The Bastille Prison vs. Crawford, Texas

...I just got in and switched on All Things Considered and the Cindy Sheehan thing came up and there was a panel of editors from various magazines speaking on 'where their readers' heads were vis-a-vis the war in Iraq, the Crawford thingy, the "Preznitt's" overall performance and where the country's heading ...what these people had to reveal during the segment got my skin leaking with cold sweat...

Is it just me or are the people in the media who are supposed to 'afflict the comfortable' become the proverbial foxes guarding the henhouses of our national braintrust? What in the hell is it going to take to get people in the streets en masse like, dare I write it, the French did when King Louis XVI's administration didn't come correct back in the late 1700s when two different royal finance ministers tried to restructure France's system of taxation...which lead to that little block party called the French Revolution...

See, the French government (read: the king) was up to it's eyeballs in debt to other nations (: creditors) so one of the finance ministers, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, first suggested that the citizens start conspicuously consuming/ shopping to give their creditors the impression that everything was going well...I think that bears repeating. Back in the late 1700s, when France was one of if not the cultural hub of the European world, its governing body (thus the country itself) was essentially going broke while giving off the illusion of living large -- on credit, son. Does any of this sound familiar? ("if we stop shopping...then they win"). De Colonne got the hook only to be replaced by an equally inept politico named Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne -- same bat shite, same bat channel but at least they got to flush feudalism down the bidet, reinvoke the powers of the Third Estate over conservative nobles, oh yeah, and the inaugural Bastille Day took place...

...There's a "counter-protest" opposed to the Sheehan view that the war in Iraq wasn't just..."the white-shoed wild bunch" of believers are headed toward Crawford to rally 'round the flag, sling mud at Cindy and her ilk and blindly support the BushDeathStar folks; the energy elites; the very people getting richer by the day as America's hoi poloi push pennies together to pay for the skyrocketing price of petrol...in the midst of flagging public approval ratings the POTUS is running around stumping for pro-war support with his tent pole raison d'être (du jour) which has become "since we're already there, we've got to stay the course until such time that it's politically convenient to 'cut and run' now that all the monies that can be re-directed through questionable public/ foreign policy (:stolen) has been 'appropriated' "...at least that's the talking point he's sticking to when I checked about five minutes ago...he's got the whole world in his hands...where's the outrage, yo?

...In Europe, the Dark Ages came to a close with the signing of a boatload of treaties, most prominent, The Peace of Westphalia (also known as the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück) which lead to the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment (Reason) and France's Fête Nationale (National Holiday) which was similar to the blueprint utilized by that little "gathering of insurgents" living in the 13 British colonies over in the New World -- led by some anti-Empire yokel named Washington...how soon we forget...

...the historic through-line has been the fact that organized religious zeal (yeah, that thousand-headed beast of an enterprise) from the 15th on up to the 17th centuries served as a backdrop for changes in the way the rich kept the poor stuck on the cockroach-ridden side of the proverbial wrong side of the tracks...just like now...Intelligent Design be damned, the GOP has button-hooked on the public with schemes that have been utilized by power brokers who have been on the make since the days that Marcus Aurelius wore his hemlock Kangol... Still, the Achilles Heel of any despotic outfit that's been this successful at hoodwinking the populace it rules has been its own hubris...and time itself...I've always wondered how much mileage could be gotten out of our current state of affairs before the wheels fell off the wagon...too bad the voting public didn't do their own homework right about now last year...oh well, bitterness profits no one. Time marches on and NOBODY can beat the clock, just ask Joseph Stalin or Idi Amin...tick...tock...

...we're getting cornholed without vaseline...who do you know in the real world who can afford to take 5 weeks off for a vacation, anyway? They're living in a different world altogether, yo: they're living in a different world. The Revolution (the French one) wasn't televised but this one will be, contrary to what Gil Scott-Heron hollered from the rooftops while standing on the shoulders of The Last Poets. I'm glad it will be...maybe Ken Burns will slap together a week long DVD presentation for PBS...I'd buy a copy of this administration's downfall for posterity's sake in a New York second...The revolution will be televised, it will be televised, it will, it will, it will be televised...but still, this time, the revolution...will be live...Laters...

Note: Those idiots supporting our "adventure in the sand" have been found to be getting finances from conservative PR concerns...as Gomer Pyle would say: "surprise! surprise!" Anyhoozle, the picture above is titled "Liberty Leading the People" which depicts the storming of Bastille Prison...ain't she fine?