Sure. I don’t think so either nor is anyone else, really. But would that be true if she were the one wielding power? I think it’s kind of beside the point. And the French revolution did chop off Marie Antoinette’s head, too, bear that in mind. Individuals who make themselves symbols of power are often the target of political violence - my question was more about whether you think that is at any point justified…
I’m just incredibly glad that Jan Sobieski’s army held back the Ottoman invasion at Vienna, or else we’d have this sort of thing all the way across Northern Europe to the Rhine!
Not sure where to put this, but I found the Guardian’s revisiting of its obituary for Franz Ferdinand this week pretty interesting.
“It is not to be supposed,” wrote a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian analysing the significance of the assassination 100 years ago on Saturday, “that the death of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand will have any immediate or salient effect on the politics of Europe.”
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Neither Sophie nor Marie Antoinette made themselves anything. They had no real agency. They didn’t dictate government policy; they were as functional as a family poodle.
Political violence can be justified, but only against legitimate targets. Agents of the oppressive government, yes. Their spouses, no. That is unnecessary violence, and it is cruel.
Now I really wanted to know what you said… it’s they mystery of the thing that kills me.
Posting snafu 
I think I fixed it.
That thing they say about “hindsight is 20-20”? Yeah, not even close.
Way too many medium-large powers making alliances with each other about killing the other guys, way too many weapons makers selling to their pet armies and armies building themselves up with help from their pet weapons makers, way too many politicians spreading propaganda about hating their neighbors. If this idiot hadn’t kicked it off, some other idiot would have.
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You only ever hear people talk about it like it was a bad thing, but check this out:
This is basically a graph of how important inherited wealth is; it correlates pretty closely to inequality.
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So we’re about due another one?
Yeah, if only we could kill a few hundred thousand people in trenches every few years, this whole “inequality” thing would be solved!
Imagine my words being spoken by Hawkeye or Blackadder, and you’ve got the picture.
It’s an interesting counterpoint to the general take on it, you have to admit; it certainly wasn’t all bad in the long-ish run from the perspective of general inequality, the root cause of a great many ills.
I guess that would be true if every once in a while the ruling classes just got bored and threw up their hands, saying ‘Fuck it - it’s time to blow some cash and spill some guts’ or something to that effect…
I’m not sure I’d put it past em, but despite my many re-adjustments to prevent being surprised by the depths of utter bastardry possible, I’m not sure it’s a plausible motivation.
Could be, the amount of wealth in private hands gets to a point it can’t continue to grow easily; having milked the public sector dry they have to fight each other for resources, and there you have it.
It sure looks like the level had hit a ceiling prior to the eve of WWI…
I’m unclear what you’re objecting to? I wrote a whole bunch of stuff there. All of it? The notion that we can understand the Balkans? That we can understand the past?
Ever seen that show Torchwood children of Earth… these aliens come down and demand some percentage of earths children, and the British cabinet have to decide who goes… I’ll give you one guess who they decide gets taken away, and with the exception of one guy, it’s not their kids, who go to elite schools and will attend elite universities and will one day rule the country/world as members of parliaments or congresses or as CEOs. I do think that this sort of thinking might work in regards to wars as well. After all, it’s not their kids dying in the trenches or whatever. It’s everyone else’s kids.
And the way things are going in Ukraine and the Middle East right now…
It certainly is. Here’s another: let’s get rid of gun violence by cutting off everybody’s hands! If they don’t have fingers, they can’t pull the trigger, right?
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I think you just solved America’s gun violence problem. We’ll have to completely change everything else in society to accommodate handlessness, but NBD, right!
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And no pesky Second Amendment problems!
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