{"id":66353,"date":"2025-12-30T18:38:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T23:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=66353"},"modified":"2025-12-30T18:38:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T23:38:13","slug":"a-dark-warning-to-trump-about-his-glittery-monarchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=66353","title":{"rendered":"A dark warning to Trump about his glittery monarchy"},"content":{"rendered":"

New ideas of socialism were in the air. They were spreading through Europe, and it was not only in France that men accounted it an infamous anachronism that the great mass of a community should toil and sweat and suffer for the benefit of an insolent minority.<\/em><\/p>\n

Already had there been trouble with the peasantry in Sweden, and <\/em>[Baron] Bjelke <\/em>[the King’s secretary] had endangered his position as a royal favourite by presuming to warn his master. Gustavus III desired amusements, not wisdom, from those about him. He could not be brought to realize the responsibilities which kingship imposes upon a man. It has been pretended that he was endowed with great gifts of mind. He may have been, though the thing has been pretended of so many princes that one may be sceptical where evidence is lacking. If he possessed those gifts, he succeeded wonderfully in concealing them under a nature that was frivolously gay, dissolute, and extravagant.<\/em><\/p>\n

His extravagance forced him into monstrous extortions when only a madman would have wasted in profligacy the wealth so cruelly wrung from long-suffering subjects. From extortion he was driven by his desperate need of money into flagrant dishonesty. At a stroke of the pen he had reduced the value of the paper currency by one-third — a reduction so violent and sudden that, whilst it impoverished many, it involved some in absolute ruin — and this that he might gratify his appetite for magnificance and enrich the rapacious favourites who shared his profligacy.<\/em><\/p>\n

The unrest in the kingdom spread. It was no longer a question of the resentment of a more or less docile peasantry whose first stirrings of revolt were easily quelled. The lesser nobility of Sweden were angered by a measure — folowing upon so many others — that bore peculiarly heavily upon themselves; and out of that anger, fanned by one man — John Jacob Ankarstr\u00f6m — who had felt the vindictive spirit of royal injustices, flamed in secret the conspiracy against the King’s life which Bjelke had discovered.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

–From The Night of Masquerade: The Assassination of Gustave III of Sweden<\/em> by Rafael Sabatini in 1924.<\/p>\n

Baron Bjelke did not participate fully in the 1792 assassination. On his way to warn the King, he’d been given a letter addressed to the King. It was from Bjelke’s wife who was, he then learned, having an affair with Gustavus.<\/p>\n

He did not give his wife’s letter to the King, nor did he warn him of the assassination plot which successfully inflicted a mortal wound on Gustavus during the Masquerade at the Royal Opera House. I’m fairly sure that hall was classically beautiful. I’m also fairly sure you grasp my reference.<\/p>\n

So much of Sabatini’s description of Gustavus sounds awfully familiar today. I wonder which MAGAt minion might become a Baron Bjelke.<\/p>\n

\u221e<\/p>\n

P.S. Anyone who loves opera might find this story familiar. Giuseppe Verdi and his librettist used the essence of it in Un Ballo In Masquera\u00a0<\/em>(masked ball), although the Italian censors would not let him assassinate a monarch, so the whole story and its characters got moved to…Boston. Just before the American Revolution. The “monarch” who is killed in the last act is now the governor of Boston. Named Riccardo.<\/p>\n

It’s somewhat screwy but the score is so marvelous it gets you past the muddle, even when two American revolutionaries, Sam and Tom, show up to lurk on the borders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New ideas of socialism were in the air. They were spreading through Europe, and it was not only in France that men accounted it an infamous anachronism that the great mass of a community should toil and sweat and suffer … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7725,9432,11152,8954,1175,2902],"tags":[11641,1169,11638,11639,9428,11640,11637,11616,1172],"class_list":["post-66353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-culture","category-maga","category-revolution","category-the-facts-of-life","category-trump-stuff","tag-un-ballo-in-masquera","tag-american-revolution","tag-assassination-of-king-gustavus-iii","tag-baron-bjelke","tag-giuseppe-verdi","tag-john-jacob-ankarstrom","tag-king-gustavus-iii-of-sweden","tag-rafael-sabatini","tag-trump"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t