HOW OTHERS SEE US ON APRIL FOOLS DAY AND EVERYDAY UNTIL THE ORANGE CLOWN GOES AWAY

If the King is a fool then his Palace is a circus 

Editor's note: The following speech was delivered by French Senator Claude Malhuret during a French Senate debate on Ukraine and European security on March 4, 2026. Senator Malhuret represents the Department of Allier in central France (biggest city Vichy). 

Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues, 

Europe is at a turning point in its history. 

The American shield is slipping away. 

Ukraine risks being abandoned.

Russia is being strengthened. 

What is happening in Washington is not merely a change in policy. It is a rupture. The United States, which for eighty years has been the pillar of the free world, now sends a message that shakes all its allies: that its protection is uncertain, that its word is reversible, and that its commitments are conditional. For those who believed that alliances were based on shared values and enduring interests, this is a strategic earthquake. 

The consequences are immediate. 

French Senator Malhuret

Ukraine, which fights not only for its survival but for the security of Europe, finds itself threatened by fatigue, hesitation, and calculation among those who once stood firmly at its side. At the same time, Russia draws strength from this doubt. What it could not obtain by force, it now hopes to gain through division and discouragement. 

Let us be clear: the objective of Vladimir Putin is not limited to Ukraine. It is the dismantling of the international order established after 1945, whose first principle is that borders cannot be changed by force. 

If that principle falls, then no nation is safe. 

What we are witnessing is the return of spheres of influence— a world in which great powers divide territories among themselves, where the law of the strongest replaces the rule of law. 

Europe cannot accept this. 

We cannot remain dependent on a protection that may falter. We cannot subcontract our security. We cannot continue to believe that others will defend our interests in our place. 

The time has come for Europe to assume its own destiny. This means strengthening our defense capabilities, coordinating our strategies, and reaffirming, without ambiguity, our support for Ukraine. 

Because Ukraine’s fight is our fight. 

Its resistance is the front line of our own security. 

If Ukraine falls, it is not only a country that disappears. It is a principle that collapses. And with it, the fragile balance that has preserved peace on our continent for decades. 

History has taught us what hesitation costs. It has taught us that weakness invites aggression, and that divisions among democracies are always exploited by those who oppose them. We must not repeat those errors. Europe has the means, the talent, and the responsibility to act. What it needs now is the will. 

Let us find that will—before others decide our future for us. 

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Illustration: F. Stop Fitzgerald, PillartoPost.org daily online magazine

THE PUBLIC HOUSE REVIEW / GETTING DIZZY JUST SITTING THERE

 CAROUSEL BAR, NEW ORLEANS 

There are bars that serve drinks, and there are bars that quietly rearrange your sense of time. At

Carousel Bar, the difference is not announced. It reveals itself slowly, almost politely, as the room begins to move beneath you.  

Set inside the old bones of the Hotel Monteleone, the bar does not spin so much as drift. Fifteen revolutions an hour, give or take, just enough to unsettle the certainty that you are where you thought you were. A drink ordered facing the bartender is finished facing a stranger, or a mirror, or a couple leaning into a conversation they may not remember in the morning.  

The design is theatrical without being gaudy. A ring of stools, bolted to a slowly turning platform, circles a fixed core of polished wood and brass. The illusion is simple and complete. You are in motion while everything that matters appears still. It is a trick New Orleans understands well.  

There is a certain discipline to the bartending here, a continuity that resists the creeping casualness of modern cocktail culture. White jackets. Measured pours. A manner that suggests the drink matters, but not more than the room. The Sazerac arrives without flourish, the Vieux Carré without explanation. They are not introduced. They are expected.  

What distinguishes the Carousel Bar is not novelty, though the mechanism alone would be enough to earn it a passing mention in guidebooks. It is the way the motion alters behavior. Conversations begin easily, then loosen, then drift, much like the bar itself. You find yourself speaking to someone you did not arrive with, or listening longer than intended. The slow rotation edits the social order in increments so small they go unnoticed until you realize you have crossed into someone else’s evening.  

The room carries its history lightly. Since 1949, the bar has turned without interruption, outlasting trends, hurricanes, and the periodic urge to modernize what never required improvement. Writers have sat here. Politicians have made promises here. Tourists have tried to understand it and locals have declined to explain it. The bar keeps its secrets not by hiding them, but by refusing to slow down long enough for you to pin them in place.  

There is a moment, usually halfway through a second drink, when the experience resolves itself. You are no longer aware of the movement, only of its effect. The room feels alive, but not restless. Time feels altered, but not lost. It is the rare establishment that can offer both sensation and calm, spectacle and intimacy, without choosing between them.  

Step outside into the French Quarter and the city resumes its usual pace—humid, musical, slightly off balance in ways that feel entirely natural. Inside, the Carousel continues its quiet orbit, indifferent to your departure, already carrying someone else toward the same realization.  

In a city built on ritual, illusion, and endurance, this bar does not imitate the culture. It participates in it. And like the best public houses, it does so without ever needing to explain itself.