Tea at Trianon: Stumblebum's Legacy

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

Saturday, May 24, 2025

Stumblebum's Legacy

From James Howard Kunstler:

Sad as it was, “Joe Biden,” the figment president, was merely one manifestation of a nation made mad by power-seeking demons, real-live, ill-intentioned human beings driving a runaway political machine, the party of hoaxes, hustles, and hatred. The country is just now struggling to exit a convulsion of mass mental illness. The demons are still there, though, and still hard at work trying to drag you all back into mass formation.
A central mystery is how the news media made itself the enemy of the people, and this conundrum is not at all explained by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson in their book Original Sin. It’s actually just another hustle with overtones of hoax, like everything else in the evil cavalcade of narratives spun out in the news media’s war on reality. Tapper and Thompson want you to believe that a faceless collective they call “the White House” managed to conceal “Joe Biden’s” well-advanced disintegration from the voting public, and that was. . . that. The media wuz fooled! Goll-lee!
Of course, that fails to explain a whole lot — such as: how come anybody watching daily video clips of “Joe Biden” in action, could not fail to see the broken old puppet he is. Alex Thompson, receiving his “award for excellence” from the White House Correspondents’ Association weeks ago said, “We just missed it.” Yeah, sure. . . . They also apparently missed the programmatic devastation to American society that was carried out in the old stumblebum’s name. (Read more.)

From Direct Line:

Let me be upfront: I did not read Jake Tapper’s Original Sin cover to cover. I skimmed it—like a responsible college student skimming The Communist Manifesto for a Political Theory class he regrets taking. I read enough to understand the vibe, which is somewhere between a B-grade Tom Clancy plot and a fever dream Nancy Pelosi might have after one too many Napa Valley chardonnays.
Tapper’s latest work of “fiction” (I use that word generously—though ironically it’s more believable than his actual reporting) is set in the familiar world of D.C. political chaos, a world Tapper claims to know intimately. And why wouldn’t he? He’s been a permanent fixture at CNN, otherwise known as the emotional support channel for people who still wear double masks alone in their Prius.
The premise of Original Sin is simple: people in Washington are corrupt. I know, hold the presses. This literary revelation puts Jake Tapper just one psychic vision short of being Miss Cleo. What makes Tapper’s take so precious is that he writes about D.C. like he’s not part of the problem. You almost expect the book jacket to read: “By Jake Tapper—courageously exposing the corruption of a city that pays his salary and boosts his book tour.”
Now, Tapper likes to think of himself as the love child of Woodward and Bernstein, but with the storytelling skill of Dan Brown and the smugness of Rachel Maddow on a soy cleanse. He builds suspense like a guy who once read the Wikipedia article on narrative arcs. Characters are either virtuous crusaders for democracy (read: thinly veiled Democratic operatives) or nefarious right-wing monsters who, if the book went on long enough, would probably storm a school board meeting while waving copies of Atlas Shrugged. (Read more.)