Why do French suck at War? (part two)

The second part of the answer addresses the fact that Americans love to make fun of France for losing wars.
And the fact that it actually tells more about Americans relationship to wars than French people’s.

First, as it has been mentioned in the comments of the first part, this stereotype almost always comes from uneducated rednecks (should I dare add Republicans to the package?) and by the way, David L. from Miami is not one of them, I know him, he’s a friend and he loves to impersonate these idiots, that’s all.

Also, this stereotype denotes several things:
-the youth of the US and the fact that all they know about wars is recent modern warfare, they can’t really understand the concept of medieval wars (or anything else medieval for that matter) when winning and losing were quite as abstract concepts as the concepts of countries and borders and such.
-most important is the very fact that these Americans are very proud of the fact that America has won many wars and they take that almost as if a war was some sort of sport where you lose or win or have a tie (this is actually why I used those terms in my previous post) and you’re sad or happy about it until the next one and if you win a lot you rock and if you lose a lot you are being made fun of, just like with your favorite football team.
That comes from a very simple reason: Americans have no concept of a war really is whatsoever.

Of course, America has been almost constantly at war with somebody since it’s inception, nowadays mostly because the military-industrial complex is a big part of the US economy and it constantly needs wars to be fed.
Of course because of this, every generation has its batch of veterans and of course veterans know what a war really is.
But: you rarely hear veterans talk about the horrible aspects of wars. And also veterans have no idea what it’s like to be a civilian in a war torn country.
No American knows what this is. No American knows what it’s like to have a war on your own soil. Simply because there never was a war on American soil except for the Civil War (but it was a civil war which are very particular wars) or the Independence war (which also was some sort of war).
As a consequence, for most if not all Americans the very concept of having a war “at home” is very blurred at best. Hence the stupid conclusions uneducated Americans draw about wars.

And more important, as this blog is about France and not the US, in France, like pretty much any other country in Europe and even in the world, people know what a war on their soil is like.
Of course, there hasn’t been a war on French soil since 1945 and I wasn’t alive then. But people that were alive and still are to tell us about are plenty. The last veteran from WWI died this year and when I was a kid there still were plenty of people that could talk about it (veterans and civilians) but most importantly war is still everywhere to be seen, on buildings, in stories, etc.

And the final parts of the question:

Why do French people suck at winning in general and mostly at sports?

It’s pretty simple. For Americans, as the philosopher Vince Lombardi stated: “Winning is not the main thing, winning is the only thing.” For French people it’s very different.
The most important thing is style. For most French people, it’s better to lose with style, having played well than winning in a classless manner.
And the lack of results can be a consequence of that.

And even if it’s true that French athletes seem to have issue with being number one (for example, just compare the total number of medals France got during the last Olympics (40) with the number of gold medals (7) to get an idea), France is still one of the major nations in the world even on the sports level (ranked 7th in these games for the total number of medals, and even with the official count, the number of gold medals count, France is 10th).

Finally: Was Ronaldo paid off on that day?

One must know nothing about International soccer to ask such a question.
A few facts.
-Ronaldo was indeed sick on that day.
-Despite that fact, France was the best team of soccer in the world in the late 90’s, thinking otherwise denotes total lack of knowledge about soccer, and Brasil didn’t stand a chance, with a healthy or a sick Ronaldo.
-Brasil hasn’t beaten France in an official game since 1958! And since 1986 (with the exception of 1990) one of two things happened to Brasil. Either it played France and lost, either it didn’t play France and was World Champion.
1986: France beats Brasil in the quarter finals.
1990: doesn’t apply.
1994: Brasil doesn’t play against France and wins the Cup.
1998: France beats Brasil in the finale.
2002: Brasil doesn’t play France and wins the Cup.
2006: Brasil loses to France in the quarter finals.

So, you see, France doesn’t need to pay Ronaldo off to beat Brasil as we always do it (why is it in your opinion that Brasilians hate the French soccer team and French people love the Brasilian soccer team?)