This Hall of Mirrors is No Funhouse
On Bastille Day, Reflecting on Revolutions Past and Prescient
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Peter Thiel, he of Palantir and Opus Dei and JD Vance and South African Nazi apartheid immigrant PayPal obscene billionaire oligarch-wealth-level mafioso-ness, loves to talk about democracy as an ancién regime.
But maybe we should imagine him and his gilded ilk as Louis XVI.
The storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 is generally marked as the beginning of the French Revolution. Today, 14 July, is Bastille Day in France and French territories.
To honor those French patriots, let’s put ourselves in their shoes….
The dictator/king hated his enemies, which amounted to anyone who dared criticize his gilded palatial existence at Versailles.
Its hall of mirrors. Jewel-encrusted, gold-leafed, silk-clad finery. Gardens bursting with bounty while French people starved. A sanitized peasant quarter where nobility could pretend to commune with the parasitic riff-raff. Or hunt them for sport. Or relish their pedophilic orgies with enslaved peasants whose noncompliance meant death.
Whatever amused the moneyed class, who expected the lowly French people to prop them up and worship and starve for and sacrifice everything for them.
For years whenever the king was super-irritated by some gnat-like agitator who despoiled his omnipotence, he condemned them to the Bastille. Without a warrant. Or proper identification. Or adequate representation. Or a fair trial.
The Bastille wasn’t exactly a low-lying swamp in the middle of nowhere, but as a medieval fortress, it represented gruesome torture, an abandonment of human rights, and an unfair death sentence handed down by moneyed elites.
Until 14 July 1789, when French people had enough. They rejected the rule of this ancién regime, this self-appointed feudal monarchial nobility that claimed power solely on the strength of bloodlines and money.
They stormed the Bastille; they freed those the king and moneyed class imprisoned; and they lit the match of the French Revolution.
Americans don’t need guillotines to overthrow the billionaire class, its lap dog politicians and bought-and-paid-for judiciary. But this Bastille Day, more Americans must understand the stakes.
Bastille-like concentration camps on American soil. Where human beings are kidnapped and banished without a fair trial, all to fulfill an arbitrary daily quota of this ancién regime.
People are dying in preventable disasters, and this ancién regime holds fêtes with frills and flummery while the country floods and burns and is blown to bits. Instead of sending relief, this ancién regime treats us to online fashion shows, distractions from its own sex crimes, and an endless sewer of lies.
This ancién regime sends masked secret police into our communities to terrorize, to invade, to kidnap, to traffic, and to violate us in service to their king and their Bezo-Zuck-Musk-Thiel-Koch-Uleihn-Leo-Heritage Foundation-ian noble-corrupt class. Because ancién regimes ARE ALWAYS CORRUPT. And these and others are the names of the corruption.
Americans, celebrate Bastille Day today. Imbue your spirits. Gird your souls. Use its lessons to shake the shackles of this wannabe feudal ancién regime that must be defeated once and for all.
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I had no idea that Thiel was involved with Opus Dei. He is openly gay and a Republican—a completely nonsensical, filthy-rich man. He calls himself a libertarian, the fool's gold of politics, and is the Chairman of Polintar, deeply involved with the US Intelligence Community. Everywhere you look, religious extremism is coming over Jefferson's Wall, and our liberty is disappearing one brick at a time. For what? To return to the Middle Ages when church and state were one? It may be time to revisit the storming of the Bastille.
Their response in TX is pathetic but they’re lying and saying it’s wonderful… and many folks will buy that line. The voters in Kerr County overwhelmingly supported T and refused to spend $ given to them by Biden… bc they hated him. They also refused to return $ bc it may be used for something g they didn’t agree with and refused to fund alert systems even after offered a partial grant. The owner of the camp disputed the fema flood map and won so he could expand the camp and make more $. The corruption and callousness extends deeper than just the feds….but they are the head of the spear. The children suffered and died in the end which is the tragedy. The vulnerable and the innocent always suffer. The only reason TX is getting any help is bc Abbott is up 🍊axx and complicit… and the DOJ requested election maps be redrawn to further gerrymander to favor republicans… and Abbott was all too happy to comply masking it as a special legislative session to discuss flood response.
They turned down Arkansas and n Carolina for help, after T lied about Biden’s females not helping n Carolina during election. And people bought that and drank the kool aid. My sister in law lost her home in FL w back to back hurricanes last year and got the $40k from fema under Biden, voted for T anyway. Today she’d get 0. People are entrenched in this cult and don’t see what’s happening… like frogs slowly boiling.