Commentary The day after the first round of the French elections, I went to my barber in Paris to learn what the results really meant (I also needed a haircut). Macron had come in first, with 27.6 percent of the vote, Marine Le Pen second with 23.4 percent, and Jean-Luc Mélanchon third with 22 percent. I’m a great admirer of my barber. No man is a hero to his valet, perhaps, but my barber is a hero, of a quiet kind, to me. He emigrated to France from Morocco 25 years ago, and now runs a tiny barber’s shop near to where I stay when I’m in Paris. The life of a very small businessman, especially if he’s an immigrant, isn’t easy and requires a kind of chronic courage and determination, much more difficult than the acute type. Needless to say, the COVID years have been particularly difficult for him, …
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