Let them eat cake: Will Trump usher in a French Revolution on American soil?
According to author Stephen Clarke, Marie-Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake.” The statement is not only misattributed to her, it is also poorly translated. Clarke says that a better translation is “Then why don’t they eat brioche?” Jean-Jacques Rousseau published it in his autobiography, which came out 7 years before the French Revolution started and was written 19 years before Marie-Antoinette’s birth. Rousseau attributed it to a “grande princesse,’ probably Maria-Therese of Louis XIV Sun Court.
It “was the perfect source of a misappropriated quotation when people were looking for nasty things to say about Marie-Antoinette… It was a time when rumours caused riots and massacres. No one was going to disbelieve such an easily quotable quip,” says Clarke.
Flash-forward to present day America where constituents are cut off from their representatives and the news. America’s power structure is becoming more isolated every day, and the supposed leaders of the country are designing a space where they can rule without the input of Americans. Town Halls have been canceled. Phones shut off and voice mailboxes allowed to fill up. Even letters and other forms of communications have been strangled. In an age when communication goes from the many to the many, this is a dangerous game for the power elite to be playing.
The attacks by the president on the 1st Amendment have left those seeking information they can trust out in the cold. They have nowhere to turn to but the dictatorial regimes pet news sources; the sources that are going to give the information out in a favorable light or withhold any unfavorable news.
The political right is already accepting these maneuvers as unavoidable and a just defense of the American government; forgetting that the freedom of the press is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The same document that the president is supposed to “preserve, protect and defend,” that congress, the cabinet of the president and military members are sworn to uphold and defend “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Without a free press and one that the American people can count on, things like #pizzagate will be enough to get a Trump supporter to shoot up a pizza restaurant, even though the entire story was made up and based on nothing. Trump supporters aren’t the only ones who will get fired up because of rumors and false news. Riots will run through the streets where citizens do not feel like their voices are being heard. It will get ugly, and it may even end up with people losing their heads, which has already happened figuratively.
We cannot allow our freedom of the press to be infringed upon by a paranoid, delusional subset of constituents and their elected demagogues. It is the illusion of being able to have a say in the way that the country is being run that has allowed America to survive storms greater than this trumped up catastrophe seems to be. However, take away that illusion and there is no place for the pressure to escape. You might as well bring a candle to the gunpowder room or a guillotine to the public square.
It “was the perfect source of a misappropriated quotation when people were looking for nasty things to say about Marie-Antoinette… It was a time when rumours caused riots and massacres. No one was going to disbelieve such an easily quotable quip,” says Clarke.
Flash-forward to present day America where constituents are cut off from their representatives and the news. America’s power structure is becoming more isolated every day, and the supposed leaders of the country are designing a space where they can rule without the input of Americans. Town Halls have been canceled. Phones shut off and voice mailboxes allowed to fill up. Even letters and other forms of communications have been strangled. In an age when communication goes from the many to the many, this is a dangerous game for the power elite to be playing.
The attacks by the president on the 1st Amendment have left those seeking information they can trust out in the cold. They have nowhere to turn to but the dictatorial regimes pet news sources; the sources that are going to give the information out in a favorable light or withhold any unfavorable news.
The political right is already accepting these maneuvers as unavoidable and a just defense of the American government; forgetting that the freedom of the press is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The same document that the president is supposed to “preserve, protect and defend,” that congress, the cabinet of the president and military members are sworn to uphold and defend “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Without a free press and one that the American people can count on, things like #pizzagate will be enough to get a Trump supporter to shoot up a pizza restaurant, even though the entire story was made up and based on nothing. Trump supporters aren’t the only ones who will get fired up because of rumors and false news. Riots will run through the streets where citizens do not feel like their voices are being heard. It will get ugly, and it may even end up with people losing their heads, which has already happened figuratively.
We cannot allow our freedom of the press to be infringed upon by a paranoid, delusional subset of constituents and their elected demagogues. It is the illusion of being able to have a say in the way that the country is being run that has allowed America to survive storms greater than this trumped up catastrophe seems to be. However, take away that illusion and there is no place for the pressure to escape. You might as well bring a candle to the gunpowder room or a guillotine to the public square.