Tea at Trianon: John Bolton’s Sour Grapes

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, June 21, 2020

John Bolton’s Sour Grapes

From The American Spectator:

Few events make the media purr more than a memoir written by a defector from a Republican administration. John Bolton joins a long list of such bitter memoirists, who date back to the days of David Stockman. The key to these memoirs is that they buttress the prejudices of the media. Bolton has made sure to calibrate his memoir to that requirement, blasting Trump for his alleged corruption and incompetence.

But how newsworthy are these memoirs exactly? They invariably follow the same pattern: the memoirist enters the Republican administration disagreeing with its policies; he leaves the administration disagreeing with its policies. How is that news? What’s newsworthy is not that they were fired but that they were hired in the first place.

The chief beef of such a memoirist is always the same: the president didn’t take his advice. The title of Bolton’s book should be The Room Where It Didn’t Happen. He is clearly upset that he got cut out of Trump’s decisions. And it is fortunate for us that he did. Trump didn’t succumb to Bolton’s neocon warmongering. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: The President voicing objections to the book only drew more attention to it. It will go down the same as Comey's book and all the others...forgettable. Bolton had ample time to resign if he found issues to be so distasteful.
Also makes Bolton look bad when he betrays the inside dealings of the West Wing. What CEO in the future would want to hire such a person.; June 21, 2020 at 10:00:00 AM EDT
Sansa said...: I agree, Bolton could have resigned very early on if never agreed with Trump's policies.; June 21, 2020 at 12:15:00 PM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: I never liked Bolton. He was always a neocon warmonger.; June 21, 2020 at 2:21:00 PM EDT