(Passing Bull 415)

For people in Victoria, the two-party system is collapsing before our eyes with the excruciating implosion of the Liberal Party.  I pass over it. 

Having spent as much time in hospital as out of it, I have returned to Carlyle, The French Revolution – for the ninth time.  It comes back to me like Mozart or Beethoven. 

The French government was broke.  The nobility refused to pay up or meaningfully put in.  They laughed their heads off – literally – at The Marriage of Figaro.  The inevitable eruption was a disaster as the French tried to do in a few years what the English had spent seven centuries doing – house training the monarchy, nobility, judiciary and setting up a middle class. 

Carlyle says of 1787:

The force of private intrigue and then also the force of public opinion grows so dangerous, confused.  The gaping populace gapes over Woodcuts: where for example a Rustic is represented convoking the poultry in his barnyard with this opening address: ‘Dear animals, I have assembled you to advise me what sauce I shall dress you with.’  To which a Cock responding, ‘We don’t want to be eaten’ is checked by ‘You wander from the point.’  Laughter and logic: what wind of public opinion is this – as if the Cave of the Winds were breaking loose!’

There is nothing new under the sun.

Political Nonsense

(Passing Bull 415)

For people in Victoria, the two-party system is collapsing before our eyes with the excruciating implosion of the Liberal Party.  I pass over it. 

Having spent as much time in hospital as out of it, I have returned to Carlyle, The French Revolution – for the ninth time.  It comes back to me like Mozart or Beethoven. 

The French government was broke.  The nobility refused to pay up or meaningfully put in.  The laughed their heads off – literally – at The Marriage of Figaro.  The inevitable eruption was a disaster as the French tried to do in a few years what the English had spent seven centuries doing – house training the monarchy, nobility, judiciary and setting up a middle class. 

Carlyle says of 1787:

The force of private intrigue and then also the force of public opinion grows so dangerous, confused.  The gaping populace gapes over Woodcuts: where for example a Rustic is represented convoking the poultry in his barnyard with this opening address: ‘Dear animals, I have assembled you to advise me what sauce I shall dress you with.’  To which a Cock responding, ‘We don’t want to be eaten’ is checked by ‘You wander from the point.’  Laughter and logic: what wind of public opinion is this – as if the Cave of the Winds were breaking loose!

There is nothing new under the sun.