Tea at Trianon: The Seat Beside a Stranger

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

Thursday, September 11, 2025

The Seat Beside a Stranger

A woman with blonde hair, wearing a beige outfit, sitting on a blue patterned seat in what appears to be a public transit vehicle. She is positioned with her hands near her face, possibly in a gesture of distress or contemplation. The post text references Iryna Zarutska, suggesting the image relates to her.

On the murder of Iryna Zarutska. From The Feminist Turned Housewife:

I cannot stop thinking about Iryna Zarutska. I think none of us can. All of us have been designed to protect and defend innocence. And despite the decades of feminist brainwashing seeing a small petite young woman so egregiously killed will make a huge impact on us.
Some of us see our daughters in her.
Some of us see our sisters
Some see our friends
Some see ourselves
We all see something. Mothers want to protect their children. Men want to protect the more fragile sex.
But somehow nobody protected her.
She died alone. Afraid. Confused. Hurt.
We have all failed her. You. Me. Everyone.
We have accepted decades of reprogramming about what we all knew to be true. That women need to be protected. That evil men exist, yes, but the only viable threat against evil wicked men are good moral men.
When morality, when societal justice and norms fail and weaken it isn’t men who truly pay the price. It is women. (Read more.)

From City Journal:

Zarutska, a refugee who arrived from Ukraine in 2022, gets on the train after her shift at a local pizza joint, just before 10 p.m. A slender woman, probably less than 100 pounds, she’s dressed in the khaki pants, black t-shirt, and black baseball cap of her employer, her blond hair tucked away in the hat. A few other people, at least four, are seated in her area of the train car; she knows, if she is calculating her public safety, that she is not alone. She finds a seat in the middle of the car, right in front of another passenger. She has no reason to avoid this young black man, Brown, 34, dressed in a hoodie, who, as she sits down, appears to be struggling to stay awake (he has been muttering and making jerky movements in the moments before she gets on the train). For more than four minutes after Zarutska takes her seat in front of Brown, he remains quiet. Even if she had looked behind her, or saw the man in her window’s reflection, she has no reason to fear him; he might appear fidgety, but lots of people fidget on the train. Zarutska scrolls through her phone, at one point nearly dropping it. She takes her glasses off at another point and tucks them into her shirt. Nothing out of the ordinary is going on here. Other passengers get on and off. The automated announcement tells people to “please stand clear” at a stop.
Then Brown stands up, grabs Zarutska by the neck, and repeatedly slits her throat. The entire action takes less than four seconds. Zarutska looks up at Brown in seeming confusion as he walks away from her. She cowers into a fetal position on the seat, looking down as the blood spatters out of her onto the floor. She falls onto the floor in front of the seat, and you think, mercifully, that she is unconscious. But she’s not: her slender hand reaches up as she tries to grab her phone, most likely to try to ask for help. She appears conscious or semi-conscious for nearly a full minute as she bleeds out. Moments later, several passengers gather around Zarutska on the floor to try to help her, and to use their own phones to call police.

Zarutska had no chance of fighting back, and that would have been true if she were a man as well. What you also learn from watching this video is that you cannot depend on supposed safety in numbers to help you in an attack. The attack may happen too quickly for anyone to stop it, and the people around you may themselves be too confused, scared, or unsure of what to do to act instantly, even if doing so can save you. (Read more.)

From The Post Millennial:

Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes is not qualified to practice as a lawyer in the state of North Carolina, according to the state's database of registered lawyers. The revelation comes after it was reported that Stokes released Decarlos Brown on cashless bail after his last brush with the law before he was charged with stabbing 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska to death in August. When Stoke's name is entered into the North Carolina State Bar lawyer look-up tool, an error is presented, indicating the judge, although overseeing a magistrate court, does not have the ability to practice law as a lawyer professionally in the state of North Carolina. Magistrate judges in the state do not have to be licensed lawyers, according to state law.

The findings were first reported by journalist Laura Loomer, who also uncovered other details surrounding the judge, who is appointed over the Charlotte District in Mecklenburg County Court in North Carolina. (Read more.)