>>211652641we're not a colony in practical terms (neither our political alliances nor our economy is dominated by france), you want to see a practical colony look at subsaharan africa, french is spoken officially, a french currency is used, french companies everywhere, french military presence, part of the francophonie organization, french can enter visa-free, etc. other maghrebi countries also fulfill much of these, they're in between subsaharan africa and algeria in terms of lasting attachment to france
what we have is a linguistic and cultural attachment to france, particularly among the elites as you said, which is a remnant of colonialism that's hard to scrub off