Tea at Trianon: MAGA ‘Cult Members’ Need ‘Deprogramming’

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

Monday, October 9, 2023

MAGA ‘Cult Members’ Need ‘Deprogramming’

From The Hill:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton railed against supporters of former President Trump during a new CNN interview, comparing those who still support the former president after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to members of a cult.

“Maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members,” she said in a clip released late Thursday.
“And sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure,” Clinton added. “He’s only in it for himself.”

She predicted Trump will likely be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, and she believes President Biden can beat him again.

“One will wreck our democracy. One violates the law on a regular basis. One appeals to the worst in our collective psyche. The other gets things done,” she said in the interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “Why is that a hard choice?”

A Trump-affiliated super PAC denounced Clinton’s comments early Friday, saying they are akin to her wanting “re-education camps.”

“President Trump has said countless times that they are only coming after him, because he stands in their way from coming after you — and Hillary Clinton just confirmed that to be true,” Make America Great Again Inc. spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said. “Tens of millions of Americans will reject the Democrat Party’s re-education camp agenda in November 2024 when we make Donald Trump the 47th President of the United States,”

Clinton also commented on the ongoing Republican leadership race in the House of Representatives, after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted from the job Tuesday by a small group of disgruntled GOP members voting with Democrats. (Read more.)