Still there yet

It's interesting to note that among the very first politicians, and indeed the first "local" politician, to hit the streets in Beirut was. . . Emmanuel Macron, the President of France.

He received nearly universal praise from the Lebanese, something he doesn't receive in France.

While there, he called for a new French relationship with its former colony, and for reforms in Lebanon, all of which was well received by the Lebanese.

And hence the strange relationship between France, which sees Lebanon as an extension of itself somehow, and Lebanon, which looks upon is former colonial rulers in ways that often express more admiration than it gives itself locally.