Cheap Seats 2022 By Rich Trzupek

The Maelstrom of Intolerance - 07/06

By Rich Trzupek
  I recently finished Thomas Carlyle’s epic “The French Revolution: A History.” It’s a remarkable look at a remarkable time in history. The parallels between the unrest in late 18th century France and the unrest in early 21st century America are striking. Carlyle’s words echo across the decades, sending us messages about intolerance, fanaticism and self-righteousness that should not be ignored.
  Who is Thomas Carlyle? Carlyle (1795-1891) was a brilliant and crusty Scottish philosopher, essayist and historian. His history of the French Revolution, written just a few decades after it occurred, is recognized by most historians as the authoritative near-contemporary work of those tumultuous times.
  The American Revolution was an argument about who should hold the reins of power, not so much about the form that governmental power should take. There were and are differences between the constitutional monarchy blended with representative democracy form of a republic that prevails in the United Kingdom and the representative democracy form of a republic that prevails in the United States. Those differences are relatively trivial. Parliament always counted far more than George III in the UK.
  The French Revolution was something very different. It was much more about form than function. On one end of the spectrum radicals sneered at any sort of formula of self-governance, declaring that pure representative democracy in which all voices were equal was the only just form of government. Far at the other end the royalists maintained that the hereditary principle embodied by the crown provided the only true path to national nirvana. For six years the nation lurched ever more widely between those two extremes.
  Both sides would be proven tragically right and grievously wrong before a brash young French artillery officer by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte finally restored order in October 1795. He did so by employing what he described as providing an angry royalist mob a “whiff of grapeshot.” I.e.: firing canons into the mob, killing about 1,400 and putting an effective end to dissent. Doing so ultimately stabilized France, but also plunged Europe into two decades of bloody war.
  What’s fascinating about Carlyle’s account is how familiar are the themes. As the revolution progressed, the need to divide the populace into classes became more and more important. Individual thought and opinion lost meaning. By the time of the Reign of Terror, the only thing that mattered was the class to which one was perceived to belong. Thus the Jacobian zealots of the time, the analog to today’s far left zealots, could convince themselves that beheading Antoine Lavoisier was just. Lavoisier is one of the heroes of modern chemistry. His execution by a corrupt state in hopes of enriching itself by seizing the great man’s estate is just one of the crimes for which the French radicals must answer.
  Eventually the radicals veered so far off the track that desertion from their ranks became inevitable. At first it was a trickle, then it became a flood as the radicals became more and more unhinged.  Georges Danton, a leading figure – perhaps the leading figure – during the relatively mild first spasms of the revolution ultimately deserted it as too extreme. Later, when he came back and tried to instill some moderation, he too was guillotined. Elon Musk may want to take note.
  Today’s dividers on the left are going to great lengths to come up new class divisions, the like of which would have made the Jacobins proud. Like the nobility in the time of French Revolution, to have the wrong skin color in modern America is to be guilty of a crime. One may try, and many do, to atone for the sin of having the wrong skin color, but the modern Jacobin will have none of it. Canceling and banning has become the modern equivalent of beheading. That is, you are welcome to keep your head attached if you are of the wrong class, but you damn well better not presume to use it for unapproved purposes.
  The modern Jacobin tolerates no dissent, no wrong-thinking, no arguments. You must think about pigmentation, gender, family, self defense, even life itself in the prescribed manner. Arguments, even discussions, are dangerous things to them. No bit of wordplay can wash away the sins that have been literally imbedded in your skin and sicken your soul. You are guilty and doomed to be so forevermore. Deal with it.
  Email: richtrzupek@gmail.com