Tea at Trianon: The Insurrection That Wasn’t

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, January 10, 2026

The Insurrection That Wasn’t

From Amuse on X:

Begin with a simple question. What would an insurrection actually look like in the United States? At minimum, it would involve an organized effort to seize state power, coordinated leadership, clear operational objectives, and the use or credible threat of armed force. That is not a controversial definition. It is the ordinary meaning of the term in law, history, and political theory. Measured against that standard, January 6 does not qualify.

What occurred that day was a large political protest that devolved into a riot. That distinction matters. Riots are chaotic, decentralized, and often fueled by emotion rather than strategy. Insurrections are disciplined, planned, and purposeful. We also now know that the transition from protest to riot was not purely organic. Subsequent disclosures have shown that elements of the FBI, DHS, and other state actors were present in the crowd, embedded through informants and confidential sources inciting the riot. Whether through omission, misjudgment, or overt encouragement, these state actors created the conditions in which escalation occurred. The available evidence therefore shows January 6 was the former, not the latter, and that institutional failures and state involvement played a material role in how events unfolded.

Even the FBI eventually acknowledged this. Months after the event, federal investigators quietly conceded that they found scant evidence of any coordinated plan to overturn the election or seize control of the government. Roughly 90% to 95% of the cases involved what the Bureau itself described as one off, spontaneous actions. There was no command structure, no unified chain of authority, and no operational plan that resembled a coup. That admission alone should have forced a reassessment of the dominant narrative. Instead, it was willfully ignored by the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the drive-by media.

Nor was January 6 an armed uprising in any meaningful sense. No protester was known to have fired a gun at the Capitol that day. No armed units attempted to seize offices or detain officials. The crowd did not arrive with rifles, ammunition caches, or tactical coordination. The only gunshot fired that day was by law enforcement, and it killed an unarmed protester, Ashli Babbitt. One need not approve of her actions to recognize the significance of that fact. The image of a heavily armed rebel force simply does not correspond to reality. (Read more.)