This Description of Events just prior to the French Revolution Sounds Just like Today

[mod mom]

I'm reading "The Hemingses of Monticello" by Annette Gordon-Reed and just finished a chapter entitled "The Eve of Revolution". This chapter is related to the period that Thomas Jefferson was living in Paris, France, during the 1780's, just prior to the French Revolution. As I'm reading, I couldn't believe how much sounds suspiciously familiar:


"Years of borrowing money to finance costly wars and lavish spending at home had taken its toll on a country already weakened by feckless political leadership and structural changes in society. By the 1780's it was clear that the practice of attempting to put out a fire by pouring oil over it-borrowing heavily, rather than raising taxes or forgoing costly military adventures and profligate domestic spending bankrupted the treasury.

-snip

The country had known crises before. The grave problems that now beset France had far greater effect because the country was very different from what it was when it faced earlier economic and social upheavals. the public was more literate than it had ever been before, and there existed, really for the first time, such a thing as public opinion to which French participants in the political battles of this era appealed in new ways and to an unprecedented degree. These very public battles attracted attention at all levels of society.

-snip

Ordinary people felt that they had a stake in, and a right to make pronouncements about all matters that concerned them. the creeping despotism in French society emerged as a particular concern. Rule by arbitrary edict, whether in public or private setting, surfaced as an intolerable insult to people who were now familiar with Enlightenment concepts about the rights of man. Talk of liberty and justice filled the air. An uneven grain harvest and problematic economic reforms drove up the price of bread and emboldened people to act. They rioted in Paris and participated in large demonstrations protesting the actions of a government that seemed to flail about as it tried to avert catastrophe."

SOUNDS FAMILIAR, DOESN'T IT?

George Santayana said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

[The Magistrate]

1. There Are Parallels, Ma'am

One benchmark to keep in mind: in the budget prepared by M. Neckar for the what proved the final year of Bourbon rule, service on the nation's debt stood at forty-five percent of expenditures.....

[mod mom]

2. Thanks, Magistrate. Your post had me wondering what our service is on our debt.

According to this site:

http://www.federalbudget.com/

Our nationals debt is $10.7 trillion and the treasury spent $412 billion on interest payments to holders of the National Debt. Smaller than France in the 1780's but still a sizable chunk. The scarey part would be if some foreign holder of that debt would call in their loans.

[The Magistrate]

4. Since Modern Government Expenditures Have a Very Different Pattern, Ma'am

My sense is that that crushing proportion has a lower threshold nowadays. Something around twenty to twenty-five percent would seem to me a genuine harbinger of doom, but even ten percent would be extraordinarily uncomfortable....

[Terran]

3. It does sound familiar, but...

I always have trouble with comparisions between western Europe and the US because of geography. This is why I don't think there can ever be a revolution here analogous to the French Revolution, which happened mostly in Paris. Paris has always been the heart of France, and what happened there was extremely influential on the rest of the nation. But Washington D.C. is just another big city to most Americans. There's no real way to mount a nation-wide revolution like that in the US.

[stillcool]

5. I think of that too..

seems like the states would have to break apart, and it didn't work out so good when the South tried it.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Yeah, I tend to agree. Where's the Bastille? For me, it's 3,000 miles away.

(whether the White House, or the Guantanamo Bay torture dungeon). The U.S. is, also, though, a more difficult country to nazify, because it's so vast (and multi-cultured) --which is why our oligarchs have taken up methods like 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code in the voting system, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls, and 24/7 fascist propaganda on TV. Maintain the illusion of democracy, present plausible narratives and most people won't rebel, especially if they have to spend thousands of dollars that they likely don't have and take a 6 hour (all day, with to and from airports) flight across this very big country, just to get to a protest in the seat of the malfeasance, Washington DC.

I have little doubt, though, that civil disorder may be part of one of the main fascist scenarios that have been developed to restore the Bush junta, after a period of corporate consolidation of their gains, with Obama. They can thus blame Obama and "the liberals" for all this shit, and Diebold Jeb or Sarah (Hitler II) into the White House in 2012. Riots--food riots, veterans' riots, jobless riots, antiwar riots--would suit this purpose, and, of course, wouldn't--and couldn't--change anything. The only protest that I could imagine that would change anything would be, say, a couple of million people converging on Washington and sitting down in its intersections, and refusing to move, no matter what. That could possibly shake up the government, but it would be VERY hard to organize. And probably the government would just go into its bunkers and wait it out, while the military slowly cuts off deliveries of water and food. Our rulers are better organized than the Bourbons.

I tend to think that peaceful action at the state/local level to rid ourselves of 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines would be more effective, as to revolutionary goals, than almost any physical protest I can imagine.

I do agree with the OP, though, that what the Bushwhacks (and collusive Democrats) have done is exactly what the Bourbons did, as to the rich pissing on the poor, and vast malfeasance. We aren't as desperate (as a whole) as the French poor were, but we could get there. Then what? Hard to say. It's like the analogies to Germany early 1930s. Yes, there are scary parallels, but this is a very different country than that was. We are a lot bigger; our people are more spread out, more diverse. We have a strong tradition of self-rule.

We are more like the Roman Empire, circa 450 AD, which had managed to keep the "bread and circuses" going, AND some public participation modes, as the empire slowly crumbled inward, from its outlying provinces to Rome, and eventually collapsed, leaving Rome in ruins--not from riots but from inner rot (--and to some extent from outside invaders but that not much, really). Our global corporate predator rulers are pretty good as to "bread and circuses." They are pretty good, too, at the illusion of public participation. They haven't been as efficient as Rome at stealing the resources from other people, that they need to keep it all going. Look at South America! They are in outright--highly principled, democratic--rebellion against our corporate oil and other dragons. And our oligarchy's greed for Iran's oil has been stopped by a combination of some faction in our oligarchy that didn't like the cost, or didn't think we could win it, and global political realities (two big nuke powers--Russia and China--against it). Iraq was a mess, and largely undefended, when we invaded. Not so Iran. And South America is united against our oiligarchs stealing their oil and other predations. The pool of exploitable resources to sustain our empire is shrinking.

We won't last as long as Rome, as an empire, in my opinion. But we might--as that reality hits home--restore democracy, given our very strong traditions in that regard. Crystal ball: I don't think we will go the way of either Bourbon France or Hitler's Germany, or Tsarist Russia (we are vast, like Russia, but Russia was completely and totally without any democratic traditions whatsoever, when the peasant/worker revolution occurred, and quickly fell right back into Tsarism, with Stalin). I think we will become a more disorganized group of states, as democracy is gradually restored, from the ground up. I think our democratic ideals will save us, in the end. It was a remarkable idea, America--unique in history--and close to the hearts of our people, and of all people. But it may be a rough ride.

The beautiful irony is that it may be the South Americans who show us the way. (First condition of their on-going, peaceful, democratic revolution: transparent vote counting!)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. France was in similar straits. But, we can expect a long slow decline rather than revoltution.

The "recovery" will take place when actual value equals prices. It will happen, but the recovery will not bring us back to where we were just months ago. Rather, it will, IMO, place us on a much diminished sort of equality with the other financial powers as far as wages and quality of life.

Hopefully, we will end up resembling Western Europe and Japan with Health Care and guaranteed pensions. Not through any particular ideology being triumphant but through practical necessity.

But, some of our sacred cows will have to be slain along the way. "The number one military superpower" and "Economic Engine of the World" to name two.

We will have to learn to cooperate with the world rather than bully it.

[Junkdrawer]

8. H.G. Wells notes this big difference between 18th Century France and England:

In England, nobles were taxed which led to the rise of Parliament and limitations on the power of the King.

In France, the nobility and the Church went Tax-Free, so the excesses of the King were never given a second thought by those that could have done something before it got out of hand.