On Nov. 11 — a mere month-and-a-half ago — world leaders gathered to mark the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I. There were a lot of distractions that day: The U.S. president was afraid of some rain; the Russian president was insouciantly late. Since then, there have been more distractions: the gilets jaunes (yellow vest protesters), Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s resignation, the stock market drop.
But as 2018 draws to a very strange close — during Christmas, President Donald Trump sat alone in the White House, surrounded by the synthetic glow of television screens — it’s worth pausing to remember the speech made that day by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.