[6stringmerc]

So how does the cycle work? I’m not being sarcastic I actually find this a relevant and on-point summation. I happen to be very interested in the systemic consequences and results in Western history as much as is applicable in present USA. I’m glad to be a bystander and not participant, that’s for sure.

[shermantanktop]

One final resolution is the guillotine, dangling upside down on a meat hook, or a bunker fire. Those are extreme but we have to wonder what will stop a specific leader from pushing so far that they meet such a fate. This personality type does not stop unless they have to.

[JumpCrisscross]

> One final resolution is the guillotine

Did you miss the lesson from the actual guillotine? It’s just another escalation in the cycle. The parties switch from raiding to guillotining each other. The guillotine doesn’t solve the problem, it just raises the stakes.

[shermantanktop]

Sure. Final resolution for that leader, in any case. But in the cycles of history, those events are almost always inflection points where something new happens. For the Terror, that lasted a while, but then we got Napoleon, which was definitely a new chapter.

[JumpCrisscross]

> in the cycles of history, those events are almost always inflection points where something new happens

Guillotines have historically been a time for the elites to consolidate wealth and power (with some shuffling among them). The poor and middle class eat shit.

(The only exceptions to the first part to my knowledge being the o.g., and only the o.g., communist revolutions in Russia and China. Still shit for the poor and middle class. But the elites fully rotated.)

> For the Terror, that lasted a while, but then we got Napoleon, which was definitely a new chapter

Sure. One which involved shuffling between Bourbons and an imperial Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna brought peace to Europe until WWI. But to the extent the French Revolution benefited ordinary people, it was in Britain and America.

Being temporally proximate to a guillotining is precedentedly fine. Being physically proximate to it is pretty much shit unless you're already powerful (or lucky enough to land a seat in the new oligarchy).

[DiscourseFan]

Human society is prone to convulsions, though. Just like the often body requires a shock to become stronger, healthier, societies need to be a push to avoid stagnation and decay. Though its true that you risk permanent injury, if you go too far.

[JumpCrisscross]

> its true that you risk permanent injury, if you go too far

Guillotining–and violence as a tool of politics more broadly–is pretty much a one-way signal in the historical record (outside civil wars). More concentration of wealth and power. Or anarchy. Either way, the poor and middle class end up worse.

As for my civil-war caveat, even that's starting to look one way in the age of information and globally-mobilised proxy-war assets.

[timeon]

So what is 2A for? What is price of shooting children in schools for?

[skrebbel]

Just to add to this, it still blows my mind how quickly this happened. The French went from overthrowing the royals to guillotining their neighbours within 5 years, and in the same short timespan Robespierre went madder than any Sun King had ever been. "La Terreur" was total madness.

[pavlov]

On top of that he was a tremendous speaker. Tyrants don’t usually bother to justify their actions much beyond “because I can and I want to.” (Cf. current US administration’s discourse over Greenland.)

But Robespierre was a believer in capital-R Reason, and he had to face the National Assembly all the time. So his speeches are a fascinating gradual slippery slope from “it would be good if Jews and actors would get to vote too” to “only Terror will purify the world.”

I’ve got a little book of them, aptly titled “Les plus beaux discours de Robespierre” — his most beautiful speeches. It would be an odd adjective to use about almost any other political monster’s output (excepting Antiquity and the distance we have to them).

[JumpCrisscross]

> French went from overthrowing the royals to guillotining their neighbours

The irony being the elites after the French Revolution were not only mostly the same as before, they escaped with so much money and wealth that it’s actually debated if they increased their wealth share through the chaos [1].

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/650023

[TitaRusell]

My country went from 1000 years of Christian hegemony to atheist in a span of approximately 20 years. Don't underestimate the capacity for humans to change.

[layer8]

It’s somewhat hopeful to assume that it is a cycle.

[cjs_ac]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...

2. Modern societies are really complex, and a great deal of information-processing work is required to keep them functioning. Authoritarian governments maintain control by concentrating power, which means there are too few people available to make decisions about the behaviour of the system. A good example is the centrally-planned economy of the Soviet Union, which was outperformed by 'the invisible hand of the market', which is really a metaphor for the collective decisions of all participants in market economies. Consequently, authoritarian governments always collapse in the end. It's interesting to note, however, that the Soviet Union and the fascist or quasi-fascist governments in Spain and Portugal lasted much longer than Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, because they built up some institutions that resulted in less concentration of power.

[throwawayqqq11]

I find your explanation of free markets outperforming authoritarian regimes wanting. How should a stable and sealed dictatorship like north korea be impacted let alone destabilized by anything outside privateers do? Can you give an example?

Also, since many people bring up the french revolution. Peak weapons tech back then was front loading muskets and the fights in paris were desparation driven bloodbaths, where such weapons were eventually captured by the revolution. Today, the power gap to be outperformed by free markets is much bigger.

[floatrock]

Usually there's a bodies-in-the-streets phase... guillotine was theatrical, bolsheviks called it the red terror, nazis were well the nazis, italians strung em up on meathooks, tienamin used tanks (after the famines), baltics did straight up ethnic cleansings, last week iranians gunned down thousands corralled in the squares.

Luckily we're still only in the "kidnap and beat-up by the secret police" phase, haven't had the mass executions yet. Only a singular execution here and there.

> I’m glad to be a bystander and not participant, that’s for sure.

Hope that's because you're not in the USA. USA-based bystanders is how this shit happens.