this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
1156 points (99.6% liked)
Microblog Memes
11496 readers
492 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
- Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
- Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
- You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
- Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
- Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If an image is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
- Absolutely no NSFL content.
- Be nice. Don't take anything personally. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements & arguments to private messages.
- No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You might want to look into what happened to the French government and its leadership shortly after funding that little proxy war. Let me give you a quick rundown, because I enjoy history:
The American Revolution was incredibly expensive and put France into an extreme financial crisis. Of course, the court's extravagent personal spending didn't help things (and made for better revolutionary propaganda), but in reality it was about 6% of total government expenditure, while loan payments, mostly from the war, represented around 50%. Even with very high taxes, it was impossible to balance the budget. A report from March 1788 estimated a deficit of 20% of expenditures, which could only be made up by more borrowing
This financial crisis led to the king calling the Estates General, something that hadn't been done in hundreds of years, to bring representatives of the three estates (nobility, clergy, and everyone else) together to work out a solution. When an agreement could not be reached, the representatives of the third estate left the Estates General and declared that they were creating a "National Assembly," which claimed to represent the popular democratic will, and started work on a new constitution. The royal family ended up declared traitors and got their heads chopped off. And the rest is history. (My source for this is an old book I own called The Coming of the French Revolution by Georges Lefebvre)
So, dumping a bunch of money on a proxy war in a bid to raise their geopolitical status and undermine their rival didn't really work out so well for France. They were so focused on playing geopolitics against Britain, but by failing to address declining conditions at home, they created a much more dangerous domestic threat which brought about the government's downfall.