Let's Celebrate Bastille Day!

Above: King George III
Noted tyrant and galactic menace.

Every Fourth of July we celebrate the defining moment of American history: with the stroke of a pen (really a giant bird feather dipped in ink-goddamn it must have taken hours to write anything), we finally rid ourselves of the tyranny of the English King and replaced it with a democracy of, by and for a handful of wealthy white male landowners. Kind of brings a tear to the eye. While a bunch of dudes in a room signing a document is a totally compelling story, it pales in comparison to the rivers of blood in which history's greatest badasses birthed their nation.

Sort of like the Occupy Movement but
with more cannons and even laxer hygiene.

Mired in an economic crisis and subject to a regressive tax system that makes Ronald Reagan look like freaking Robin Hood, 18th Century France was kind of a shitty place to live for the 99%. Hungry and fed up (or rather underfed up) with a pack of rich aristocrats flouncing around their gold-leaf Palais in their tights, ermine-trimmed robes and those stupid powdered wigs European people love so much, the impoverished masses of France decided un oeuf was un oeuf and stormed the Bastile-a big fort/prison thing. The kerfuffle kicked off the decade-long period known as the French Revolution.

Highlights of the Revolution included the abolition of feudalism, lots of shouting (possibly in French) and the Reign of Terror in which tens of thousands of political undesirables were publicly beheaded by Guillotine. Yeah, the head-chop-o-matic invented by Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin as a more humane method of execution. I suppose it's more humane than beating the condemned to death with a cudgel made of puppy bones, but still, holy shit France.

 Oh, and in case you thought the Dark Ages ended in 1000 A.D. you should know that the last Guillotining
happened in 1977. 19-goddamn-77. Let's just hope no one in Texas ever hears about this thing.

You can really taste the cruelty!

So yeah, keep this colorful and blood-soaked history in mind the next time you refer to them as cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Anyway, now every July 14th the French have their 4th of July (still with me?) marked with fire works, parades and, I don't know, whatever the French equivalent of barbecue is. Probably foie gras or something. It's like the ground-up liver of a duck that's been force-fed corn its entire life. Like, for real, what is up with the French?

The Revolution was a time of social and political upheaval, uncertainty and violence.
On the upside it took home 8 Tony Awards. Suck on that, Cats.