Reading Comic Book Version of History
Sponsored by Robespierre Dental Care.
I have no idea if this is just a real quote from the movie or just an attempt to “edginess” by members of the coffee shop resistance, but the French Revolution has pretty much zero appeal to anybody who has actually read the accounts.
Revolutions, necessary or not, come with a hefty bill and people also incur in heavy penalties if they let them get out of hand. The French Revolution is a prime example of a movement that had reasons to happen but then got off the rails and became a monster bigger that the one it supposedly killed. Once you get the “machine” rolling and killing, it acquires a taste of blood that is hard to satiate. In this particular case once they ran out of royals and elites to kill, they had to keep feeding the revolutionary process with more bodies by creating criminals (or simply suspects) out regular folk in the worst of cases, and from within the revolutionaries themselves because that is what usually happens to the morons who think are in control and Karma needs to be paid in full.
Maximillian Robespierre is my favorite example of this last principle. He went on from being one of the top if not the top honcho of the French Revolution to being processed and disposed off by the bloodthirsty machine he helped create. He was tagged traitor and enemy of the Revolution, they went to arrest him, there was a struggle and was shot in the face resulting in the removal of his lower jaw. He was dragged to “court” still alive, thrown a top of a table in God knows how much in well-deserved pain, tried by a panel of his deranged peers and then sent to have his collar size altered for eternity by guillotine.
He was not the only one, others followed. A poetic ending if you ask me.
Eventually the revolutionary machine was bloated enough and the killings ceased. And the most ironic twist of the Revolution is that they did indeed eliminate a king, but it led straight to an emperor: Napoleon Bonaparte.
Revolutions are only cool if you know nothing about revolutions.
One of the things revolutions do after they feel established is to kill off the ranks of fighters and planners as they (a) don't need them anymore and (b) they are now a danger to the newly established order.
I have a feeling the passion for killing will die out after the USAID thieves are gone, most of the establishment, a few good guys, but long before it gets to me. Just thinking out loud here.