The French Victory, December 1805, Moravia
Napoléon at the Battle of Austerlitz, by Francois Gerard
MeanMesa is constantly plummeted into an unpleasant state of incredulity approaching some embarrassing gastric distress as we watch the neo-cons -- each one apparently a victim of the Texas Board of Education -- trot out any historical name which might further inflame their sole source base of hill billies and bigots. They have fully exploited the now almost total public lack of context for terms such as "socialist," "fascist," "communist" or "statist" far beyond even their most outrageous fantasies of "innuendo wall paper tricks."
It seems that all the Crochety Old White Southerners (COWS) sober enough to stagger up to a microphone love to throw such terms around as if they were no more than Alabama pig manure in the spring, terms which, they suppose, can be effortlessly redefined in any way which might suit their momentary ambitions. We've seen plenty of it. This constant referral to Waterloo, although, of course, as tasteless and rude as most of the other drivel they pipe through their wholly owned corporate media fraud, is no exception to this dismal tradition.
So, for the history impaired, MeanMesa finds it necessary to present a few historical facts concerning this Waterloo of theirs. The unusual "ownership" of such a term is couched in this rather conditional way because the actual Waterloo, along with all of its contemporary, rather material, geo-political implications, was actually quite removed from the ill informed understanding they have sought to court with their rapt listeners scattered through all the trailer parks in Rush Limbaugh's broadcast orbit.
One, perhaps overly simplified version of the events at Waterloo, suggests that the Royal Crown of England at the time, Queen Victoria, -- still reeling from the "unpleasantness" which the French Royalty had encountered under the populist blade of the French Revolution's guillotines, actually had little angst in selling her diamond ear rings to finance the Duke of Wellington's European adventure. Being labeled with the term "neo-con" would not have troubled Miss Queen Vicki in the least.
If the whole affair were to be translated into modern American political terms, Wellington and Victoria would inescapably be represented by the reactionary Republican Party and Napoleon Bonaparte would, even though he wound up temporarily being an Emperor, represent the "community organizing" side of things.
It was clearly the hope of the British and their royalist allies that Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo would "plug the dike" on the growing appetite of oppressed European royal subjects to have more say in their futures. Although hardly a thorough-going, complete, objective analysis of the affair, such a generalization points directly at the contradictory nature of referring to "Obama's Waterloo" as indulged in most recently by the loud, dirty shirt corporatists in our own government. For Mr. Frum's comments as reported on Think Progress:
The neo-con who voiced this troubling opinion, Mr. Frum, a heavily soiled speech writer and propagandist employed by the autocracy, has -- with respect the the health care reform bill -- added to his comments in a most interesting way. For a quick analysis of those comments, MeanMesa offers the following link from the (ultra-fun) blog ALAS:
Don't freak out so much that you don't pony up a few minutes of your time to read through these last two links (total read time: less than 5 minutes). Examine your own thoughts about what has happened in the Congress. If the history-metaphor doesn't catch your fancy, try Great Nature's approach (total watch time: 8 minutes). This short video may help you understand just how wonderfully "out of character" the Democrats have been all through the health care debacle and what that might mean....
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