Tea at Trianon: Do You See it?

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, December 20, 2025

Do You See it?

From Tierney's Real News:

What if every morning you sent your daughter off to elementary school and every evening she came home and told you about the scene that happened that day at school.
The first day it was someone acting up in her class that took the attention off study.
The second day it was someone acting up outside her classroom window that distracted the class.
The third day it was someone in the hallway acting up that prevented the students ever from entering class that day at all.
The fourth day it was someone acting up in the lunch room that prevented class from ever returning to class again that day.
The fifth day it was a group fighting at the entrance to the school that prevented anyone from entering or leaving the building.
The sixth day it was a called-in “bomb threat” at recess and the school and grounds had to be evacuated.
The seventh day - there was a school shooting during gym (even though the building was a gun-free zone) and one classmate was killed but nobody knows who did it because the killer was wearing a mask and the principal disabled the school cameras in the gym to “protect” the privacy of the students.
And on and on and on. Every week brought new threats or some unseen catastrophe. It felt as though the school and the world teetered on the edge of disaster, never allowing a moment’s peace or certainty.
By the end of her first year of school your daughter had learned NOTHING and did not know how to read or write or do arithmetic.
But she HAD learned how to be afraid and seek comfort by any means possible. She was exhausted. She wanted someone to protect her and take her away from all that - while at the same time she became so used to the excitement that life seemed dull without it. (Read more.)