The Frankish Reich Posted 1 hour ago Posted 1 hour ago (edited) 15 hours ago, BillsFanNC said: This shows how a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. The Marx quote the esteemed "Gnostic Death Cult" uses here is Marx quoting Goethe's Faust. (Yeah, as if you've read that) In context, Marx was using that to show how quickly, how easily the French Republic allowed itself to slide back into a kind of dictatorship. It is from the same tract that included the famous line, "History repeats; the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." I have a feeling Marx would have said the same thing about Trump 1.0 vs. Trump 2.0. And he would have a point now just as he had then. The context (and it wouldn't kill you to read your Boogeyman Marx rather than "Gnostic Death Cults" stupid and ill-informed take on him): The constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal code, liberté, egalité, fraternité, and the second Sunday in May, 1852 – all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a sorcerer. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for the moment, so that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: “All that exists deserves to perish.” [From Goethe’s Faust, Part One.] It is not enough to say, as the French do, that their nation was taken unawares. Nations and women are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer who came along could violate them. Such turns of speech do not solve the riddle but only formulate it differently. It remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-six millions can be surprised and delivered without resistance into captivity by three knights of industry. Edited 1 hour ago by The Frankish Reich
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