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.

The rich are on a Tax Strike

I've made this point many times, but it's time to make it again:

the High and the Mighty, The Gods Who Walk Among Us® are refusing to pay taxes on behalf of the Common Good. Period.

They won't do it, and you can't make them. Nyah, nyah.

Of course, you cannot have a successful society on this basis. Our leaders have been attempting to negotiate a compromise with Our Betters, to no avail. They will not pay to support the Common Good. They will not. They will not. They will not. And nothing we can do can make them. Nothing.

I've pointed out that this was the situation in France when the Nobles refused to be taxed to pay for Louis XV's incessant wars, and told the King to make the Common People pay instead.

The King got all he could out of the Common People before they were completely destitute, but it wasn't enough, and his successor, Louis XVI, had to call the Estates-General to come up with some additional revenues from the Nobles as well as the Common People. They took it upon themselves instead to declare an end to the Ancien Régime, and to separate the heads of any number of Royalty and Nobility from their bodies. As I've said, it didn't end well for Louis and his family, nor for many of the Highest and the Mightiest in the Royaume de France.

We know this to be true in the context of France, and maybe to some extent (who knows) in the odd case of Romanov Russia. Maybe in a few places here and there in Asia, Latin America. Europe. Africa. Now and then, here and there. Tumult and civil unrest appear. "They say they want a Revolution." And any nation worth its salt will put it down. Hard.

Compared to much of the rest of the Western and Near-Eastern Worlds, the United States has almost unimaginably calm in the midst of worst economic catastrophe most Americans have ever experienced. As the Ruling Class consolidates its wealth and position -- in the face of increasing misery for the masses -- the People do not rise up. They protest, yes, and they march and they demonstrate and they blog, but they don't rise up to seriously challenge the Rulers or even to slightly inconvenience them.

We have what must be the most rigidly courteous protest community on the face of the earth.

It is bizarre.

Even the thought of (ew) rudeness makes people take to their fainting couches clutching their pearls. We cannot do that, it would be wrong, and we are better than our opponents!

Bizarre. Telling.

The Gods Who Walk Among Us® have so completely bamboozled the People to believe that their salvation can only come through subservience to those who rule them that the very idea of The Demand (which is a key to any successful action or protest) -- that, for example, the Rich pay at least their fair share of taxes -- is too direct to be considered. The Demand, not "request" or "suggestion," that taxes on the Rich be increased is therefore not made.

And so we're stuck, and we'll stay here until the next collapse, and we'll wonder why this keeps happening, and then it will happen again. Until there is nothing left to collapse, and then it will be time to dust off the tumbrils and oil up the guillotines, and everyone will wonder why nobody predicted it.

Bizarre.

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.

Price Shock

Haven't been to the supermarket since I've been sick, so I faced a good deal of price shock when I went to get some Valentines and other supplies at my local discount food market yesterday. Practically every item I buy regularly had gone up in price. Very few had remained stable, none had gone down.

Some of the price rises were significant, 40% or more, and in the case of head lettuce, the price had more than doubled. Bananas and some baked goods were about the only items that seemed to be about the same. Meat prices in general were about 20% more; dairy was pushing 30% more. Frozen items were all up 15% - 20% or more. Bread was, in some cases, 50% more; typically, it was about 30% more. Some snack crackers had doubled in price. Canned goods were mostly 10%-15% more.

I could go on.

I knew from the news that global commodity prices were being driven up by speculators and that the cost of basic supplies for poor and marginal households around the world had become a crushing -- and in many cases an impossible -- burden which has given rise to some of the "unrest" we're seeing so often repeated. The fact that I was seeing these price increases reflected in my own grocery bill is in no way comparable to the real hardships so many people are facing -- including right here at home -- thanks to speculators, weather anomalies, crop failures and so on.

Still, it's a shock.

Also, of course, gasoline prices are shooting up toward $4 a gallon again (at the closest station to us in California, regular gas was $3.49.9 yesterday; it's probably more today), driven in part by hedge funds and speculators as before. This time, however, they are moving more slowly and deliberately to extract whatever "surplus" they can from the American economy. Well, from the Underclass at least.

This tells me we are headed toward another crash, soon. I became convinced that it was the speculator-driven rise in oil and food prices that triggered the financial collapse in 2008 -- ordinary people could not keep up with the price rises, and they cut back suddenly. When they did, the financial house of cards built on ever greater levels of debt collapsed.

We're headed down the same path now. Ordinary people haven't even remotely recovered from the previous crash; in fact, millions and millions more are being forced into what looks like perpetual poverty year over year, and if the deficit hawks get their way (they will, of course), the pace of impoverishment will accelerate, and the numbers will be off the charts.

Those already in poverty at home and abroad cannot even hope to keep up. Their lives and livelihoods are already shattered, for many, permanently. The only real hope they have is to fight back much as those abroad have been doing all over Europe and the Middle East. There's no guarantee of success, and there are many risks to life and limb for those who choose to resist rather than succumb.

But there is no other way. The domestic and global aristos are not going to stop their pillage and plunder on their own. They cannot be sated with "voluntarily" delivered treasure. They know no moral restraint. Another crash will only slow them down temporarily. The only thing the People can do to bring this careening overclass to its senses (if it has any) is to rise up and make it impossible for them -- or at least extremely uncomfortable for them -- to continue on their global campaign of looting and destruction.

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.]

They're not like us

This is how they live:



It's a relatively new house in McLean, Virginia (suburban DC) now on the market listed at $17,000,000. This is the kind of price you expect in entertainment and finance communities, but in Washington?



We don't live like this because we can't afford to on the one hand, and many of us wonder why anyone would want to live like this on the other. And no, this is not one of Saddam's palaces. It's a suburban palace in McLean.



Too opulent? Well, try this one, only $15,000,000:








Still too luxe? Well, try this one, only $5,000,000:









All these properties are in the Washington DC/Northern Virginia/Maryland area. They're just a sample of the newer manors and mansions and palaces that have been built in the area the last few years to house the hoity and the toity. There are many, many more older manses and demesnes all over DC and the areas surrounding it that have long housed Old Money People who, in America, believe it is their right to rule. Their wealth and their position convey automatic Power.

And Our Government is their servant. Specifically their servant, not yours or mine.

The entire population could rise as one tomorrow (but of course they won't) and still "Our Government" would be "Their Government," because 1) they demand it; and 2) they believe they bought and paid for it.

We've seen the crippling corruption of the Congress and the White House practically every day that Health Care Reform has been addressed or discussed. It is mindboggling to see Our Government -- which is really Theirs -- consistently dismiss the interests of the People in pursuit of abundant campaign cash from people who live like the would be seigneurs for whom these estates were built.

And yet, that's America today.

Time for tumbrils and guillotines?

Too Late for Tumbrils?

I always had this notion of a Grand Parade of Tumbrils down Pennsylvania Avenue with all the hucksters and (neo)conmen who have been robbing and killing and raping with such utter impunity for years and years trussed up and hauled forth to their disposition on the steps of the Capitol.

But no.

We're still too polite for that.

It should be glaringly obvious by now that the Current Administration has no intention whatsoever of interfering in any way with the continued payment of extortion to the Masters of the Universe who order them around just as they ordered around the Busheviks in the Previous Regime.

It should be further obvious by now that the Current Administration has no intention of doing much of anything to provide more than minimal (and hard-to-get) aid and succor to the millions of proles who are down on their luck and out on their asses right now, nor for the millions more yet to be surplussed.

And the People continue to take it.

It may well be too late for tumbrils or any effective Peoples' Action against the looters and murderers who control this country with an iron grip.

Who could have imagined...?