Festival of the Goddess of Reason
"Most of them were still drunk with brandy they had swallowed out of chalices--eating mackerel on the patenas. Mounted on asses, housed with priests' cloaks, they reined them with priests' stoles. They clutched in the same hand communion-cup and sacred wafer ... Mules high-laden with crosses, chandeliers, censers ... thus did the profaners advance toward the Convention, in an immense train, all masked like mummers in fantastic sacredotal vestments ... God was evicted the next day in Notre Dame, and in various other churches. In Notre-Dame God's place was taken by Mlle. Candeille, a pretty actress, lavishly rouged, as the 'Goddess of Reason', crowned with a red woolen night-cap, and escorted by wind-music, she seated herself on the high altar, and the first communion service of the new religion was celebrated."
BUT of course it didn't last ... those French are such fickle thinkers! "Robespierre decided that Atheism is aristocratic. The idea of a Supreme Being who watches over the innocence oppressed and punishes the crime triumphant is an idea of the people. So he gave a festival of the Supreme Being, and had the figure effigy of Atheism solemnly burned."
The sad part is how this continues to happen, just in the politically correct way of language: imperialism through sarcasm, underlying assumptions and pseudo-intelligence. Times have been crazy before, are crazy now and will be again.
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