#Substack eminence

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Substack Mastery Book: Chapter 5

Editorial Excellence and Practical Tips for Self-Editing Newsletters for Cost Effectiveness and Reader Satisfaction Image designed by Dr Mehmet Yildiz at digitalmehmet as the artifacts of Substack Mastery Book Dear beta readers, thank you for your valuable feedback, which will refine this book and help me create a valuable information source for fellow writers. Now that you have learned the…

[soulmaking]

latest substack post!! tracey emin, the princess and the pea, shakespeare's will, and basically living in my bed <3

[serendip8y]

Why We Must Mobilise

Robert Reich

Read in the Substack app

The first 100 days: Why we must mobilize

Now is the time for all of us to become activists and force this despicable regime out of office

Robert Reich

Apr 28, 2025

Friends,

Today is the start of the 14th week of the odious Trump regime. Wednesday will mark its first 100 days.

The U.S. Constitution is in peril. Civil and human rights are being trampled upon. The economy is in disarray.

At this rate, we won’t make it through the second hundred days.

Federal judges in more than 120 cases so far have sought to stop Trump — judges appointed by Republicans as well as Democrats, some appointed by Trump himself — but the regime is either ignoring or appealing their orders. It has even arrested a municipal judge in Milwaukee who merely sought to hear a case involving an undocumented defendant.

Recently, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit — an eminent conservative Reagan appointee who is revered by the Federalist Society — issued a scathing rebuke of the Trump regime. In response to its assertion that it can abduct residents of the United States and put them into foreign prisons without due process, Wilkinson wrote:

“If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ would lose its meaning.”

Judge Wilkinson’s fears are already being realized. Early Friday morning, ICE deported three U.S. citizens — aged 2, 4, and 7 — when their mothers were deported to Honduras. One of the children, having Stage 4 cancer, was sent out of the United States without medication or consultation with doctors.

Meanwhile, the regime continues to attack all the independent institutions in this country that have traditionally served as bulwarks against tyranny — universities, nonprofits, lawyers and law firms, the media and journalists, science and researchers, libraries and museums, the civil service, and independent agencies — threatening them with extermination or loss of funding if they don’t submit to its oversight and demands.

Trump has even instructed the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the platform that handles the fundraising for almost all Democratic candidates and the issues Democrats support.

At the same time, Trump is actively destroying the economy. His proposed tariffs are already raising prices. His attacks on Fed chief Jerome Powell are causing tremors around the world.

Trump wants total power, even at the cost of our democracy and economy.

His polls are dropping, yet many Americans are still in denial. “He’s getting things done!” some say. “He’s tough and strong!”

Every American with any shred of authority must loudly and boldly sound the alarm.

A few Democrats and progressives in Congress (Bernie Sanders, AOC, Cory Booker, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy) have expressed outrage, but most seem oddly quiet. Granted, they have no direct power to stop what is occurring, but they cannot and must not appear to acquiesce. They need to be heard, every day — protesting, demanding, resisting, refusing.

Barack Obama has spoken up at least once, to his credit, but where is my old boss, Bill Clinton? Where is George W. Bush? Where are their former vice presidents — Al Gore and Dick Cheney? Where are their former Cabinet members? They all must be heard too.

What about Republican members of Congress? Are none willing to stand up against what is occurring? And what of Republican governors and state legislators? If there were ever a time for courage and integrity, it is now. Their silence is inexcusable.

Over 400 university presidents have finally issued a letter opposing “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” Good. Now they must speak out against the overreach endangering all of American democracy.

Hundreds of law firms have joined a friend-of-the-court brief in support of law firm Perkins Coie’s appeal of the regime’s demands. Fine. Now, they along with the American Bar Association and every major law school, must sound the alarm about Trump’s vindictive and abusive use of the Justice Department.

America’s religious leaders have a moral obligation to speak out. They have a spiritual duty to their congregations and to themselves to make their voices heard.

The leaders of American business — starting with Jamie Dimon, the chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who in normal times has assumed the role of spokesperson for American business — have been conspicuously silent. Of course they fear Trump’s retribution. Of course they hope for a huge tax cut. But these hardly excuse their seeming assent to the destruction of American democracy and our economy.

Journalists must speak out too. In the final moments of last night’s “60 Minutes” telecast, Scott Pelley, one of its top journalists, directly criticized Paramount, CBS’s parent company. “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways,” he told viewers, explaining why the show’s executive producer, Bill Owens, had resigned.

“Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial — lately, the Israel-Gaza War and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it.”

Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Paramount, is seeking the Trump regime’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of the media company, and Paramount is obviously intruding on “60 Minutes” content to curry favor with (and not rile) Trump.

Kudos to Pelley for speaking out and to Bill Owens for resigning. We need more examples of such courage. (They both get this week’s Joseph Welch Award, by the way, while Shari Redstone and Paramount get this week’s Neville Chamberlain.)

***

Friends, we have witnessed what can happen in just the first hundred days. I’m not at all sure we can wait until the 2026 midterm elections and cross our fingers that Democrats take back at least one chamber of Congress. At the rate this regime is wreaking havoc, too much damage will have been done by then.

The nation is tottering on the edge of dictatorship.

We are no longer Democrats or Republicans. We are either patriots fighting the regime or we are complicit in its tyranny. There is no middle ground.

Soon, I fear, the regime will openly defy the Supreme Court. Americans must be mobilized into such a huge wave of anger and disgust that members of the House are compelled to impeach Trump (for the third time) and enough senators are moved to finally convict him.

Then this shameful chapter of American history will end.

[lesmisletters-daily]

The Solitude Of Monseigneur Welcome

Les Mis Letters reading club explores one chapter of Les Misérables every day. Join us on Discord, Substack - or share your thoughts right here on tumblr - today's tag is #lm 1.1.12

A bishop is almost always surrounded by a full squadron of little abbés, just as a general is by a covey of young officers. This is what that charming Saint François de Sales calls somewhere “les prêtres blancs-becs,” callow priests. Every career has its aspirants, who form a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power which has not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its court. The seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present. Every metropolis has its staff of officials. Every bishop who possesses the least influence has about him his patrol of cherubim from the seminary, which goes the round, and maintains good order in the episcopal palace, and mounts guard over monseigneur’s smile. To please a bishop is equivalent to getting one’s foot in the stirrup for a sub-diaconate. It is necessary to walk one’s path discreetly; the apostleship does not disdain the canonship.

Just as there are bigwigs elsewhere, there are big mitres in the Church. These are the bishops who stand well at Court, who are rich, well endowed, skilful, accepted by the world, who know how to pray, no doubt, but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple at making a whole diocese dance attendance in their person, who are connecting links between the sacristy and diplomacy, who are abbés rather than priests, prelates rather than bishops. Happy those who approach them! Being persons of influence, they create a shower about them, upon the assiduous and the favored, and upon all the young men who understand the art of pleasing, of large parishes, prebends, archidiaconates, chaplaincies, and cathedral posts, while awaiting episcopal honors. As they advance themselves, they cause their satellites to progress also; it is a whole solar system on the march. Their radiance casts a gleam of purple over their suite. Their prosperity is crumbled up behind the scenes, into nice little promotions. The larger the diocese of the patron, the fatter the curacy for the favorite. And then, there is Rome. A bishop who understands how to become an archbishop, an archbishop who knows how to become a cardinal, carries you with him as conclavist; you enter a court of papal jurisdiction, you receive the pallium, and behold! you are an auditor, then a papal chamberlain, then monsignor, and from a Grace to an Eminence is only a step, and between the Eminence and the Holiness there is but the smoke of a ballot. Every skull-cap may dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man who can become a king in a regular manner; and what a king! the supreme king. Then what a nursery of aspirations is a seminary! How many blushing choristers, how many youthful abbés bear on their heads Perrette’s pot of milk! Who knows how easy it is for ambition to call itself vocation? in good faith, perchance, and deceiving itself, devotee that it is.

Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted among the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests about him. We have seen that he “did not take” in Paris. Not a single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary old man. Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth its foliage in his shadow. His canons and grand-vicars were good old men, rather vulgar like himself, walled up like him in this diocese, without exit to a cardinalship, and who resembled their bishop, with this difference, that they were finished and he was completed. The impossibility of growing great under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so well understood, that no sooner had the young men whom he ordained left the seminary than they got themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix or of Auch, and went off in a great hurry. For, in short, we repeat it, men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion, an incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and this infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.

Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menæchmus of talent, has one dupe,—history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone grumble at it. In our day, a philosophy which is almost official has entered into its service, wears the livery of success, and performs the service of its antechamber. Succeed: theory. Prosperity argues capacity. Win in the lottery, and behold! you are a clever man. He who triumphs is venerated. Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth! everything lies in that. Be lucky, and you will have all the rest; be happy, and people will think you great. Outside of five or six immense exceptions, which compose the splendor of a century, contemporary admiration is nothing but short-sightedness. Gilding is gold. It does no harm to be the first arrival by pure chance, so long as you do arrive. The common herd is an old Narcissus who adores himself, and who applauds the vulgar herd. That enormous ability by virtue of which one is Moses, Æschylus, Dante, Michael Angelo, or Napoleon, the multitude awards on the spot, and by acclamation, to whomsoever attains his object, in whatsoever it may consist. Let a notary transfigure himself into a deputy: let a false Corneille compose <i>Tiridate;</i> let a eunuch come to possess a harem; let a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an epoch; let an apothecary invent cardboard shoe-soles for the army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, and construct for himself, out of this cardboard, sold as leather, four hundred thousand francs of income; let a pork-packer espouse usury, and cause it to bring forth seven or eight millions, of which he is the father and of which it is the mother; let a preacher become a bishop by force of his nasal drawl; let the steward of a fine family be so rich on retiring from service that he is made minister of finances,—and men call that Genius, just as they call the face of Mousqueton <i>Beauty</i>, and the mien of Claude <i>Majesty</i>. With the constellations of space they confound the stars of the abyss which are made in the soft mire of the puddle by the feet of ducks.

[pswitch]

from the JANUARY 199KOO Carousel (1/12)

Visit my sites for all of my creations

PSwitch. NYC | MUSIC | SHOP | LIFE or get easy access at https://pswitch.online/

Join the PTOK Substack to get FREE music downloads and more directly in your inbox https://pswitch.substack.com/

[reds1981]

people on substack post as if tracey emin never existed. for some reason my suggested page is just “list of everyone I’ve ever fucked” like okay. and? what year is it. too many people think they’re smart I’m sorry but it’s true.

[grandhotelabyss]

Have you read The Changing Light at Sandover? If so, I wonder if you believe in the occult dimension to the poem. How much of the poetic merit can be attributed to those otherworldly voices that spoke to Merrill? I'm only half joking.

Haven't read it, want to read it. Blake Smith's summary of the occult content is disquieting for its similarity, as I think I mentioned on Substack, to similar transmissions received by very different figures like Grant Morrison and Terrence McKenna, or, in the poetic tradition itself, to views that can be extrapolated from Rilke, to wit, that we are being guided by something like our own higher and unfolded selves-become-gods through this necessarily brutal testing ground of earth and flesh to arrive at their own eminence. It's a disturbing view, somewhat in the way Hegel's apparently secularized Hermeticism is, as it seems to ratify history's aspect of "slaughter bench," but that doesn't mean it's not true, and (as Blake points out) even Abrahamic orthodoxy runs quickly into the same issue re: the fortunate fall or questions of theodicy. It's hard to square what actually happens with an exalted view of man's or God's or gods' morality, at least as we understand morality down here. Poetic merit, though, is due finally to the talent, skill, and preparation of the poet; divine inspiration must meet artistic intelligence. Perhaps someone ranting on the street has seen a true vision, but the rant is not for that reason alone great poetry.

[h4tebook]

Nothing much to say… I mean 🍊

As of basically today hit the pause button on all types of federal aid… it’s been suspended until further notice…

Over the past couple of days, he has pretty much been doing nasty deportation grabbing anyone and everyone that has a slight bit of melanin to them, marking them as a legal immigrants putting them on a plane and trying to dump them anywhere…

He has all, but basically said, and suggested that the entirety of Palestine should be reserved for his whack ass resorts, and as for the Palestinians themselves, he said they should essentially be ethically cleansed, which is absolutely abhorrent, but these things we expected from him… he’s evil…. But he’s also enacting everything from his project 2025 booklet hitting everybody with a blitzkrieg maneuver, in the hopes that it leaves people paralyzed and unable to act.

Cost of food and everything else, is steadily climbing and shows no signs of stopping … honestly it looks like we’re up Schitt’s Creek without a paddle I’m not sure where we go from here

Everything in me says, eventually they will exhaust themselves and we will pick up the pieces later after we obliterate them

The important thing to remember is to never let yourself get too tired , don’t let the fear that you feel paralyze you into inaction, other people may not wish to hear it, idc but we’re gonna need to keep your wits about you in order to fight back.

I may pen something similar on my Substack. I am thinking of trying to turn it into a journal that houses all my thoughts that I can’t necessarily speak on other platforms..

One thing is for certain, though I do feel it in my bones the eminent collapse of the United States and boy will it collapse in such a big way.

[startestblog]

The Solitude Of Monseigneur Welcome

Les Mis Letters reading club explores one chapter of Les Misérables every day. Join us on Discord, Substack - or share your thoughts right here on tumblr - today's tag is #lm 1.1.12

A bishop is almost always surrounded by a full squadron of little abbés, just as a general is by a covey of young officers. This is what that charming Saint François de Sales calls somewhere “les prêtres blancs-becs,” callow priests. Every career has its aspirants, who form a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power which has not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its court. The seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present. Every metropolis has its staff of officials. Every bishop who possesses the least influence has about him his patrol of cherubim from the seminary, which goes the round, and maintains good order in the episcopal palace, and mounts guard over monseigneur’s smile. To please a bishop is equivalent to getting one’s foot in the stirrup for a sub-diaconate. It is necessary to walk one’s path discreetly; the apostleship does not disdain the canonship.

Just as there are bigwigs elsewhere, there are big mitres in the Church. These are the bishops who stand well at Court, who are rich, well endowed, skilful, accepted by the world, who know how to pray, no doubt, but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple at making a whole diocese dance attendance in their person, who are connecting links between the sacristy and diplomacy, who are abbés rather than priests, prelates rather than bishops. Happy those who approach them! Being persons of influence, they create a shower about them, upon the assiduous and the favored, and upon all the young men who understand the art of pleasing, of large parishes, prebends, archidiaconates, chaplaincies, and cathedral posts, while awaiting episcopal honors. As they advance themselves, they cause their satellites to progress also; it is a whole solar system on the march. Their radiance casts a gleam of purple over their suite. Their prosperity is crumbled up behind the scenes, into nice little promotions. The larger the diocese of the patron, the fatter the curacy for the favorite. And then, there is Rome. A bishop who understands how to become an archbishop, an archbishop who knows how to become a cardinal, carries you with him as conclavist; you enter a court of papal jurisdiction, you receive the pallium, and behold! you are an auditor, then a papal chamberlain, then monsignor, and from a Grace to an Eminence is only a step, and between the Eminence and the Holiness there is but the smoke of a ballot. Every skull-cap may dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man who can become a king in a regular manner; and what a king! the supreme king. Then what a nursery of aspirations is a seminary! How many blushing choristers, how many youthful abbés bear on their heads Perrette’s pot of milk! Who knows how easy it is for ambition to call itself vocation? in good faith, perchance, and deceiving itself, devotee that it is.

Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted among the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests about him. We have seen that he “did not take” in Paris. Not a single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary old man. Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth its foliage in his shadow. His canons and grand-vicars were good old men, rather vulgar like himself, walled up like him in this diocese, without exit to a cardinalship, and who resembled their bishop, with this difference, that they were finished and he was completed. The impossibility of growing great under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so well understood, that no sooner had the young men whom he ordained left the seminary than they got themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix or of Auch, and went off in a great hurry. For, in short, we repeat it, men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion, an incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and this infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.

Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menæchmus of talent, has one dupe,—history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone grumble at it. In our day, a philosophy which is almost official has entered into its service, wears the livery of success, and performs the service of its antechamber. Succeed: theory. Prosperity argues capacity. Win in the lottery, and behold! you are a clever man. He who triumphs is venerated. Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth! everything lies in that. Be lucky, and you will have all the rest; be happy, and people will think you great. Outside of five or six immense exceptions, which compose the splendor of a century, contemporary admiration is nothing but short-sightedness. Gilding is gold. It does no harm to be the first arrival by pure chance, so long as you do arrive. The common herd is an old Narcissus who adores himself, and who applauds the vulgar herd. That enormous ability by virtue of which one is Moses, Æschylus, Dante, Michael Angelo, or Napoleon, the multitude awards on the spot, and by acclamation, to whomsoever attains his object, in whatsoever it may consist. Let a notary transfigure himself into a deputy: let a false Corneille compose <i>Tiridate;</i> let a eunuch come to possess a harem; let a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an epoch; let an apothecary invent cardboard shoe-soles for the army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, and construct for himself, out of this cardboard, sold as leather, four hundred thousand francs of income; let a pork-packer espouse usury, and cause it to bring forth seven or eight millions, of which he is the father and of which it is the mother; let a preacher become a bishop by force of his nasal drawl; let the steward of a fine family be so rich on retiring from service that he is made minister of finances,—and men call that Genius, just as they call the face of Mousqueton <i>Beauty</i>, and the mien of Claude <i>Majesty</i>. With the constellations of space they confound the stars of the abyss which are made in the soft mire of the puddle by the feet of ducks.

[reporterswithoutorders2]

It’s hard to choose a starting point from which to neatly begin the story of Isadore “Izzy” Feinstein Stone. His extraordinary intelligence certainly looms large: he is one of a very few individuals to whom the term ‘genius’ is justly applied. He is also one of the most colourful and most loveable figures in the history of journalism, and his eccentric, warm, affable character has delighted countless enthusiastic young counter-culture steeped journalists and colours everything to do with him. But perhaps the most significant facet of our many-faceted subject is his singular personal and professional fortitude, moral instincts, and basic, palpable goodness of heart.

One thing I have noticed from reading a number of recollections written about Stone by younger colleagues who were fortunate enough to work with and befriend him, is the unfailing consistency with which the same sentimental tone creeps into each of their reflections. Among the million laudatory things that could justly be said, one of the most striking is that he was eminently lovable. These friends and co-workers plainly loved him. Even I, who was born after he had passed away, feel very warmly about him. He is the perfect archetype of the countercultural, antiauthoritarian intellectual and humanist – how could you help but love him? And I don’t mean countercultural or antiauthoritarian in any cheap or superficial way. I don’t say these words the way they are used to describe figures like William S. Burroughs and other culturally savvy, performatively cool, and usually morally indifferent socialites who pass themselves off as heroes of the counterculture in every generation. I mean it in the sense of not being bound by the orthodoxy of one’s era, society, profession, or social set; of having the independence of mind and strength of character to follow one's own compass, whether it means going against the orthodoxy or whether it means going with the orthodoxy. Independence is one of its defining traits, as in integrity.

Read the full article on Substack.

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

The Substack Eminence Book

An Original Book For Ultra-Advanced Writers Who Want to Scale with Clarity, Authority, and Integrity. Written by Dr Mehmet Yildiz, a Community Builder and Substack Bestseller The Substack Eminence Book Is Coming in August 2025 Dear Freelance Writers, Startup Founders, and Journalists, For those who don’t know me, I am the author of the best-selling book, Substack Mastery and Advanced Substack…

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

The Meaning of an Education Badge from Substack

ILLUMINATION Writing & Reading Academy Helped Me Get My First Badge on Substack Gratitude: As it was about education, it meant a lot to me. Dear Writers and Readers, Happy Weekend! This is a brief post to inform you about the wonderful messages we have received related to our new venture to empower writers and inform readers on Substack, as well. It has been an absolute pleasure for me to…

[lesmisletters-daily]

A Restriction

Les Mis Letters reading club explores one chapter of Les Misérables every day. Join us on Discord, Substack - or share your thoughts right here on tumblr - today's tag is #lm 1.1.11

We should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were we to conclude from this that Monseigneur Welcome was “a philosophical bishop,” or a “patriotic curé.” His meeting, which may almost be designated as his union, with conventionary G——, left behind it in his mind a sort of astonishment, which rendered him still more gentle. That is all.

Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician, this is, perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his attitude was in the events of that epoch, supposing that Monseigneur Bienvenu ever dreamed of having an attitude.

Let us, then, go back a few years.

Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate, the Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company with many other bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as every one knows, on the night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809; on this occasion, M. Myriel was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and Italy convened at Paris. This synod was held at Notre-Dame, and assembled for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one of the ninety-five bishops who attended it. But he was present only at one sitting and at three or four private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so very close to nature, in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that he imported among these eminent personages, ideas which altered the temperature of the assembly. He very soon returned to D—— He was interrogated as to this speedy return, and he replied: <i>“I embarrassed them. The outside air penetrated to them through me. I produced on them the effect of an open door.”</i>

On another occasion he said, <i>“What would you have? Those gentlemen are princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop.”</i>

The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things, it is said that he chanced to remark one evening, when he found himself at the house of one of his most notable colleagues: “What beautiful clocks! What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a great trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying incessantly in my ears: ‘There are people who are hungry! There are people who are cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!’”

Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts. Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in connection with representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a contradiction. The priest must keep close to the poor. Now, can one come in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one’s own person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is poverty.

This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D—— thought.

It must not be supposed, however, that he shared what we call the “ideas of the century” on certain delicate points. He took very little part in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence on questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he had been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be an ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making a portrait, and since we do not wish to conceal anything, we are forced to add that he was glacial towards Napoleon in his decline. Beginning with 1813, he gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He refused to see him, as he passed through on his return from the island of Elba, and he abstained from ordering public prayers for the Emperor in his diocese during the Hundred Days.

Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers, one a general, the other a prefect. He wrote to both with tolerable frequency. He was harsh for a time towards the former, because, holding a command in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation at Cannes, the general had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had pursued the Emperor as though the latter had been a person whom one is desirous of allowing to escape. His correspondence with the other brother, the ex-prefect, a fine, worthy man who lived in retirement at Paris, Rue Cassette, remained more affectionate.

Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment traversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things. Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are not confounding what is called “political opinions” with the grand aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic, humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of every generous intellect. Without going deeply into questions which are only indirectly connected with the subject of this book, we will simply say this: It would have been well if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a Royalist, and if his glance had never been, for a single instant, turned away from that serene contemplation in which is distinctly discernible, above the fictions and the hatreds of this world, above the stormy vicissitudes of human things, the beaming of those three pure radiances, truth, justice, and charity.

While admitting that it was not for a political office that God created Monseigneur Welcome, we should have understood and admired his protest in the name of right and liberty, his proud opposition, his just but perilous resistance to the all-powerful Napoleon. But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who are falling. We only love the fray so long as there is danger, and in any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a stubborn accuser in prosperity should hold his peace in the face of ruin. The denunciator of success is the only legitimate executioner of the fall. As for us, when Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it work. 1812 commenced to disarm us. In 1813 the cowardly breach of silence of that taciturn legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe, possessed only traits which aroused indignation. And it was a crime to applaud, in 1814, in the presence of those marshals who betrayed; in the presence of that senate which passed from one dunghill to another, insulting after having deified; in the presence of that idolatry which was loosing its footing and spitting on its idol,—it was a duty to turn aside the head. In 1815, when the supreme disasters filled the air, when France was seized with a shiver at their sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable in it, and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D——, ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the august and touching features presented by the embrace of a great nation and a great man on the brink of the abyss.

With this exception, he was in all things just, true, equitable, intelligent, humble and dignified, beneficent and kindly, which is only another sort of benevolence. He was a priest, a sage, and a man. It must be admitted, that even in the political views with which we have just reproached him, and which we are disposed to judge almost with severity, he was tolerant and easy, more so, perhaps, than we who are speaking here. The porter of the town-hall had been placed there by the Emperor. He was an old non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a member of the Legion of Honor at Austerlitz, as much of a Bonapartist as the eagle. This poor fellow occasionally let slip inconsiderate remarks, which the law then stigmatized as <i>seditious speeches</i>. After the imperial profile disappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never dressed himself in his regimentals, as he said, so that he should not be obliged to wear his cross. He had himself devoutly removed the imperial effigy from the cross which Napoleon had given him; this made a hole, and he would not put anything in its place. <i>“I will die,”</i> he said, <i>“rather than wear the three frogs upon my heart!”</i> He liked to scoff aloud at Louis XVIII. “The gouty old creature in English gaiters!” he said; <i>“let him take himself off to Prussia with that queue of his.”</i> He was happy to combine in the same imprecation the two things which he most detested, Prussia and England. He did it so often that he lost his place. There he was, turned out of the house, with his wife and children, and without bread. The Bishop sent for him, reproved him gently, and appointed him beadle in the cathedral.

In the course of nine years Monseigneur Bienvenu had, by dint of holy deeds and gentle manners, filled the town of D——with a sort of tender and filial reverence. Even his conduct towards Napoleon had been accepted and tacitly pardoned, as it were, by the people, the good and weakly flock who adored their emperor, but loved their bishop.

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A Restriction

Les Mis Letters reading club explores one chapter of Les Misérables every day. Join us on Discord, Substack - or share your thoughts right here on tumblr - today's tag is #lm 1.1.11

We should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were we to conclude from this that Monseigneur Welcome was “a philosophical bishop,” or a “patriotic curé.” His meeting, which may almost be designated as his union, with conventionary G——, left behind it in his mind a sort of astonishment, which rendered him still more gentle. That is all.

Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician, this is, perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his attitude was in the events of that epoch, supposing that Monseigneur Bienvenu ever dreamed of having an attitude.

Let us, then, go back a few years.

Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate, the Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company with many other bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as every one knows, on the night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809; on this occasion, M. Myriel was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and Italy convened at Paris. This synod was held at Notre-Dame, and assembled for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one of the ninety-five bishops who attended it. But he was present only at one sitting and at three or four private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so very close to nature, in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that he imported among these eminent personages, ideas which altered the temperature of the assembly. He very soon returned to D—— He was interrogated as to this speedy return, and he replied: <i>“I embarrassed them. The outside air penetrated to them through me. I produced on them the effect of an open door.”</i>

On another occasion he said, <i>“What would you have? Those gentlemen are princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop.”</i>

The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things, it is said that he chanced to remark one evening, when he found himself at the house of one of his most notable colleagues: “What beautiful clocks! What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a great trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying incessantly in my ears: ‘There are people who are hungry! There are people who are cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!’”

Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts. Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in connection with representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a contradiction. The priest must keep close to the poor. Now, can one come in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one’s own person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is poverty.

This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D—— thought.

It must not be supposed, however, that he shared what we call the “ideas of the century” on certain delicate points. He took very little part in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence on questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he had been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be an ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making a portrait, and since we do not wish to conceal anything, we are forced to add that he was glacial towards Napoleon in his decline. Beginning with 1813, he gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He refused to see him, as he passed through on his return from the island of Elba, and he abstained from ordering public prayers for the Emperor in his diocese during the Hundred Days.

Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers, one a general, the other a prefect. He wrote to both with tolerable frequency. He was harsh for a time towards the former, because, holding a command in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation at Cannes, the general had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had pursued the Emperor as though the latter had been a person whom one is desirous of allowing to escape. His correspondence with the other brother, the ex-prefect, a fine, worthy man who lived in retirement at Paris, Rue Cassette, remained more affectionate.

Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment traversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things. Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are not confounding what is called “political opinions” with the grand aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic, humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of every generous intellect. Without going deeply into questions which are only indirectly connected with the subject of this book, we will simply say this: It would have been well if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a Royalist, and if his glance had never been, for a single instant, turned away from that serene contemplation in which is distinctly discernible, above the fictions and the hatreds of this world, above the stormy vicissitudes of human things, the beaming of those three pure radiances, truth, justice, and charity.

While admitting that it was not for a political office that God created Monseigneur Welcome, we should have understood and admired his protest in the name of right and liberty, his proud opposition, his just but perilous resistance to the all-powerful Napoleon. But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who are falling. We only love the fray so long as there is danger, and in any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a stubborn accuser in prosperity should hold his peace in the face of ruin. The denunciator of success is the only legitimate executioner of the fall. As for us, when Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it work. 1812 commenced to disarm us. In 1813 the cowardly breach of silence of that taciturn legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe, possessed only traits which aroused indignation. And it was a crime to applaud, in 1814, in the presence of those marshals who betrayed; in the presence of that senate which passed from one dunghill to another, insulting after having deified; in the presence of that idolatry which was loosing its footing and spitting on its idol,—it was a duty to turn aside the head. In 1815, when the supreme disasters filled the air, when France was seized with a shiver at their sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable in it, and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D——, ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the august and touching features presented by the embrace of a great nation and a great man on the brink of the abyss.

With this exception, he was in all things just, true, equitable, intelligent, humble and dignified, beneficent and kindly, which is only another sort of benevolence. He was a priest, a sage, and a man. It must be admitted, that even in the political views with which we have just reproached him, and which we are disposed to judge almost with severity, he was tolerant and easy, more so, perhaps, than we who are speaking here. The porter of the town-hall had been placed there by the Emperor. He was an old non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a member of the Legion of Honor at Austerlitz, as much of a Bonapartist as the eagle. This poor fellow occasionally let slip inconsiderate remarks, which the law then stigmatized as <i>seditious speeches</i>. After the imperial profile disappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never dressed himself in his regimentals, as he said, so that he should not be obliged to wear his cross. He had himself devoutly removed the imperial effigy from the cross which Napoleon had given him; this made a hole, and he would not put anything in its place. <i>“I will die,”</i> he said, <i>“rather than wear the three frogs upon my heart!”</i> He liked to scoff aloud at Louis XVIII. “The gouty old creature in English gaiters!” he said; <i>“let him take himself off to Prussia with that queue of his.”</i> He was happy to combine in the same imprecation the two things which he most detested, Prussia and England. He did it so often that he lost his place. There he was, turned out of the house, with his wife and children, and without bread. The Bishop sent for him, reproved him gently, and appointed him beadle in the cathedral.

In the course of nine years Monseigneur Bienvenu had, by dint of holy deeds and gentle manners, filled the town of D——with a sort of tender and filial reverence. Even his conduct towards Napoleon had been accepted and tacitly pardoned, as it were, by the people, the good and weakly flock who adored their emperor, but loved their bishop.

[reporterswithoutorders2]

Reporters Without Orders: Launching January 1, 2023

Reporters Without Orders is an anarchist news publication, launching on Substack on the first day of next year. You can subscribe to the Substack page by following the attached link.

The kind of subject matter that will be covered is suggested in part by the name itself, and by the tagline, “the home of anarchist journalism.” By “anarchist journalism,” I do mean all of the obvious things: journalism which is anti-authoritarian, which holds power up to scrutiny, which gives voice to needs and welfare of the voiceless, the disenfranchised, the deprived, excluded and subordinated. But it means much more than this, as well.

The philosophy of Anarchism is not merely oppositional, against authority, against government, etc. It also offers its own rich, creative, and eminently positive vision of a different, free society. 

It proposes that people have the capacity to organize every necessary or desirable aspect of a functioning society through voluntary arrangements and relationships. A function of anarchist journalism, therefore, is to document the myriad ways in which people are already doing this, whether motivated by an explicitly anarchist ethos or not. In short, a major focus of anarchism is what may broadly be called ‘emergent order’.

A focus on emergent order involves, for instance:

Stories about people, groups, and projects which address the needs of their community and its most disadvantaged members, especially in innovative and unique ways;

Analysis of governmental regulatory and artificial barriers to essential services and better living standards;

Informative articles on what individuals can do to take a more active part in their communities; and…

Generally, such related subjects as: 

the gig, sharing, and gift economies; in more theoretical language, black markets, gray markets, microenterprises, and homebrew production projects; modular and vernacular techniques for constructing affordable housing and other vital goods and services, and economies characterised by moves toward reduced capital outlays, distributed infrastructure, and scalability; disruptive technologies; co-operative businesses and business models; 

unschooling, homeschooling, free or open schools/universities, and other alternative systems of education; community organization and developing the infrastructure of civil society; mutual aid and resource sharing; etc

In addition to this, we will cover a broad cross-section of those aspects of the social and political landscape which seem most significant to us, including: law and justice, with a focus on the Melbourne and Victorian courts and the cases being heard therein, and Victorian legal advocacy and reform groups; policing and police reform; protests and other forms of civil activism in Australia; civil unrest and activist movements globally, and particularly the global anarchist movement.

Finally, one of the aims of this project which is nearest to my heart is to celebrate the craft and tradition of journalism, and to keep alive the memory of its great practitioners and the noble heights to which they took the medium. To this end, I will be publishing a series of articles on the history of journalism, consisting of: longform essays on significant chapters in that history — the Abolitionist Press, the Afro-American Press, the "Race Beat", the Muckrakers and the genesis of investigative journalism, etc. — supplemented by profiles and critical discussions of the writers who figure most prominently in these narratives and annotated reading lists/guides to the journalism of these historical episodes; and profiles of the great journalists of history, such as I. F. Stone, Murray Kempton, Sy Hersh, Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, etc., etc.

If you’re interested in getting involved, submitting an article, or becoming a regular contributor, drop me a note at leekavanagh1@gmail.com or check out the ‘Submissions/Volunteers’ page.