Channeling 1789

Channeling 1789, the real start point of the French Revolution, mirrors what is happening in the US as inequality, the dying of empire and the inability of the government to do anything of real consequence parallels what went down in France beginning with that fateful year of 1789.

In 1789, France was a power in decline. In particular, a surprising rival had replaced France as Europe’s dominant power, the British Empire.

Similarly, the United States in 2022 is a nation that is being replaced by an aggressive and seemingly more competent rival: the People’s Republic of China. Notably, America has suffered humiliating reverses in Afghanistan and Iraq, that revealed its military power to be worthless.

Military ineptness ...

Another similarity is that France built the most powerful and advanced army in the world in the late 18th century. Yet, that army proved incapable of advancing French power. Notably, the French Kingdom invested a fortune in its navy and could never beat the British Royal Navy at sea.

America spends over twice as much on the military as its biggest rival. Yet that military has proven incapable of achieving America’s goals abroad and seems helpless in the face of growing unrest at home.

 

Arrogance 101

During the 18th Century, the French Intelligentsia became arrogant, intolerant, and increasingly alienated from ordinary people and traditional French culture.

In modern America, we see a growing hostility to basic American ideals and institutions on both sides of the political aisles. On the left, many Woke intellectuals denounce America itself as racist, white supremacist, and illegitimate. On the right, libertarians and conservative intellectuals denounce all government as illegitimate and corrupt.

Government ineptness

Gridlock and infective government were the immediate causes of the French Revolution. Notably, it was the radical measures King Louis XVI took to address France’s great financial crisis of 1783-1789 that led the Revolution.

2022 America faces a similar crisis; the never-ending battles over the Debt Ceiling and the US Senate’s inability to pass anything but defense budget increases. Frighteningly, America has its own version of the Estates General in Article V of the US Constitution.

Civil war

Something Americans forget is that the French Revolution was a Civil War. The Civil War broke out when local governments and others in many regions of France refused to acknowledge the National Assembly’s authority.

What happens if some states refuse to accept the Constitutional Convention’s authority? In France, the result was a civil war between the National Assembly, federalist governments in some French cities, and monarchists.

Inequality

In 1789 France, as in 2022 America, wealth and power became concentrated in a small portion of the population. In both countries, wealthy oligarchs got control of the economy and the political system.

For example, Christian Morrisson and Wayne Snyder estimate the wealthiest 20% of France’s population controlled 60% of the nation’s wealth in 1789. Similarly, the wealthiest 20% of Americans controlled around 55% of the nation’s wealth in 2018, Politifact estimates. Moreover, the Federal Reserve estimates the richest 10% of Americans held 70% of the USA’s wealth in 2019, Collage Group reports.

The real owners

Additionally, America’s wealthy now have a monopoly on political power. For example, Open Secrets claims the average annual income of a member of Congress was $1 million in April 2020. In contrast, Google estimates the median individual annual income in the USA was $31,133 in 2019. Similarly, the US Census Bureau estimates the median household income in the United States was $67,521 in 2020.

Hence, 2022 America like 1789 France has a government of the wealthy by the wealthy and for the wealthy. A similar plutocracy led to catastrophe in France in 1789.

The similarities between 2022 America and 1789 France are too great to ignore. Hopefully, Americans can learn from French history and avoid a catastrophe similar to the French Revolution.

2024 looms.