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August 10, 2015
One of us: Bless you, Mr. Trump.
Trump is what happens when we Yanks look in the mirror: good, bad and occasionally a bit ugly.
According to NBC/Survey Monkey polling as of last night, since last week's debates Donald Trump--and even after saying 'inappropriate' things before, during and after the debates--is up one point to a remarkable 23% out of 16 candidates. Amazing. Donald Trump has been around since I was a kid in Cincinnati. As a young man, in fact when he was still a college student, he redeveloped a insolvent project in The Queen City, the Swifton Village apartment complex, which his father had purchased in the early 1960s. After that my timeline for him is simple, and probably like everyone else's: real estate, gambling, bankruptcies, wife troubles, Rosie O'Donnell feud, financial recoveries, part-time pundit and now political candidate pushing 70. I have never liked his real estate, either hotels or office buildings. I don't like him as a television personality. But I have always liked his feistiness. I have liked him as a personality because he is clearly "one of us"--as "American" as you get. Whether we admit it or not, Donald Trump is a living caricature of the American Dream Achieved--loud, proud, out front, in your face, feisty, unapologetic--and exactly how we actually are and how we have been viewed for two centuries going back Alexis de Tocqueville. Trump is what happens when we Yanks look in the mirror: good, bad and occasionally a bit ugly. Love or hate him, you don't get any more authentic in America than this guy.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)
Journée du 10 août.
Louis XVI:
My God, it's a revolt!Duke de la Rochefoucauld:
No, sir, it's a revolution.--2 years earlier.
Two hundred and twenty-three years ago today, during the French Revolution, an insurrection at the Tuileries Palace marked the end of the French monarchy until the Bourbon restoration in 1814. An August 10, 1792, a mob supported by the Paris Commune stormed the palace, where Louis XVI and the royal family had been taken two years earlier and put under watch. The family fled to to take shelter at the Legislative Assembly. Three days later, the king was officially arrested and imprisoned. Six weeks later, on September 21, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and established the French Republic. King Louis XVI was executed on January 21, 1793.
The Taking of the Tuileries ("Prise du palais des Tuileries") 1793, Jean Duplessis-Bertaux (1747-1819) National Museum of the Chateau de Versailles.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)