Too dangerous for farce

Hilary Mantel says that in her novel of the French Revolution, A Place of Greater Safety,she has “as far as possible” used the real words of the characters—from their recorded speeches or preserved writings. Her central protagonists are George Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Maximilien Robespierre, architects of the Revolution, from whose words and works she draws considerably. I have been long interested in the French Revolution, an interest derived I suppose from the occurrence of the Reign of Terror (which from Mantel’s novel shows to be how the leaders developed and referred to these events); my reading of Edmund Burke during college courses in 18^thcentury literature, and my reading in the 9^thgrade of Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities.
     But I read this in Mantel’s novel:

From the private notebooks of Maximilien Robespierre:

What is our aim?
The use of the constitution for the benefit of the people.
Who are like to oppose us?
The rich and corrupt.
What methods will they employ?
Slander and hypocrisy.
What factors will encourage the use of such means?
The ignorance of the ordinary people.
When will the people be educated?
When they have enough to eat, and when the rich and the government stop bribing treacherous tongues and pens to deceive them; when their interests are identified with those of the people.
When will that be?
             Never.

My word, this sounds threateningly familiar, because this represents the situation that exists now under the reign of Donald Trump who would be King. To refer to the press as the enemy of the people is the strategy he deploys to deceive because this accusation leaves his words as the sole source of truth. Whoever oppose him promulgates what he calls ‘fake news.’ But the press and his critics are deemed such because they call to account the words and deeds of his administration that promulgate lies and deceptions as its modus operandi. Of course, Trump is a liar, and the press has not failed to call him on his lies even as they number them into the thousands. That he might be a criminal has now been revealed by the guilty plea of Michael Cohen. Investigative journalism, the kind that in my lifetime discovered the crimes of Richard Nixon, lies at the heart of democracy, and to undermine the credibility of the free press protects the President from whatever the press discovers. And Trump is very selective about what press he defiles: he is an avid fan of Fox News and the National Enquirer. He is not very bright: he claims not to read very much! 

     And what protects Trump and his terrified lackeys is the ignorance of the people to their own interests. And these demagogues are protected from discovery by their control of the educational system, represented in this administration in the person of Betty DeVos. They all work to maintain the ignorance of the people. In the form of the catechism, Robespierre asks, What factors will encourage the use of such means as slander and hypocrisy? and he answers, “The ignorance of the people.”  I despair for our children and for the future of democracy in the United States.
     The administration works to protect their deceitful and criminal acts by attacking all who speak in opposition to them. This is exactly the nature of progress of the French Revolution: anyone who spoke against the Convention or Committee of Public Safety was declared a traitor to the Revolution and sent to the guillotine.
     We are living through a very dangerous moment in our history. Trump and his enablers threaten the very nature of our democracy, and those who object to his policies, his tactics, his vile rhetoric are deemed traitors.