The Attempted Gifford Assassination. . . . .

As questions swirl in any rational person's head concerning the question of political assassination, the Tea Party Movement's regular use of violent discourse, Sarah Palin's folksy, down-home use of gun metaphors, we will inevitably hear copious right-wing commentators tell us the obvious untruths - that there is no connection between gun control and gun violence, that just because Sarah Palin used the symbols of gun-sights to target progressive political opponents, this doesn't mean their discourse of violence had any thing to do with the attempted assassination of a progressive legislator who was, in fact, one of those that Palin "targeted." And these right-wing commentators will be smug in the knowledge that there is seldom a direct cause and effect in such events and in such issues in general. Conservatives can oppose gun-control, promote the use of guns, or use a constant and consistent discourse of anger, hate, and violence, and we are still hard pressed to create a direct causal link. But this is because most social phenomena simply don't work this way. In the lead up to the Revolution in France, for example, there was a systematic abuse of power by the French aristocracy. Aristocrats routinely beat or even raped their underlings over whom they had near total control. But we cannot find any direct relational cause between individual acts of aristocratic abuse and the storming of the Bastille. The real causes of the Revolution in France were distal rather than proximate. The Gordon Riots in London were acts of terrible violence directed in part at Catholics in England who had been demonized by Lord George Gordon, the leader of the Protestant league. Yet, despite Lord Gordon's inflammatory discourse against the nation's Catholics, we cannot establish a cause and effect relationship between his provocative  speeches and articles and the violence that ensued. But anyone who doubts that there is a causal relation gives empiricism a bad name. Now over two hundred years after the Riots history makes those connections obvious. Similarly, individual efforts at gun control may have little discernable or immediate impact on the number of gun crimes. This is because such efforts are cumulative and the real impact is a gradual shift in ideology. As guns are more controlled and more difficult to get fewer people purchase them and negative associations arrise with gun-ownership. Given the complex overdetermination of social phenomena, I can not demonstrate a direct line of effect between Sarah Palin's provocative discourse and the attempted assassination of Congress Woman Gifford. But as the right-wing discourse of hate and violence heats up and conflict increases, no doubt history will make the links that we cannot empirically make today.

Violence in the Streets. . . . .

Dateline - July 14th 1789, Paris France.

Early reports are emerging of lawless groups of thugs wearing red 'phrygian' caps, known locally as the red-bloc, making violent assaults on the Bastille. It seems that these groups, consisting of ragtag numbers of young terrorists, began gathering early and milling about the grounds outside the prison. Apparently they harbor a number of complaints against the government including the conditions of hygiene in their environs, the discrepancies between rich and poor, the restrictions on media, and other things.

Word is that after some hours of gathering the groups eventually coalesced and attacked the ancient fortress which was being protected by 82 soldiers and several dozen Swiss Grenadiers. An exchange of gunfire went on for several hours and eventually the red-bloc entered the Prison fortress. At least a hundred were killed in the incident, including one soldier.

"These are simply lawless thugs," one Swiss Grenadier was heard saying. "They are useless, violent, anarchists who have freed the inmates and put us all at risk." An official government spokesman defended the use of deadly force in the protection of the Bastille saying, "Our soldiers acted with complete professionalism in defending a public building. The violence was instigated entirely by the red-bloc, who have no respect for law and order and have decided to pursue their political goals through violent means. If some of them died it was entirely their fault."

When questioned about the outrageous cost of maintaining and defending a fortress like the Bastille in the middle of France's most populous city, another government spokesperson told us that "the cost was entirely appropriate for such a facility, particularly when it is clear that there are violent thugs like these who are ready to cause trouble." When asked about the red-blocs concerns over human-rights abuses by the government and fundamental injustices in the system, the government spokesperson waived off such concerns saying that "France is the greatest country in the world and should be a showcase to other nations, and the red-bloc was simply putting a stain on the country's international reputation."

Few of the so-called 'red-bloc' could be found to comment but one young women who held a small child in her arms told us that "people everywhere are suffering and the government spends millions of Francs on these types of things. There is no justice here and generations from now people will thank us for standing up for what it right."

Shelley strikes again....

I was looking through Shelley's The Revolt of Islam yesterday and in the Preface, written by himself, Shelley was talking about the effect of the French Revolution in his own time. Not only are his words pertinent to what I have been posting lately concerning the Romantics and the events in France, but, if you just change the proper nouns, it is very reminiscent of what we are experiencing today. (Some of us more cynical people may wonder a little at the last little spot of optimism at the end but otherwise Shelley's words still inform today)

“But, on the first reverses of hope in the progress of French liberty, the sanguine eagerness for good overleaped the solution of these questions, and for a time extinguished itself in the unexpectedness of their result. Thus, many of the most ardent and tender-hearted of the worshippers of public good have been morally ruined by what a partial flimpse of the events they deplored  appeared to show as the melancholy desolation of all their cherished hopes. Hence gloom and misanthropy have become the characteristics of the age in which we live, the solace of a disappointment that unconsciously finds relief only in the wilful exaggeration of its own despair. This influence has tainted the literature of the age with the hopelessness, of the minds from which it flows. Metaphysics, and inquires into moral and political science, have become little else than vain attempts to revive exploded superstitions, or sophisms like those of Mr. Malthus, calculated to lull the oppressors of mankind into a security everlasting triumph. Our works of fiction and poetry have been overshadowed by the same infectious gloom. But mankind appear to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware, methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change.” 

Very interesting would you agree?

Comparing the Ages

Following up on the subject of the Romanticism and the French Revolution which I touched upon yesterday - These are subject which are close to my heart and should, I believe, be more widely known and discussed because they are remarkably instructive as well as just plain fascinating. One of the interesting aspects of the events that followed the French Revolution is the strange similarity his has to our own times. The Revolution in France ushered in a terrific sense of optimism throughout Europe in people who  had grown extremely weary of the terrible injustice which so endemic to European society. Writers like Rousseau, Voltaire, and even Joseph Priestly had generated strong feelings toward a ‘natural’ sense of equality and justice which, in large part due to the strong resistance on the part of the ruling-class, eventually erupted into the uncontrollable anger of the events in France. In England the feelings of ‘leveling’ gave weight to a generation of writers and activists like Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Thomas Paine, William Blake, and the members of the London Corresponding Society.  This radicalism was relatively short lived however as the events in France seemed to spin increasingly out of control. Anti-Jacobin groups emerged all over  Britain and the Government passed various laws to make suppression of dissent easier.

These events were very similar to the mood in the West in the decades after the ‘socialist’ revolutions  in the 20^th century. A  genuine space was opened up in which reformers could call for more transparency, more democracy, and more socially responsible policy making. Governments reacted much the way William Pitt’s government had in the 1790s, with paranoia and suppression of dissent. J. Edgar Hoover was the Lord Castlereagh of the 20^th century. With the apparent failure of the socialist projects real economic and social reform seemed impossible in the 1990s in the same way that reform was anathema in the decades after the French Revolution. Reform took ages. Universal Male suffrage which had emerged in 1792 in France took another 60 years to return. And the vote for women was still generations away. But the feelings of reform in Britain might be said to have turned inward into the literary struggles of the Romantics. Coleridge and Wordsworth may have abandoned reform but it was taken up again in the poetry of Shelley and Byron. Romanticism carried the mantle of reform until the Victorian writers began to make reform and the condition of the working-class  a fundamental part of their literary project.

So where are we today? The final failure of the neo-conservative project that began in the Reagan years seems to have once again opened up a space socialist types of reforms. At the very least, faith in the market has been badly shaken. However, we seem to live in a age of cynicism and there is very little of the Romantic idealism around in our time. Perhaps the best we can hope for is a Neo-Victorian sense of practical reform.