Ever since November 8, I’ve been watching movies depicting the French Revolution of 1789, and I’ve continued to be impressed by the similarities of that event, which upended the old order, and the election of Donald Trump this past year, which upended another old order.
The primitives, especially the trained historians among them, like to compare themselves with the workers and peasants and decent and civilized people as the aristocrats, of the first revolution, but as usual the primitives misunderstand history.
The French Revolution was only superficially between the workers and peasants, and the aristocracy; it was
really between the working productive taxpaying elements of that society, and the loafers and freeloaders. Anyone who’s read a history book more than a hundred pages long can figure that out.
It’s obvious that the election of Donald Trump, if it didn’t totally smash (the jury’ll still be out on that for some years yet) the Man, the Old Order, the Establishment, it did significant damage to those sectors that dominated American government, society, academia, and culture since the last revolution that ushered in the Age of Aquarius back in 1974, when the hippies took over from the Watergated old white men.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Everything on the hippie agenda was at least socially respectable, if not totally legal, by 1980. It’s true we’ve had three Republican presidents inbetweentimes, but their effect was no more than that when a corrupt Democrat party machine allows for the occasional election of a “reform” mayor or governor, so as to give an appearance that things are changing when they really aren’t.
The Democrats, liberals, primitives, and old hippies controlled it all; government elected and bureaucratic, academia, the
intelligentsia, the news media, Hollywood, popular culture. For more than forty years, from 1974 through 2016, they had it all. And it seemed as if they’d have it forever and ever.
And given their sore-loserhood about the recent elections, apparently they thought so too.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The first phase of this new revolution is over, with an adult now in the White House, but it’s one thing to have a revolution, and another to maintain it, to keep it going until it’s done its job. One can’t just clock out and go home for supper. Decent and civilized people won, but their victory isn’t permanently secured just yet.
The latest movie about the French Revolution that I’ve watched—two times now; I discovered it only yesterday afternoon—serves as a reminder of what we must do, to keep the revolution on track and to make it permanent.
https://youtu.be/u-b7Rtu-nukI tell you, nobody but nobody can make movies about the French revolution so impressively as do the French. The only thing that limits their popularity is that they’re generally in…..French (and not playable on American DVD players). But other than this, the actors and actresses, the scenery, the depictions, the ways events are shown, is awesome.
As the movies are usually more than two hours long, my jaw gets tired from gaping in utter astonishment at how good they are. I’m to where I’d rather watch a French-made movie about the French Revolution than eat or sleep or hop around in the sack.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The main “lesson” in
Danton we all need to keep in mind is that having secured something, one can get negligent about keeping it and expanding it. It’s something a lot easier on which one can lose one’s grip than hang onto it.
By 1792, three years after the revolution, the revolutionaries, including Danton, were getting lazy and letting things go. There were a few far-sighted others, including Robespierre and St.-Just, who wished to keep things going, and they were finally compelled to institute the Reign of Terror so as to keep the reactionaries at bay.
It bothers me that there appears no similar plans these days, to keep the for-now down-and-out Democrats, liberals, and primitives cowed and fearful, as they so well deserve to be. They’re not going to stay that way forever, unless at least some of them hear the sliding of a blade coming down from above them.
Given their long and sordid history of intolerance, their contempt for all that is good and decent, their willful ignorance, and most of all their unwillingness to compromise, to accommodate, those who think differently than they do, it’s important that they be kept humbled and prostrate and terrified.
