Happy Bastille Day

by Bryan

8 comments

1 Badtux { 07.14.11 at 10:39 am }

Oh I know, it’s so embarrassing, Duffer. There you are, a normal right wing personality who, presented with starving peasants and told they are starving for lack of bread, look around in befuddlement and ask “Why don’t they just eat cake or cookies then?”, and then you get whacked over the head each year with the inevitable outcome of such a “let them eat cake” attitude. It must be rather baffling to you. If the peasants are starving, let them pull themselves up by the bootstraps that they ate for lack of food! The only problem is, that attitude invariably leads to national disaster… as you inadvertently point out in your bafflement and confusion.

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

2 Bryan { 07.14.11 at 11:44 am }

I think the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo was a bit more of a disaster, than storming a prison, and you can’t expect the poor to pay all of the taxes imposed by the state and receive none of the benefits without eventually getting annoyed. Oh, wait, you’re a Conservative and that’s exactly what you expect.

3 Suzan { 07.14.11 at 3:29 pm }

Hmmm.

Seems I remember those bourgeoisie being hit with the guillotine blade more than a few times. And you may be mixing up your definition of who were lower-class people then with now as almost everyone thinks they are middle class now (and large numbers of them hate the undeserving, lazy poor), and very few did then.

But perhaps your comprehension of these events comes from Faux Snooze or the Koch Brothers? It’s easy to get confused by them you know. It’s their SOP for the uneducated.

As you have the sound of a troll about you, i.e., one who interjects lies easily into any type of blog discussion and then tries to change the subject when called on them, I’m going to assume that you know the facts and don’t want to acknowledge them.

And I guess we should leave that “feeling” for people you mention so fondly to the capitalist owners who moved their jobs overseas (and are now stealing their safety net benefits to pay off their truly “necessary” deficits caused by the wars and tax cuts)? (If you need help with pronominal antecedents, I’ll be happy to tutor you.)

the revolution, like almost every revolution, including yours, had very little to do with the poor people, it was the bourgois middle-classes who stirred it, started it, and unleashed the dogs of war.

4 Badtux { 07.14.11 at 3:29 pm }

Ah yes, Duffer, failing to see the point once again, other than perhaps the point on your head :). My point was that if you treat your population with disdain, your population will rise up and bloodshed will happen. I in no way stated that I approved of bloodshed, I just stated what happens. It’s called CAUSE AND EFFECT. If there’s lots of humidity in the air and a cold front comes through, it rains. If there’s lots of poverty in the population and the royalty says “Let them eat cake”, bloodshed happens. Whether I approve of it or not is irrelevant, it rains (water or blood) just as hard.

I realize that in the alternate universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees that you live in, it rains when you want it to rain, and bloodshed never happens. Unfortunately, the rest of us live in the real world…

5 Bryan { 07.14.11 at 5:14 pm }

Mr. Duff, when the mass of the people are left with the choices of starving to death, or revolting in hopes of something better – a major portion will revolt. Anyone, actually any animal, will fight to survive, and survival was the issue.

Once the mob takes over there is no controlling what happens.

This, however, is a very different case than what happened in 1914. 1914 wasn’t a fight for survival, it was a deliberate breakdown with an object of starting a war.

The king of France should have provided bread if he wanted to keep his head.

6 Kryten42 { 07.15.11 at 2:39 am }

Hey… does Murdock own anything in France? Maybe he’ll end up in a *nice* French Prison for screwing the French! Ohhhhh… now that’s a NICE image and sooo deserved! 😈 Too bad we can’t sent all US & Aussie Politicians there for a 10+ year *vacation*! And France has no concept of “habeus corpeus”! They all love Paris so much, they can stay at the Palais de Justice! 😈

It’s truly too bad Le Bastille was destroyed. I hear they had some pretty good dungeons that would have been the perfect place for the lot of them! Mind you, according to recent news reports, the Palais de Justice comes pretty close! 😉 😀

I know… wishful thinking. *sigh* But you have to admit… that would be Justice! 😉 😀

7 Badtux { 07.15.11 at 10:32 am }

Duffer dear duffer, have you never heard of the UPA? In any event, Stalin maintained control over the Ukraine the old fashioned Tatar way — by simply exterminating any villages that dared rebel against his rule using external forces drawn from other nationalities in the Empire, or via mass deportations of entire regions to Siberian work camps where the Siberian wilderness itself served as their prison walls. The French royals did not have that option, their own military forces were drawn from the same peasantry that was revolting, and revolted right along with them. The Monarchy was lost when the Army either went wholesale to the Revolution or simply sat in their barracks. Hmm, sort of like Egypt this year, now that I think about it.

And I assure you, Duffer dear duffer, that I am quite aware of the dismal aftermath of every single such armed revolution that I’ve ever studied. That’s why you right-wingers disgust me so much, because your policies of “let them eat cake” and dismissive sneers at the plight of the poor always lead to such bloodshed because, here’s a clue, dear Duffer: human beings do not voluntarily just sit down and die just because you think they’re excess population if they can’t feed themselves. They will do anything — ANYTHING — they think will increase their chances of survival. Including following the sorts who always end up in charge of these violent revolutions — sorts who are not, as a rule, nice people.

As for the American War of Secession, it was not a revolution, it was a war of secession by the provincial governments of one part of a country against their lawful rulers in another part of a country, no different from our U.S. Civil War of 1861-1865 (but with a different outcome, in that the war of secession was successful). The colonial governments that revolted against English rule consisted by and large of the very same colonial ruling bodies that King George III had dismissed in order to impose direct Royal control over the colonies in order to extract additional taxes out of them to pay the Crown’s crushing debt burden (the same debt burden, I might add, which eventually forced the Crown to sue for peace when they no longer were able to meet payroll of their mercenary armies or hire replacements for those who deserted or were defeated in battle). The people who led the American War of Secession were already successful politicians and leaders of their communities, not starving peasant rabble. That undoubtedly accounts for why its outcome was different from that of bloody revolutions — its outcome was different because it wasn’t a bloody revolution.

– Badtux the History Teacher Penguin

8 Bryan { 07.15.11 at 9:25 pm }

Mr. Duff you said “greatest disasters’, and World Wars I and II [in many ways caused by the World War I peace treaty] were much greater disasters.

There were no large corporations in the colonies, and the largest protest concerning taxation was the Boston Tea Party which was the result of a tax break given to a true antecedent of the Koch corporate tactics – the British East India Company by the British government.

You obviously haven’t spent much time studying the late 19th – early 20th century history of the Russian Empire, or the multiple revolutions that occurred in Russia, or the reasons behind them, or the number of individuals actually involved. Of course, you didn’t have officers of the White Army as professors, as I did, and don’t speak the language, as I do.

I wouldn’t advise telling a Ukrainian that they ‘did nothing’ when they were being starved. They tend to take such slurs personally. They even formed a division of the Waffen SS to fight Stalin.