Naploleon's Tomb

 

 Day five of my 2^nd trip to France and still resetting the jet-lag clock. The weather cleared this afternoon but not so much that it got warm but enough to feel good. Today I walked to the Tomb of Napoleon and the Musèe de l’Armèe but first I toured the Rodin Museum.

 I hate the way art is tucked away in the bastions of culture as many pre-20^st century artists did. Because of this, graffiti on walls is the preferred venue of this era. I am prejudiced about art galleries and museums. I’m glad they exist but I resist the calling for everyone to get some culture.

 I can’t, for the life of me, understand why people drag

young children to such places. It isn’t likely that a two, or four-year-old, will get anything out of looking at shit they can’t touch or taste. Most of the teens, eyes glued on the phone screens, text friends likely about how bored they are in emogees and abbreviations that are code to most of us over fifty.

 I get a kick, however of most of the husbands who get as little from museums and galleries as do their toddlers. Perhaps the realistic nudes make it worth it, and Rodin certainly met the challenge competing with Penthouse but not online porn.

 

 The wives, for the most part seemed to see the wild beauty of it. Some actually looked like they appreciated it. Whether one is gay, lesbian or of all the variations otherwise are good places to pick-up a hook-up if the art isn’t of interest to them.

Competing with all the tourist attractions in this particular city, there is the notion that we must get some culture in a city like Paris. One can hear the echoes far down the hallways of men, who’ve never sketched, painted, or carved but have had some art history, loudly man-splain to impress their dates, wives or anyone in earshot.

I, for one, am sometimes posing as though I am appreciating

a piece by standing in meditation in front of a painting. In that sense, I am as phony as anyone else about culture. I laugh at myself, sometimes out loud. I am not embarrassed as I am free of pretention at this point.  

Napoleon’s Tomb

 Hyper-nationalism is the calling card of dictators and I am cautious about my own nationalistic traits because of this fact, and it is a fact. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco made a mess of things in the 20th Century and Napoleon laid out the templet for those that followed his example.

  Chaos in a country and ant-nationalism played a role in each case for order. People don't like disorder and when they've had enough the man on a white horse starts to look good for them. The chaos is created by a rigid appeal for good causes. 

Napoleon had the Reign of Terror  

  Italy was an old culture but a new Country when Mussolini offered the Italians a brighter future than the serfdom that still existed in Italy. He gave the people nice uniforms and order and a sense of pride in the new nations that the confusion of a republic/monarch promised but never delivered. 

 

 Franco took advantage of the anti-nationalism, with it's foundation in the chaos of strikes and riots, to enact the same application of nationalism and religion.... for crying out loud, anarchists and Communists were executing priests and nuns. 

 Hitler did the same with more as the others with a  than a dash of racial exclusiveness. The inaction of Bonn against the unreasonable demands of Communist and anarchist groups in Germany led to the fall o the Weimar Republic. Capitalists employ the good intentions of the demands of radicals to exploit. 

 None of these would have been successful (to the extent that their short lived Reichs survived) had not business needed order to thrive. In the 21st Century. we are at the tipping point of PC that is almost equal to what went down before, and the control technology is on platforms that is frightening to a degree tyrants of the past would make them giggle with a white Persian on their lap.

So, I got me some culture yesterday.