DON’T FEAR THE REAPER

March 2026

Below is a quote from my March 2020 issue.

From Wikipedia:

“(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” is a song by American rock band Blue Öyster Cult from the band’s 1976 album Agents of Fortune.

Also from Wikipedia:
Death is frequently imagined as a personified force. In some mythologies, a character known as the Grim Reaper causes the victim’s death by coming to collect that person’s soul. Other beliefs hold that the Spectre of Death is only a psychopomp, serving to sever the last ties between the soul and the body, and to guide the deceased to the afterlife, without having any control over when or how the victim dies.

I have been listening to Blue Öyster Cult since my first year in high school, and I probably have most of their albums. I find their music a lot more eclectic than the vast majority of hard-rock bands.

The world is now looking with great fear at the rapid spread of the coronavirus from one country to the next. Those who have some historical perspective might think of the Black Plague, the terrifying bubonic plague pandemic that swept through Asia, Europe, and Africa in the 14th century, killing an estimated 50 million people. The term la Grande Faucheuse, French for the Grim Reaper, dates from that time. It has been over a century since the last major pandemic: the Spanish flu at the end of World War I, which lasted from January 1918 to December 1920.

The above is what I published in my March 2020 issue as I was catching the worldwide fear of COVID and the silent death going through the neighborhood. At that time, I focused on “The Reaper.” For over 30 years, I have had a policy not to use the same title twice. This is only the second time I have done it. This time, I am focusing on “Don’t Fear.”

Some people are so immersed in faith that they take Psalm 23 literally: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want, and especially verse 4: Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

But other people are subject to fear and need ways to handle it. Fear is a real emotion with huge effects and sometimes devastating consequences. The lavish decades that followed WWII are now gone for good. Parents fear that their children will never enjoy the careers and the good lives they had. Entering the job market is a challenge; good jobs are scarce, and working conditions for employees are poor. Meanwhile, in the news, we hear about war in many countries and a high level of violence in our communities. In some places, people even die because of their political ideas.

In France, poll after poll, including those done by Amnesty International, has shown that the number of people willing to demonstrate has been shrinking for the last ten years or so. This trend has become a lot more visible with the rise of the “Gilets Jaunes” grassroots opposition to the government and the extreme violence on both sides, with the use of excessive police force being well documented. A majority of French people (61%) feared that violent protests would erupt following the results of the early legislative elections in 2024, according to a CSA Institute poll for CNEWS, Europe 1, and the Journal du Dimanche published on June 27, 2024. France used to be known for putting together demonstrations blocking the boulevards of eastern Paris in no time, with bands, food vendors, and complete families attending. Those days are gone.

The American situation is different and always has been. No parallel can be made. Even so, American political violence has skyrocketed in the last few years, and I do not need to go into detail on this situation. Some fear sending their children to school, going to work in construction, or going shopping in certain neighborhoods when large policing forces are present in town.

There is no point in discussing whether the current level of fear is reasonable. In both France and the USA, we are dealing mostly with fear of the policing forces dedicated to maintaining law and order. The media talks about other Western countries facing similar circumstances, but I do not know enough about them. The situation in the USA and France raises the question of how the current case came about, since the mission of these police forces is to enforce law and order, to protect, to secure premises, and therefore to offer people a safe public place.

There is also a deepening distrust of the government and its various administrative divisions. Again, their mission is to serve the public, offering help and support. They should be popular. But as time goes on and suspicion of fraud has grown, the scrutiny embedded in administrative procedures has made people feel as if they are treated like criminals.

There are commonly three types of response to fear. The first is obedience, excessive caution, and focusing on staying safe. The second is panic, incoherent behavior, and survival mode, which often leads to a far worse situation. The third one is overcoming fear, refusing to bend in the face of violence, and confronting the powers that nourish fear. Many observers have pointed out how large crowds in Minneapolis have overcome their fear and expressed their views, knowing the danger they faced.

 

THE POLICY OF FEAR USED BY AUTOCRATIC REGIMES
WIKIPEDIA
A dictatorship is a form of government that is characterized by a leader who holds absolute or near-absolute political power. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, and they are facilitated through an inner circle of elites that includes advisers, generals, and other high-ranking officials. The dictator maintains control by influencing and appeasing the inner circle and repressing any opposition, which may include rival political parties, armed resistance, or disloyal members of the dictator’s inner circle. Dictatorships can be formed by a military coup that overthrows the previous government through force, or they can be formed by a self-coup in which elected leaders make their rule permanent. Dictatorships are authoritarian or totalitarian, and they can be classified as military dictatorships, one-party dictatorships, and personalist dictatorships.

One thing that all such governments do as soon as possible is to spy on citizens to detect, then identify, voices of dissent to keep these people under surveillance and perhaps eventually arrested, usually with no court hearing or public sentencing. Under Stalin and Hitler, or today, Putin in Russia and Xi in China, surveillance is total, so no dissenters talk openly or take known risks. The sophistication of current means of control increases the capacity for surveillance. There is no need to tap phones. Those in control have access to text messages and emails, and posts on social media, so they know exactly what each individual says. In China, everybody knows that all these media are totally controlled.

The situation in the USA is different. Many people question how far police surveillance of social media, emails, and messages goes. In some cases, for instance, where lawsuits have been brought against people for flimsy reasons, it is clear that there has been serious digging to come up with minor illegal acts and prosecute people on those grounds. When I lived in the USA, people felt safe because they knew that neither the public nor the private sector could spy on them, thanks to strict limits of the law and the Department of Justice enforcing the law. When people owned firearms, it was more about feeling safe. Many feared losing their job or needing to go to the hospital, as they were uninsured. In addition, there was profiling of minorities, which exposed them to higher risks – that was true then and is still true today.

The current situation in the USA is the result of an acknowledged political choice. As I suggested above, the current French government follows the same kind of policy, albeit on a much smaller scale. In contrast, Spain, for example, has today chosen a different political orientation.

SPANISH GOVERNMENT PLANS TO REGULARIZE 500,000 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
BBC, January 27th, 2026
The Spanish government has announced a plan to legalize the status of undocumented migrants, a measure expected to benefit at least half a million people. Regularization will be available to foreign nationals who do not have a criminal record and can prove they lived in Spain for at least five months prior to 31 December 2025. “This is a historic day for our country,” said Elma Saiz, Spain’s minister of inclusion, social security, and migration. The measure will provide beneficiaries with an initial one-year residence permit, which can then be extended. Requests for legalization are expected to begin in April, and the process will remain open until the end of June.

“We are reinforcing a migratory model based on human rights, integration, co-existence, and which is compatible with economic growth and social cohesion,” Saiz said. Spain has seen a large influx of migrants in recent years, mainly from Latin America. The conservative think-tank Funcas found that the number of undocumented migrants in Spain had risen from 107,409 in 2017 to 837,938 in 2025 – an eight-fold increase.The highest number of undocumented arrivals currently living in Spain is believed to be from Colombia, Peru, and Honduras. Spain’s socialist-led coalition government has been an outlier on this issue among the larger European nations, underlining the importance of migrants for the economy. The country has been outperforming the other main EU economies in recent years, posting expected growth of close to 3% in 2025. Unemployment, a longstanding weakness of the Spanish economy, has dipped below 10% for the first time since 2008, according to figures released on Tuesday.

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I wanted to start this section with a quote from a respected media outlet so that no one would think this is fake news, which can happen more often than we would like. Viewed in the context of the immigration policies of the current American and French administrations, the Spanish one may seem at best insane, and at worst, suicidal for the country. Yet France, Italy, and Spain, among countries in Europe, have fairly regularly opened the way to grant illegal immigrants a legal stay. The two main reasons to do so may appear very different, but I believe they can be seen as pretty much the same.

The first is that the economy is doing well, and there is a need for new workers. Thus, the labor market can absorb these new legal immigrants without harming businesses. The new workers need to pay taxes, comply with legal limitations on hours worked, and so on. This is the motivation explained above.

The second reason is that the government deems the stable illegal population to be so large that there is an imbalance that must be addressed. Giving these people a legal stay diminishes the risk associated with having illegal immigrants in the workforce. This, in turn, improves their job security and health coverage, thus ending the main abuses illegal immigrants endure.

Interestingly enough, the Italian and French governments are currently making it more difficult to get a legal stay through regularization.

France’s Ministry of the Interior announced on January 27th that the country had issued 384,230 initial residence permits last year, a year-on-year increase of 11.2%, but that the number of regularizations had fallen by 10.1%. The decision to make it more difficult to regularize one’s immigration status is totally political. It is based on making illegal immigrants look like bad people who do not deserve legal status. The French government is unpopular, as is President Macron, and stirring up fear on various issues is seen as a possible way to reduce their unpopularity.

Clearly, it is always a political choice to have policies based on fear. This brings up another topic. The current American administration depicts almost all immigrants as criminals, dangerous people who destroy the well-being of their neighbors. For several weeks, people in Minneapolis have overcome their fear of the massive policing forces’ presence on the city streets. They rejected the government’s position and flooded the media, especially social media, with videos of what was being done to non-American citizens, some of whom had legal stays, as well as American citizens. Some American citizens were killed, but it did not dampen the protests, which only grew. These people overcame their fear of what could happen to them if they took action.

AMERICAN CITIZENS DEALING WITH DUAL NATIONALITY
My family has experienced dual nationality for over four generations. The youngest are my children. My paternal grandmother was born Spanish in Morocco and naturalized French. When my daughter was born in 1991, my wife went to the American Embassy to register her birth as an American citizen. She was warned against her becoming French through naturalization. Even though the regulation had changed in 1986, decreasing the risk of losing American citizenship upon naturalization, she met women telling horrid stories about what happened to them. Before the 1986 change, an American citizen had to testify in court that if they became French, they would not renounce their American citizenship. To win such a court case, the person had to prove that they never took advantage of the prerogatives of being French, thus in many ways defeating the purpose of being naturalized. The US federal administration later shifted the burden of proof away from the individual. This made it much safer, as the guidelines for challenging such people in court were based on whether obtaining the new citizenship meant automatically losing the previous one, or whether the adopted country was considered an enemy of the USA.

Now, there is proposed legislation in Congress that would take the rights of the American people backward, to a situation worse than what existed prior to 1986. I see two different issues with the proposed change.

1 – The vast majority of Western countries do not mind dual nationality. They view dual nationals as if they only held that country’s nationality. If complications arise from being a dual national, most countries let these people deal with them. By contrast, countries that monitor the obtaining of a second nationality are afraid of losing control of their population; they idealize their own nationality to keep the country homogeneous. Such governments show insecurity about their country’s future and its possible transformation. The current American administration sanctifies American nationality when it deals with well-off children on American soil, hoping such children will become “good” grown-ups sharing pre-Civil Rights Movement values.

2 – In Western Europe, most countries allow multiple nationalities with little if any oversight as to what the other nationalities are. Nationality may be acquired through marrying a national, by establishing a long enough residency, or by being born in the country. Most countries, like the USA, have requirements other than just bona fide five-year residency. Even Germany, which for a long time only recognized blood affiliation, now accepts dual nationality linked to the birthright of the soil (the legal term – ius soli). Historical reasons explain why, and I am happy that they are moving away from the old policy.

The bottom line is this. When a country believes it can integrate and assimilate an immigration flow, the path to citizenship is simpler, and dual nationality is a given. When the country is afraid of the consequences of an immigration flow, it tightens the naturalization requirements to preserve what it considers its traditional values. Over the last few decades, the naturalization procedure in the USA has become increasingly difficult, with more and more requirements. Lately, some ceremonies have been cancelled, preventing people from becoming Americans. Disputing American citizenship by birth in the USA follows the same logic.

George Clooney and his family became French. He openly admits that his level of French is insufficient to meet the minimum required for naturalization. I believed he submitted two files with his spouse, a native French speaker (she was born Lebanese), and their children also speak French well. On the screen, he is the boss. In this situation, he is the weak link. Administrative logic would insist that the rest of his family could be naturalized, but not him. Therefore, he needed and got preferential treatment. I do not see this as a big deal. The important thing to me is that he will undoubtedly be at the forefront of the fight against automatic loss of American citizenship, as in the proposal mentioned above. This issue will now be personal; it will affect him right away. Can anyone imagine George Clooney not being an American icon?

THE REVEREND JESSE JACKSON’S DEATH
The Rev. Jesse Jackson died on Tuesday, February 17th, 2026. I remember his two presidential campaigns. On March 12, 1995, he preached at the American Church in Paris, and I was there. I have a vivid memory of his sermon, which lasted for a long time; my recollection is that it was close to an hour. He was passionate and engaged. What I remember most was that his sermon was almost a political speech, well structured, and that he went back to his main theme on a regular basis, and made sure the congregation was following what he said. He was a fantastic speaker in that regard.

He came to preach a second time on August 9th, 2009. The ACP monthly magazine, the Spire, which was still published at that time, said: “What a privilege this morning to shake hands with Jesse Jackson. He preached at the American Church in Paris, on his way from Chicago to the Ivory Coast. He made an impassioned call for peace in the world, calling himself a ‘troublemaker for peace.’ He says he is asked sometimes whether, with all his political speeches, he ever preaches much anymore. His answer: ‘I preach the gospel every day – and I use words if I have to!’” He also visited in August 2021, but did not preach that time.

THE FRENCH TAX OFFICE IS BANNING PAYMENT BY CHECK
When I started my career in 1997, checks were the most common means of payment. I remember depositing them twice a month, up to 20 at a time. I would send a check to pay utilities, in the special envelopes provided. Today, hardly anyone uses a checkbook anymore. One client tells me she writes one check per year to pay my fees. It is a fact that checks have just about completely faded away. For one thing, processing checks is expensive, as it requires manpower at both banks.

In France, checks now account for less than 2% of non-cash payments across all sectors, compared with more than a third in the early 2000s. For years, the tax office has had a center in Rennes specialized in processing checks, speeding tickets, and other types of payments. It is due to be closed sometime in 2027.

Every time some procedure goes totally digital, members of the population who have no internet connection, or a very poor one, are penalized, as are those incapable of using the internet properly.

MY FEES WILL INCREASE ON SEPTEMBER 1st, 2026
I will be increasing my fees by 20% at the beginning of the next scholastic year, after the 2026 summer vacation. Here are the new rates:
1st meeting/1st work: 420€ euros for 2 hours
Extra hour(s): 180 euros per hour
Handling mail at my office: 50 euros per month
Surcharge for out-of-office meetings: 90 euros, assuming less than 30 minutes’ transportation
Surcharge for meetings and phone calls at the client’s request after 7PM weekdays, all weekend, on national French holidays, and during vacations: 30%
Clients paying by wire to an American account must add $20 to the fee to cover the bank charge for processing a wire transfer.
Bounced checks incur a charge of $20 or 20 euros.

THE SHIP STUDIO IS AVAILABLE FOR RENTAL IN APRIL 2026
The SHIP studio is currently available on April 1st. I am finally getting a lot more requests and have had to refuse a few lately, as it was already rented. When people contact me about renting it, I send them to the website. I hope it shows how cozy the accommodations are. The monthly rent of 1,400€ is all-inclusive. While I continue to favor rentals lasting between two and six months, under certain conditions, I have accepted one-month rentals.
https://www.jeantaquet.com/home-in-paris

OFFICE CLOSED FOR SUMMER VACATION
The office will be closed for seven weeks over the summer, from the evening of Friday, July 3rd, to the morning of Monday, August 24th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed, and Sarah or I will honor prefecture meetings already scheduled, as well as a few other engagements. Like last year, I should be away from the office for most of the time, but I will stay in France, specifically in Burgundy.

Best regards,