All kinds of pop culture concepts cross the Atlantic Ocean and I’m fine with that. Some stay where they are and never make it here. I don’t think buying milk in 3.78 litre jugs will ever become the norm here.

Political science and activism concepts are constantly exported from the US. People here start to think in these concepts. Academics in the US get feedback about the situation here and interpret it through the lens of the status quo in the US.

I used to get exasperated at people using identity politics from the US without adapting the terminology (calling Frenchmen of Algerian descent African-American for example). I used to get exasperated at people assuming that health insurance was the most pressing concern in every country, or that any EU country could learn anything from Obamacare.

People are starting to assimilate Trump’s Mexican Border Wall Discourse in the context of the refugee crisis in Europe. For once I wish it was the other way round. I wish people in the US would say that immigration from Mexico is primarily a humanitarian concern, because of ISIS, but many “Mexicans” are actually from Morocco and Afghanistan. This is how it feels.

I wish people would sometimes act as if the main problem in US politics right now is too many parties in parliament, haphazard privatisation of state-run heavy industry, too much cheap but empty housing, organised crime in local government, or austerity measures imposed on the US by Germany, France and Britain.

Americans are acting like WE elected Trump TOO. Some of this might be in order to act as if THEY TOO elected Macron.