Tired of Writing about Wokeness. Part One.
Could writing about Marie Antoinette be a piece of cake? We’ll see.
Isn’t there anything else to write about? Nature? Birds, flowers, insects. And there it is: insects. As soon as I think of insects I think of the bugs that my great-grandchildren will be eating when they own nothing, and dutifully report how happy they are, knowing what the result of reporting unhappiness might be.
But there I go again, writing about Wokeness. As if there is nothing else to write about in the whole known universe.
Okay, art. I can write about art. I could probably even write about art without mentioning Wokeness, though it wouldn’t necessarily be easy.
But I don’t want to write about art right now, and I certainly don’t want to write about Wokeness, for I wouldn’t have begun to write this multi-part Substack piece unless I was sick and tired of writing about Wokeness.
So then, let’s take a look at some of the other things I’be been writing about. This Substack piece, like most of my Substack pieces, is written under the general heading of No More than a Village, inspired by the Twentieth Century Toronto English professor turned media guru, Marshall McLuhan, who predicted that TV would contract the whole world into a global village.
But I’ve started other writing series, which I’ve kind of put on the back burner.
One series is called The Lafayette Leftist. It’s about the French Revolution and the role of the Marquis de Lafayette in both the American Revolution and the one in his native France. It’s also about the original meaning of Leftist versus Rightist, which has been grossly distorted over time.
So, can I write about the French Revolution and the Marquis and the Left-Right paradigm without getting distracted into… you know? (If you don’t know, read the title of today’s upload.)
Let me give it a shot.
I can start by writing about Marie Antoinette. She was an interesting lady, and there’s a PBS special series on her which I’ve been watching. We can start with her trip to the guillotine and work backwards.
Marie Antoinette was the wife of the French king Louis XVI; she was beheaded on October 16, 1793, after a trial by French Leftists who had gone rogue. Those Leftists had begun as (sort of) a movement defending the interests of the Third Estate, a French category for those who were not members of either the aristocracy or the established Church. Early on those revolutionary Leftists had been inspired by the American Revolution, but soon became corrupt, power-mad, and bloodthirsty.
Leftists who go rogue? Yes. Quite an interesting topic, but I promise to not to write about today’s rogue Leftists, and only stick to those in France in the Eighteenth Century.
So, I’ll get back to why Marie Antoinette was sent to die by decapitation under the guillotine, but first I’ll write a little about her background.
At the time the Austrian Empire was big stuff (it was finally abolished politically in World War One) and it was competing with France and other countries as to who would rule the world. (Uh-oh: rule the world. Yes, I could get sucked into writing about a certain Economic Forum and a large Communist country in the Far East, and an American President who seems to be supportive of both, but I’ve promised not to write about Wokeness, and so I won’t.)
So then, a French king and the Austrian Emperor’s wife (the Emperor was dead) tried to make peace between the two superpowers by marrying off one of the Emperor’s better looking daughters to the grandson of the French king. It appears that neither party to this arranged marriage was happy about the arrangement, and a biographer, Antonia Fraser, reported that seven years passed before they even had sex with each other, married though they were, when the king was 15, and Marie was 14.
So, I said that I’d get back to Marie’s trip to the guillotine, and I will, but first I need to report a few crucial events:
On July 14, 1789, in a section of Paris whose residents were fed up with royal rule, a fortress, which had been turned into a prison, was raided and a supply of gunpowder liberated. That fortress-prison was, of course, the Bastille, and July 14 became the French national festival, which it still is.
Now to mention the Marquis de Lafayette briefly, a supporter of both the American and French revolutions. He was back in France because by 1789, the American colonies had freed themselves from Britain. Lafayette tried to set up a constitutional monarchy, more or less like the UK has. (Remember that King Charles was just crowned last weekend in Westminster Abbey.)
Lafayette’s plan was rejected by both sides. The king himself along with Marie Antoinette tried to get out of France and was captured by the revolutionaries.
Marie Antoinette (who, it seems never did say “let them eat cake”) was put on trial. A “Committee of Public Safety” reportedly threatened to kill her daughter, and took away her son, who was then browbeaten (or beaten?) into becoming a child revolutionary. Marie was reportedly accused of child abuse, leading to her death sentence.
(Here we go again. Committees of “Public Safety” and child abusers accusing parents of child abuse. I could, couldn’t I, but I won’t. I promised.)
So, Marie Antoinette’s head rolled, but what happened to Lafayette?
Well, the more moderate revolutionaries, the Girondists, pushed for a war with Austria after all, and they got what they wanted. Though Lafayette now had American citizenship, the enemies of France were not impressed, and he and family were locked up in a Prussian prison in 1792 and didn’t get out for five years.
Did I do it? Did I write a fascinating Substack piece about our Global Village without mentioning (insert W-word here.)?
Well, I tried. Have I succeeded? Have I at least come close?
Close enough for government work?
WOKE = Willful Order Killing Entrepreneurship