iPhones eight and

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Speaker 1: ten hours a day and listening to podcasts recorded by

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Speaker 1: syncophats from both camps that want only to keep America

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Speaker 1: divided and in the dark. And over and over, I

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Speaker 1: engaged with everyday Americans who could not tell me the

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Speaker 1: capital of the state where they resided, who could not

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Speaker 1: name either of their US senators or their representative in

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Speaker 1: the House of Representatives, but who could assure me in

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Speaker 1: one boldly declared utterance that Trump was the greatest president

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Speaker 1: in the history of the country, or that Trump was

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Speaker 1: evil incarnate and would soon bring about the country's demise,

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Speaker 1: all in one way or the other. No middle ground,

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Speaker 1: no room for discussion, no room for debate, a nation

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Speaker 1: I was sad to discover of dogmatists. Annette flew home

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Speaker 1: to France, convinced America's glory days were in the past.

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Speaker 1: They're a fat, lazy, stupid nation now, she writes in

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Speaker 1: the introduction of her book, The End of Democracy in America.

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Speaker 1: They are ignorant of their history, oblivious to their fate,

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Speaker 1: and besotted by their riches. They rest now mostly on

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Speaker 1: their laurels, and they seem perfectly content to let the

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Speaker 1: oligarchs rob the treasury blind while they bet on football

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Speaker 1: and watch videos of the Chinese slowly and meticulously take

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Speaker 1: over the world without firing a shot. Annette over wine

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Speaker 1: and oysters at Dewitz confides to a friend, Honestly, I

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Speaker 1: wish well, I wish I'd never gone like that boy

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Speaker 1: that you love from Afar. It would have been far

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Speaker 1: more pleasant to live with my fantasy of America and Americans,

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Speaker 1: rather than immerse myself in their perverse and cynical reality.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this original audio presentation of a

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Speaker 1: Frenchwoman visits America, narrated by the author. If you enjoy

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Speaker 1: today's story, please take a few seconds to rate, review,

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Speaker 1: and subscribe to this podcast, and then go to Thomas

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Speaker 1: William Simpson dot com for additional information about the author

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Speaker 1: and to view his extensive canon. The Ten Minute Storyteller

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Speaker 1: is produced by Andrew Bligleisi and Josh Klani and as

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Speaker 1: part of the Elvis Duran podcast Network in partnership with

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Speaker 1: iHeart Productions. Until next time, this is Bill Simpson, your

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Speaker 1: ten Minute Storyteller,