Thursday, February 12, 2009

Today In History: Down the bourgeois!

On this date in 1894, a young, well-fed, upper-crust Frenchman protested the injustice of the system by lobbing a bomb into a sidewalk cafe in Paris. Apparently, in his ideologically addled mind, "people minding their own business" = "the whole bourgeois edifice of something or other".

He was caught and executed, I guess because this was 19th Century Paris and not 19th Century Dallas, so nobody thought to just shoot his ass on the spot.

Fortunately for society today, most of Émile's modern ideological successors in America (and there are plenty) go into bladder-emptying spasms at the mere sight of a single round of loose ammunition or a toilet bowl float, which kind of limits their scariness...

6 comments:

  1. AND they probably aren't real good around the house at fixing things either...

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  2. Hey now. The 19th century citizens of Dallas were more sophisticated than that. They would gather a lynch mob first.

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  3. Fortunately for society today, most of Émile's modern ideological successors in America (and there are plenty) go into bladder-emptying spasms at the mere sight of a single round of loose ammunition or a toilet bowl float, which kind of limits their scariness...

    Except for the voting part.

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  4. Noah D beat me to it.

    Joe_M

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  5. Agreed, on A.T.'s point. 21st Century Dallasites would shoot him while he was striking the match to light the fuse.

    19thC. Dallasites would give him a proper and fair trial followed by a necktie party from a streetlight.

    Regards,
    Rabbit.

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  6. For another aspect of 19th century Dallas, I highly recommend the sermon "Christ Came to Texas," by William Cowper Brann. It is my second-favorite sermon in English.

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