[Larisochka]

bloated, statist society ^These kinds of irritating slogans/buzzwords are tired and propagandistic.
When I hear them it's like nails on a chalkboard.

What does modernize mean, really? your wording implies that there is only one way to be modern, the way you have in mind? It's offensive, actually.

Plenty of people in Europe would say their economy and way of doing things are much more 'modern" than ours. Some, even, might say our system is barbaric: a corporate elitist feeding frenzy at the expense of the people, far from modern but actually quite regressive. They have no desire to emulate it.
When you throw around words like bloated and statist, you might consider that the American government is bloated too...but in favor of an overgrown military-industrial complex and corporate welfare instead of for the interests of average people.

France is doing just fine, evidently, and wouldn't want to make the mistakes that have been made here in recent decades.

In case you haven't noticed, the way we do things here doesn't seem to be working too well; this whole country is going down the toilet.

The European Union is on the ascendancy.