{"id":42257,"date":"2019-01-04T09:39:25","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T14:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42257"},"modified":"2019-01-04T09:39:25","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T14:39:25","slug":"yellow-vests-modern-junk-politics-and-robespierre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42257","title":{"rendered":"Yellow Vests, Modern Junk Politics and Robespierre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yellow Vests, Modern Junk Politics and Robespierre<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

During the recent holidays, I had the opportunity to listen to my French friends extol the virtues of the yellow vests (gilets jaunes) movement. \u201cWe have had enough of the elitist rule that has left most of the French working class economically desperate,\u201d Pierre said. \u201cPeople have gone into the streets out of dire frustration.\u201d Jean added; \u201cThis is not just a complaint about taxes, rather it is an\u00a0uprising against the oligarchy that has destroyed democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

I listened to their complaints with empathy, fully accepting their descriptions of what the French middle and lower classes are living through. Their emotions seemed genuine; I had no reason to question their analysis of the underlying causes of the recent protests. Where we differed was their inability to answer my simple question: \u201cWhat is the solution?\u201d<\/p>\n

My answer to that question refers back to what is considered to be the first act of modern politics, the beheading of King Charles I of England in 1649 during the civil war between the monarchy and parliamentarians. The beheading highlighted the people\u2019s uprising against the established order. The parliamentarians, led by Oliver Cromwell, scored military victories, eventually capturing the monarch and convicting him of treason before sentencing him to death.<\/p>\n

In this historical example, attention should be on the actions before the beheading, involving rulers, parliamentarians, armies and courts. All were legitimate structures of power. The political, in this sense, took place within a given system. Cromwell\u2019s army had the goal of establishing rule by the people within that system. The actual beheading was the culmination of a political process.<\/p>\n

The importance of legitimate structures of power is central to politics. \u201cWho are you?\u201d is a typical identity question that has to be answered within some form of authority.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yellow Vests, Modern Junk Politics and Robespierre During the recent holidays, I had the opportunity to listen to my French friends extol the virtues of the yellow vests (gilets jaunes) movement. \u201cWe have had enough of the elitist rule that has left most of the French working class economically desperate,\u201d Pierre said. \u201cPeople have gone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5493,23701,333,657,23702,23287],"class_list":["post-42257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-daniel-warner","tag-france","tag-protests","tag-robespierre","tag-yellow-vest-protests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42258,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42257\/revisions\/42258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}