Who Are The Invisible Committee and Why Are They Saying Those Things?

Adbusters had something to say about "The Coming Insurrection"

"The Invisible Committee" was apparently discovered by Glenn Beck back when he had some sort of TeeVee Show that I never saw.

The (Alleged) IC produced a manifesto of sorts in France in 2005 called "The Coming Insurrection."

Supposedly, the Occupy is that Insurrection.

Well. "The Coming Insurrection" (2005) is so beautiful and so French, if you're old enough, you might think you've fallen into a François Truffaut/Jean-Luc Goddard collaborative movie written by Françoise Sagan on the set as it is being shot.

Yes, of course, our Vanguardists and Insurrectionists are no doubt immersed in its poetry and floating through its imagery.

A few passages will suffice to give a sense of the whole:

Struggles create the language in which a new order expresses itself. But there is nothing like that today. Europe is now a continent gone broke that shops secretly at discount stores and has to fly budget airlines if it wants to travel at all. No “problems” framed in social terms admit of a solution. The questions of “pensions,” of “job security,” of “young people” and their “violence” can only be held in suspense while the situation these words serve to cover up is continually policed for signs of further unrest. Nothing can make it an attractive prospect to wipe the asses of pensioners for minimum wage. Those who have found less humiliation and more advantage in a life of crime than in sweeping floors will not turn in their weapons, and prison won’t teach them to love society. Cuts to their monthly pensions will undermine the desperate pleasure-seeking of hordes of retirees, making them stew and splutter about the refusal to work among an ever larger section of youth. And finally, no guaranteed income granted the day after a quasi-uprising will be able to lay the foundation of a new New Deal, a new pact, a new peace. The social feeling has already evaporated too much for that.

As an attempted solution, the pressure to ensure that nothing happens, together with police surveillance of the territory, will only intensify. The unmanned drone that flew over Seine-Saint-Denis last July 14th – as the police later confirmed – presents a much more vivid image of the future than all the fuzzy humanistic projections. That they were careful to assure us that the drone was unarmed gives us a clear indication of the road we’re headed down. The territory will be partitioned into ever more restricted zones. Highways built around the borders of “problem neighborhoods” already form invisible walls closing off those areas off from the middle-class subdivisions. Whatever defenders of the Republic may think, the control of neighborhoods “by the community” is manifestly the most effective means available. The purely metropolitan sections of the country, the main city centers, will go about their opulent lives in an ever more crafty, ever more sophisticated, ever more shimmering deconstruction. They will illuminate the whole planet with their glaring neon lights, as the patrols of the BAC and private security companies (i.e. paramilitary units) proliferate under the umbrella of an increasingly shameless judicial protection.

The impasse of the present, everywhere in evidence, is everywhere denied. There will be no end of psychologists, sociologists, and literary hacks applying themselves to the case, each with a specialized jargon from which the conclusions are especially absent. It’s enough to listen to the songs of the times – the asinine “alt-folk” where the petty bourgeoisie dissects the state of its soul, next to declarations of war from Mafia K’1 Fry – to know that a certain coexistence will end soon, that a decision is near.

I read it in English, but I hear it in French, and it's gorgeous. Horrible in its truth and gorgeous in its veracity. If this were the Manifesto of the Revolution, no one would ever rise, they would simply step out of their ordinary lifeways and into something else again, as easily as changing a sweater. And everything that used to be would suddenly stop dead in its tracks, like one of those movies, while you and the rest of the Insurrectionists assemble a New Reality in the midst of the frozen Old Reality from the excess and debris all around you. And then you dance.

It's a beautiful vision. Why would anyone want to resist it?

But then, there are always critics:

Just because someone expresses themself poorly and comes from France it doesn't mean they are somehow secretly saying something profound. This work getting a good review from Glenn Beck and various collegiate wanks might sell copies among supine and endlessly pliant Enemies-Of-All-Authority-With-A-Capital-A, but if it's possible to judge a work by the readers who are most enthusastic for it there will probably not be much of use in it in regards to collective class politics, among real people, who are forced to work for a living, in the real world, outside of a safe and cosy ideological hothouse of simultaneously sheepish and posturing riot porn consumers...

So there. Take that, ya Frenchy pooftahs.

And that's one of the nicer ones. Nonetheless, marchons! Marchons!

1789, Folks. 1789.

More and more, it's looking like we're on the cusp of some kind of revolt or revolution. Whether it will be as thoroughgoing and overwhelming as the French and Russian Revolutions is impossible to say. But there is no doubt that an encompassing movement toward "reform" and "transformation" is taking hold.

The initial salvo was fired by the Gingrichites in their determination to undercut, hamstring and then impeach Bill Clinton from the Presidency while overturning whatever was left of the Progressive Revolution that had transformed government in this country decades previously. For those who lived through it, Gingrich-time is fairly recent history, and yet it was fifteen years ago now, and it's not as if there haven't been titanic developments since then, not as if -- to continue the metaphor -- the Titanic hasn't sunk, in fact, and some of us are in the lifeboats trying to survive with no rescue in sight.

What do you do then?

Populist outrage is normal under the circumstances, but the genius of the TeaBagger sponsors was to be able to channel ordinary populist outrage against the others who are suffering rather than toward those who are causing the suffering -- not just causing it but profiting from it.

When I saw the video of Obama being confronted by TeaBaggers in Iowa, I thought, "You know, this really is a pre-revolutionary act. I wonder if those who brought this 'movement' into being are prepared for where it could lead?" It can easily get out of their hands, after all.



Polemicists and propagandists are having a field day, of course. The point of their screeds seems to be to discredit the electoral process itself and to denounce all the candidates because, the best you can get through the system we have is the lesser of two evils. And who wants that? If your argument is that the system cannot produce anything better than the greater or lesser "evil," then your proposition is essentially that not only is the system "evil" but so is the government that results. This frame of reference all but requires the overthrow of the system and the government -- because they are both... "evil." Choosing the Lesser Evil doesn't end the evility of the whole.

By 1789, Le Royaume de France had reached its financial limits -- in no small measure due to its financial support of the American Revolution. More to the point, however, the Ancien Régime had reached its political limits. The King and his Court had nowhere to turn and nowhere to go to get out of their political and financial impasse -- except to call an extraordinary session of the Estates General, something that hadn't happened in 175 years, but which had to be done in 1789 because there was no other option but to have the representatives of the People decide among themselves (with the support of the Crown, of course) what to do about the crisis.

At the time, the Ancien Régime was roughly three hundred years old, having come into being through the consolidation of the territory and rule of France under the Bourbons beginning in the late 1400's. It was a drawn-out process, however. We could say it was something like the drawn out process of establishing and consolidating the United States, which came into existence in 1776, didn't achieve independence until 1783, didn't have a functional central government until 1788-89, and continued the expansion, consolidation, and integration of domestic territory until 1959.

And, like France under the Bourbons, the United States has sought to project its power and influence far and wide -- including through colonial and imperial wars of aggression.

France began hitting the financial wall during the reign of Louis XV whose incessant wars (and the upkeep of the Royal Court and His Majesty's Presence and Mistresses) essentially bankrupted the state. Louis tried to solve the financial problem by asking his nobles to pay taxes. They laughed to scorn; they told him to get any money he needed for wars and upkeep from the common people -- where all taxes are ultimately paid from anyway. The nobles' excuse for not paying taxes was that it cost so much for them to hie their households to Versailles (which is where they lived, not necessarily well, either) and to wait in attendance on the King that they had no other ready money with which to pay additional revenues to the Treasury. Let the peasants pay.

And so it would be.

Of course disaster could not be held at bay forever, and as the ruin of France's peasantry continued, hunger and disease and misery stalked the land. When the price of bread skyrocketed due to the unwise deregulation of grain and flour markets, the French people commenced to starve -- and to riot and to raise more and more tumult.

Calling the Estates General was seen as a way to manipulate the masses into quiescence while forcing ever more revenue out of them. "See, you are being listened to!"

Yes, of course.

Of course things went awry almost immediately. There was the Bastille Incident; the incident at Versailles when the fish-wives of Paris stormed the Palace, killed several of the guards, and paraded their heads around on pikes. This would become a theme. The nobles continued to refuse to pay any significant amount of tax. The King dithered. The representatives of the People became infuriated. And soon enough, there was a revolt: it was the revolt of the first two estates, the clergy and the nobility, against the representatives of the masses. Wouldn't you know.

And that's when the world turned upside down. The representatives of the People (actually, it was mostly the representatives of the tiny French middle-class, but who's counting, right?) formed themselves into the National Assembly and declared that they were in charge now and demanded the King's assent. Which they got. This was no small accomplishment and it put the nobles and the clergy on the spot.

Things had gotten out of hand, and there was no way back to what now looked like the stability of Royal Rule from the Throne.

The path forward was uncharted. The American example was not really applicable to France, and the philosophes of France were not exactly masters of political organization. All that was understood was that the Old Ways could not continue.

The working out of New Ways took a very long time, and there would be rivers of blood shed along the way.

Yet most of the New Ways developed by the French through trial and much error are still in place throughout Europe and a significant portion of the rest of the world. No matter how much we might deplore the violence of the French Revolution(s), the social and political structure that they eventually settled on has served them well.

I noted quite a while ago that we were entering a period that resembled the prelude to the collapse of the Ancien Régime in France, and now I've taken to seeing growing parallels with the Crisis of 1789. We're almost there.

I am still convinced that if there is a widespread revolt, the Revolution will be led from the Right. And what we will witness is factions of Rightists fighting among themselves for pre-eminence in a more or less Post-Modern variation on Fascism which will effectively be direct corporate rule over us all. We are getting there step-by-step. The only real question is whether the final steps to this end result will be accomplished through peaceful acquiescence or through command and violence.

I don't have an answer at this point.

More to the Point: We Are Ruled by Idiots

Le Roi du Déluge, Louis XVI

The calls for Revolt and Revolution are growing more and more strident and shrill every day. As the upshot of the Debt Crisis Crisis Deal settles in -- and there is much more of this Satan Sandwich to come -- people are OUTRAGED!!!™, and not simply in the Left-o-sphere, oh no.

The OUTRAGE!!!™ is spreading this time well beyond the comfortable confines of Blogtopia® (h/t Skippy the Bush Kangaroo) and into the masses, and it is not being "injected" by the handful of constitutional malcontents who see it as their job to stir up discontent.

No, this time the Anger and the Bile in the Gorge is spreading nationally, among all kinds of people, most of whom have no interest in or contact with the Blog-o-sphere, Left or Right (or Decline to State), due to the fact that the People's Screwage is, like that in Wisconsin earlier this year, right out in the open -- with much more to come -- was deliberated for months, and it is a deeply, profoundly disturbing vision Our Rulers have set for the rest of us.

The Deal essentially institutionalizes the Status Quo -- which is miserable for millions upon millions of Americans, more every day. "More misery for more people!" is its obvious motto. There is not only nothing whatever in the Deal to alleviate any of this misery, there is nothing on the horizon to do so. Quite literally, just as in most of the West, the People's well being is being sacrificed, right out in the open, on the altar of finance and greed.

"Hope" is changed to "Fury."

The Fury has yet to be channeled into into a Revolt that can actually overcome the Power that is being consolidated and reinforced every second of every day. One after another, the stream of revolts at home and abroad this year has failed to actually reverse -- or even to substantively modify -- the March of Oppression and Greed which is overwhelming simple common sense.

How long will it be before the metaphorical calls for Tumbrils and Guillotines are replaced by the real thing?

Whatever the course of events:

We are ruled by idiots.

Discovery: It's Actually Kind of Hard to Prevent What's Already Taken Place

One of the more intriguing conceits of the Modern Progressive Movement ("We're Not Libertarians, So Stop Saying That!") is the consistency of effort aimed at preventing what has already occurred, whether it be economic catastrophe, global warming, cuts in Medicare and Medicaid or reductions in Social Security benefits, Imperial wars of aggression, the End of Civil Liberties -- or what have you.

After a while, it begins to feel like Modern Progressives are always fighting losing battles.

It's not just losing battles, though. It's more insidious than that. It's perfectly reactionary because it lets the Barbarians (as it were) set the agenda for everything. The Modern Progressive merely responds, and the response is almost always the same: preserve and/or extend the status quo.

Which is not...actually... "progressive". But that's another issue.

I was looking at some of the pictures of the tumult in Europe, particularly the police action against protestors in Barcelona. Of course, it reminded me of the Old Days when Americans used to do things like this, actually take risks -- physical risks at that -- to Make a Point about this or that issue of importance to the People.



They'd get their heads knocked in, they'd be gassed and bludgeoned and they'd be dragged off to "detention" for greater or shorter lengths of time while the Authorities "struggled" to restore or maintain "order." It was the way things were done. Not necessarily routinely -- because most sane people don't like to confront a more powerful Authority if they can avoid it -- but it happened often enough and was bothersome enough to The Powers That Be to make the point of popular displeasure with actions of the High and the Mighty.

These protests have been going on in Europe for a good long time now; they actually pre-date the Arab Spring, and I think they were in truth the direct inspiration for the protests in North Africa that brought down the corrupt regimes of Tunisia and Egypt. (No, it really wasn't because of WikiLeaks' Leaks. Really. It wasn't.) The Spanish protests have taken a leaf from the Egyptian ones -- ah, synergy! -- in that the protestors have been camping out in the squares of the major cities to make their presence known and their voices heard above the clattering din of their rulers who are scrambling to comply with the dictates of the various Euro-banksters who have determined that the living standards of your average European sod is way too high and must be reduced sharply in order to ensure the comfort and convenience (and continued financial lubrication) of the regimes and their sponsors.

So. The August Authorities assert themselves against the People, and we have scenes like the one above. Or this one:



But as I say, we used to have protests like this in this country fairly often but we don't have this sort of thing -- much -- any more.

It is said that Americans pretty much stopped protesting in this manner (except for the Anarchists and their Black Bloc associates, of course -- the Black Bloc being widely understood to be provocateurs) when it was realized that the High and the Mighty here pay no attention to tumult among the rabble, and besides -- even worse -- the media won't cover it.

I mean, after all, the whole point of having a Protest is to get on the TeeVee. Ask Medea Benjamin (who I happen to have enormous admiration for, so don't take this as a slam. She will put herself at risk to make whatever point she feels is necessary. And she'll often enough get on the TeeVee when she does it. Yay, Medea!)

It's not that no one in the United States will do these sorts of things. It's more a question of who does it, when, what they are protesting, and to what object. Americans can sometimes be persuaded to participate in very polite weekend protests, for example, that are arranged primarily for their convenience. Yet strangely, protest by convenience isn't very effective.

Of course earlier this year, enduring protests erupted in Wisconsin over the Governor's plan to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees and to restrict the ability of their unions to collect dues and function.



This was actually one of the most inspiring protest movements we've seen in this country in a generation, and it led to more and more protests around the Midwest and eventually all around the country. Solidarity!

And then it petered out. The energy behind it hasn't been entirely extinguished, but the message has been thoroughly muddled as the protests led to a) political reaction, ie: the recall elections in Wisconsin which may or may not be successful, but whether they are or not won't be known until later this summer; b) court action, ie: delay in implementation of some aspects of the Governor's plan until the courts have resolved the issue (with the prediction that the state supreme court will carry out the orders of its billionaire sponsors... sigh).

In other words, most of what the Governor of Wisconsin set out to do has been accomplished in spite of the protests, just as most of what the Governors set out to do in other states that have experienced these kinds of protests has been accomplished. The protests have been effective in raising awareness and consciousness among those who have been paying attention, but they have not been successful in preventing the actions that are being protested.

It's kind of hard to prevent what's already taken place, eh?

And in essence, that's how the Barbarians (as it were) consistently get their way. How they are able to make consistent progress on their plots and plans while "progressives" stand still or beat a retreat.

This has been the constant... error... of "progressive" action. It is not -- for the most part -- action at all. It is reaction to the outrages of Our Rulers. This dates back at least to the advent of the Bushevik Regime, when tens of thousands of protestors gathered in Washington to protest his inauguration (ignored by the media of course), when in fact the deed was already a done deal. The protest needed to occur previously, and it needed to put forward Something Better.

What happened instead was that those who were convinced that Bush Rule was the shiznits were assembling, often armed, all over the country, and they were DEMANDING their way or the highway. It was either Bush on the Throne or Teh Revolution. And by golly, they got their way.

"Progressives" retreated to the metaphorical shadows where they have been ever since, trying mightily from the shadows to revive something -- through the political process and the courts -- that really doesn't function anymore.

We have been witness to, and in some cases unwitting participants in, the extinguishing of the American Experiment in Constitutional Self-Government.

For all intents and purposes, the Republic is... over.

There is a piquant irony in that Obama has tried rather strenuously to restore the Constitutional Authority of the Congress (and to restrict some of the overreach of the activist courts), and it's not worked out well. The function of the Congress was so corrupted prior to Obama's advent on the Throne that his efforts to restore it to a more traditional -- and Constitutional -- role have led to some truly appalling results (which I won't get into here) that have had the effect of further alienating the People from their Government, especially the Congress and the Courts.

In other words, Representative Government no longer works.

It's a bad joke.

Under the circumstances, the People have the Power to essentially dismiss the Government and come up with something different (which may or may not require active Revolution). But the American People aren't doing that. Instead, they are largely passive, much as the Roman public was as the Republic was extinguished in all but name and the preservation of institutional formalities for centuries after the establishment of the Imperium.

So if we're actually going to make progress under these circumstances, we have to come to grips with the way things really are, and what is really necessary to change things for the Better.

Starting with, oh I don't know, demanding better.

Why not?

The status quo isn't good enough.

Considering Yet Again "What to Do?"

[Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosophe)

Yes. Well.

The Osama Thing has certainly thrown a spanner in the works. Of course, Goldstein/Osama could have been liquidated at any time, anywhere at all. The fact that he was done to death in Pakistan at a compound near the capital, in the midst of any number of Pakistani military installations is evocative to be sure, but of what is still a mystery.

There are those who will maintain that Osama/Goldstein actually died of his kidney disease in 2002, and he's only been "kept alive" as a Monstrous Image of Hate for the convenience of The Powers That Be.

If the reports are to be believed, some kind of Death Dealing was done at the Compound in Bilal Town, some number of men and at least one woman were "taken out" as they say and some sort of new-fangled Stealth Helicopter was left in ruins in the courtyard and hanging on the wall of the place (as if to advertise it's presence and peculiarity.) Whether the Devil Himself, Mister Osama was there and was dealt the "double tap" that is now in the descriptions of the Incident -- one to the head, one to the chest to make sure he's good and dead -- who knows?

Since no physical evidence of his death by Navy SEAL gunfire in Pakistan is to be forthcoming, much as there was no physical evidence of his existence on this Earth after late 2001, we are unlikely to know what really happened with this man, or when, or where.

Does it matter?

For historians and recorders of the Past, most certainly. For the Future, not so much.

It appears that TPTB are actually moving relatively quickly to turn the page, to end the Era of Osama once and for all and Move On. This may or may not lead to a withdrawal from Afghanistan and an end to the highly discriminate -- but often erroneous -- bombing of civilian targets (alleged to be "Taliban") in the Wild Areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. My own suspicion is that there will be no withdrawal as such, but there may well be a return to base such as has taken place in Iraq, in which troop numbers in the field are reduced and their actions restricted, their presence keyed much lower than before. But they're still there. Ready.

There is an Empire to consolidate and preserve after all. And that won't suddenly go away.

Another Goldstein will arise now that the former one is at the bottom of the Arabian Sea, or is it the Persian Gulf? Somewhere under the ocean They say. But They Say a lot of things, and much of what They Say is lies.

They're so used to getting away with it, all this huffing and puffing at skeptics that's coming out of the White House is more than a little amusing. It's partly Show, of course, but there are genuine reasons for skepticism that have nothing to do with political persuasion. They have to do with bitter experience of... lies.

The important question is not about how Awful the Government is, nor whether an when another Goldstein will arise. The important question is what to do about it. What can we do about it? Should we do anything about it?

I've reached pretty much the limit of my endurance of people who simply want to complain about the Awful Government and its many minions, who make a career of mocking the powdered and perfumed courtiers who pass for American Mass Media -- yet who seem to desperately want to become part of that exclusive class of servants and minions.

Yes, we know. The Government is Awful. All governments, by their very nature, are Awful. They lie. Their minions are craven. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Yes. That is the way it is. Now what do we do about it?

Yammer incessantly?

Some time back, I pointed out that the period we are in resembles that of Louis XV, not Louis XVI, in that there is much anxiety and much grumbling, and there are occasional outbreaks of unrest, but there is no real revolutionary fervor, not yet, not among the People. What we have right now is the Revolt of the Rich and their refusal to be taxed to pay for the many wars and other indignities they insist must be forced on the rest of us.

The Rich revolt first, then the People revolt against the Rich. Or so it goes.

Of course, the political Revolution that established the United States grew directly out of the English Civil Wars of the century before, which had nothing to do with "the People" (as if there were any such concept at the time) and what motivated the American revolutionaries politically was quite different than the motivations for the French Revolution which came after the American one, but not long after, and there were numerous and close relationships between France and the interests of the French Government in the New World, and between French philosophers and American revolutionaries. Some of the American revolutionaries were educated in France or in French Flanders. But the French influence on the Revolution in what would become the United States would occur primarily during the long reign of Louis XV; by the time his grandson, Louis XVI, got to the French Throne, the revolutionary pattern had already been set in America, and its French connections were setting the stage for Revolution in France in due time.

But why did these revolts and revolutions take place at all? Arguably, things weren't so bad in either France or Britain's American colonies that Revolution was a necessity. No, things weren't good enough, government was corrupt and craven, popular representation was limited or non-existent, and force was being employed to "secure the realm" from... some kind of evil.

The educated middle class was restive, the proletariat was apathetic, and the aristocracy was rotten to the core.

The monarchies in both Britain and France were tottering institutions, with a Mad King on the Throne in Britain, and an ineffective one in France.

The situation was ripe.

Not so much now and in the short term at any rate, Americans are working overtime to throw away the Enlightenment -- out of which so much Revolutionary fervor, for good and ill, was generated. Instead of progress, the culture, thought, and future of the Nation seems to be reverting to some sort of superstitious Neo-Feudal ideal. Those in Revolt in other words, are headed backwards.

They openly desire to go backwards, they reject the very ideas and ideals that inform the present, and they yearn -- some desperately -- for a "return" to a theocratic autocracy such as they imagine ruled in Biblical times.

While the current revolt is headed in that direction, and would be doing so whether or not there was a Goldstein figure to Hate, and it's not the Revolution yet.

That is still to come. And no matter how we get there, constant complaining about the way things are won't do it.

-------------------------------

For review: The Social Contract

Le Roi -- il se est vivant!

[I've never been very good with reflexives... sigh.]


Over the years, those of us of a more rebellious bent have often alluded to the tumbrils and guillotines, the French Revolution, and the end of the Ancien Régime in our many unsuccessful attempts to rouse the rabble to La Révolution Maintenant! And of course Americans continue to sit on their hands, stare blankly at their flat screens and munch contentedly on their take and bakes or their bowls of hot butter-flavor microwavable popcorn.

The movement to Revolt seems to get nowhere.

Blaming it on the People is standard practice. They are Too Lazy and Too Ignorant to get off their ample duffs and DO anything about the Monstrous OUTRAGE!!!!™ that is our daily lot.

Meanwhile, life for ordinary Americans continues to deteriorate at an alarming clip, the seas continue to rise, and Our Rulers continue to ignore the People while serving their corporate masters slavishly.

Of course there are signs of incipient revolt everywhere, from the rabid rightists sucked into the TeaBagger movement to the impending revolt of air travelers over the invasions of personal space and privacy now standard with the TSA.

We can see that even The Powers That Be are engaged in a revolt of sorts in their refusal to have their taxes raised to fund the Government, indeed their refusal to pay taxes at all.

That last, of course, is the key to the parallels between the econo-political situation in America today and that of France during the reign of Louis XV, not Louis XVI. Of course the parallel isn't exact; these things never are.

But we shouldn't be blind to the similarities.

France's empire had reached a zenith during the previous reign. Louis XV -- great grandson of his predecessor Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil -- ascended the throne in 1715 at the age of five and he reigned for the nearly the next 60 years. He ruled for almost 50 of those years and for at least 30 of them, he was fully in charge of the government of France and its Empire, although it would be wrong to say he was an absolute monarch.

Louis XV's reign seemed full of hope and promise, but it ended as a huge disappointment. Louis is said to have been irresolute, dissipated, and irresponsible, and yet from some points of view he was anything but.

What you can say about him is that he tried and largely failed to reverse the slide of la Belle France into the economic and political turmoil and chaos that would lead to the French Revolution some 15 years after his death.

His reign was the predicate.

He did what he thought he could. It wasn't enough. He couldn't do more, at least in some respects, because France's political and governmental institutions were too rotten and too corrupt to cope with the needs of the nation and its people. There was no way to go forward without overturning the whole system, a Revolution that would come in due time, but one that could not be pressed before its time.

When the institutions of the State don't work, there's not a lot you can do to correct matters that have gone awry. That was the case with France under Louis XV. Yet life could go on, apparently as usual. Active rebellion from Below was all but inconceivable; such rebellion as there was during the reign of Louis XV was at the top, not at the bottom of French society, and it was a rebellion of the Church and the Aristocracy against paying taxes to fund the Government.

To me, it's obvious how that relates to our situation today and for long years since. Our own Corporotocracy refuses to pay taxes sufficient to keep the Government from gross insolvency, and has essentially declared that any enhanced government revenues must come solely from the Little People, those of Lesser Means.

Wars must continue unabated, fully funded. Subsidies for the rich and well-connected must be maintained. Programs for the benefit of the poor and middle classes must be eliminated or "scaled back."

This is the American equivalent of France's Rebellion of the Rich under Louis XV. The People's complaints were being "heard" in the Parlement of France, a very fractious and polarized body, but the upshot was that the economic burden on the People was increased rather than mitigated.

All the time, Louis was trying to find some way through all the aristocratic bullshit, but he could not imagine doing anything outside the Institutional Norms of his day, and as the institutions could not encompass anything outside those norms, his efforts failed.

The People of France knew full well what was going on, but they didn't know what to do about it. Nothing they tried seemed to work, but then there was little imagination in their efforts to remedy their deteriorating situation. This lack of imagination was mirrored by their Betters who simply used the economic and financial crises of Louis' reign to enhance their own position while the People starved.

After years of rhetorical animosity toward the King in the Parlement, in 1757 a man named Damiens decided to take matters into his own hands one evening at Versailles* and stabbed the King as he was about to enter his carriage and canter off to his petit palais, Le Trianon, in the Gardens.

Of course this act of lèse-majesté was shocking (!!) to the People of France, and Damiens paid with his life in a very grotesque -- but apparently highly entertaining -- public torture and execution in Paris anon.

The King, it is said, was disconsolate at the whole affair and resolved to change his ways forthwith. Good luck with that. In fact despite Louis' reform objectives, nothing got better. And despite the entertainment value of brutal public executions, the People were not amused with the course of events.

They simply did not know what to do, and they would not come to the understanding that they could do something about their plight until they witnessed the example of the American Revolution across the seas.

THAT was the catalyst for the French Revolution -- and many other revolutions to come.

Ordinary Americans will not be able to remedy their own plight without a catalyzing event that shows them the way. I used to think that would be the uprisings in Eastern Europe, the Philippines, and eventually the Soviet Union itself. But as those events fade into the mists of time, I'm not so sure Americans even remember them, let alone see them as catalysts.

At the moment, then, perhaps there isn't a contemporary example of "what to do." But one will come in time. No doubt...

[NB: Isn't it astonishing that literally anyone and everyone had access to the Palace at Versailles during the reigns of the Bourbons? It was quite possible for individuals of any -- or no -- estate to approach and petition the King or his ministers as they perambulated around the chateau, and the idea of preventing the People from doing so was inconceivable. The absurd levels of Security -- and the Security Theater -- behind which our own government operates would be considered unmanly and insane by the monarchs of yore.]