Tea at Trianon: Moral Inversion and Disengagement

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, November 7, 2026

Moral Inversion and Disengagement

From Unlicensed Punditry:

I was watching a recent clip of Barack Obama this morning defending Democrats and their agenda and as I began to consider all the things he said and did during his terms and how it seems evident now that he was neck deep in the Russiagate hoax, and continued pulling the strings through a shadow government until it all crashed after President Doughbrains wrapped the entire Democrat clown car around a telephone pole during June of 2024, it reminded me of why I really, really dislike the guy.
Has nothing to do with race, or the fact he is a racialist and a stealth communist, it has to do with the one characteristic that I truly hate in people.
Let me give you an example before I define and describe that characteristic and what backs it up.
I was on the road a fair amount from 2014 to early 2020, so I never had time or the inclination to watch much regular TV but I remember watching a few episodes of a 2018 TV series called “You” on Netflix (I looked, it is still streaming there) when I was working up in Vancouver. “You” was a psychological thriller series based on the books by Caroline Kepnes (I know nothing about her other than this series was based on her books). (Read more.)