There are some interesting parallels between the tragic figure of Marie Antoinette (nee Maria Antonia Josefa Johanna), who was an Austrian princess and the wife and queen of Louis XVI, the last king of France, and Kamala Harris, the political equivalent of the “wife” of US president Joe Biden. Both women had/have tin ears in terms of connecting with their respective subjects/citizens and traditions. Marie Antoinette was uncomfortable in her adopted country. Who can deny that Kamala Harris frequently appears at a loss in public appearances (even when they are tightly scripted for her benefit), and that she has great difficulty in connecting with average Americans?
Marie Antoinette’s words and actions ultimately determined her fate, and probably contributed to the start of the French Revolution. Are Kamala Harris’s words and actions dooming her to a similar fate, politically speaking, while leading to a political counterrevolution in the US?
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Let us examine the premise.
MARIE ANTOINETTE
Many French were skeptical when the future king of France married an Austrian princess in May 1770, given the longstanding enmity at the time between France and Austria. Their skepticism would be borne out over the next 23 years.
Close observers of the French Court at Versailles and later in Paris noted that “Louis XVI was besotted with his wife and allowed her to take on a role at Court that had never been bestowed on the two previous queens,” including direct involvement in various royal appointments and violating long-established court protocols, customs, and rituals. She developed a reputation as a gambler and spendthrift, spending heavily on fashion, luxuries, and high stakes gambling though France at the time was facing a severe financial crisis and the French people were suffering food shortages and other depredations.
As a result, she “became the target of pamphlets, libels, and caricatures” in the years leading up to the French Revolution. Initially, public opinion of her was very favorable, but by the end she was loathed by many Frenchmen, especially the republicans, as she was blamed for the inability of France to pay off its debt due to her wasting of the crown’s money. In 1787, she was given the nickname of “Madame Déficit” because many Frenchmen thought that she had single-handedly bankrupted the country.
Held in captivity by the new republican government (the Committee of Public Safety) after Louis XVI was guillotined on 21 January 1793, Marie Antoinette was tried on 16 October 1793 and declared guilty of the three main charges against her: depletion of the national treasury, conspiracy against the internal and external security of the State, and high treason for giving state secrets to the enemy (Austria).
The phrase “let them eat cake” – supposedly her response when told that French peasants had no bread – is traditionally and conventionally attributed to Marie Antoinette although there is no real evidence that she ever said it. Nevertheless, the phrase resonated with Frenchmen of the period who despised her spendthrift ways while the people were living hand-to-mouth, and the phrase has passed into folklore, as many people around the world continue to attribute those words to her and her fate at the guillotine to this very day.
Regardless, Marie Antoinette was a lightning rod for French republicans who exploited her failings for their own political purposes. Here is one summary of what led to her personal meeting with “France’s Razor”:
She found it difficult to adapt to French customs and when she became Queen, she committed more and more blunders, often unwittingly, which gradually alienated public opinion, helping to tarnish her image in a most disastrous way.
The moral of her sad story would be, “the high and mighty who ignore the plight of the common people may pay the ultimate price.”
KAMALA HARRIS
Kamala Harris burst onto the national scene in 2019 when she ran for the Democrat nomination for president with behind-the-scenes support from her long-time mentor Barack Obama. Unfortunately, her candidacy soon flamed out after a disastrous run in which she failed to garner 1% support in the Democrat primaries. This came after a lackluster career in California politics (California is a one party, Democrat-dominated state) that was jumpstarted by former Democrat Speaker Willie Brown and later Barack Obama. Actually, here career in California was more than simply lackluster, as she has a long record of failures and mismanagement, as reported by Just The News in July and in the Sacramento Bee last year.
In August 2020, Harris was selected as Biden’s vice presidential candidate expressly for identity politics and DEI purposes as Biden himself stated (“I would pick a woman to be my vice president.” Never mind merit – just like in California Democrat politics!
Like Marie Antoinette, Harris was given unprecedented responsibility for a variety of functions in the Biden-Harris regime beginning in early 2021: chairman of the National Space Council, leading COVID jab advocate (these remarks are enough to gag a person), and – perhaps most notoriously – Border Czar. Even this Harris puff piece in The Week quickly runs out of gas in listing her “accomplishments” as vice president.
However, what has gotten quite a bit of attention – and blowback from critics across the political spectrum – are her policy positions and public statements that are at best head-scratchers (but are actually cringe-worthy). Does she have a political tin ear, or is she simply a garden-variety politician who tells audiences what they want to hear even if it requires lying? You decide after reading these Marie Antoinette-like equivalents of “let them each cakes”:
- Raising bail money for incarcerated BLM thugs during the 2020 riots
- Covering for Biden and praising his “mental acuity” throughout the last 3.5 years
- Being selected to replace Joe Biden as the Democrat presidential nominee in August without having received a single primary vote from rank-and-file Democrats (different rules for the elite versus “common people”)
- Using communist slogans for her campaign (“unburdened by what has been”)
- Running on “joy” when Americans are struggling with high prices and inflation
- Proposing a tax on unrealized capital gains
- Affecting various fake accents to bamboozle audiences
- Proposing to pay for prisoner sex changes (gender transition surgeries – sic)
- Co-sponsoring with Bernie Sanders of Medicare for All (including for illegal aliens)
- Attending a high-dollar donor dinner in CA while western North Carolinians and other were getting hammered during Hurricane Helene
- Staging a photo op in North Carolina nearly a week after Hurricane Helene
- Staging a Univision interview complete with teleprompter (the interview was supposed to have been “spontaneous”)
- Refusing to hold a formal press conference (very Marie Antoinette-like!)
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Marie Antoinette was apparently oblivious to how the French viewed her lavish lifestyle, her unwillingness to adhere to the traditions of the French court, and her meddling in French politics. And it eventually cost her life.
Kamala Harris may have committed the ultimate political sin by claiming that she would “change nothing” about the policies of the last four years while also stating that, “I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.” At the same time, she has the audacity to campaign as the “change candidate.”
Voters have consistently identified the economy, inflation, and border security as their top concerns going into the November election. To blurt that she would “change nothing” when many people are struggling to pay their bills thanks to Bidenomic/Kamalanomics is the equivalent of her telling Americans to “eat cake.”
Perhaps Kamala Harris will be “politically guillotined” next month, which would be analogous to Marie Antoinette’s physical guillotining in 1793. She has earned it!
The end.
This article originally appeared in Stu Cvrk’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission