Napoleon. My love of Scotland, and now love of the French Revolution and Napoleon has made me quite the anglophobe. It pains me how even in my own education, Napoleon was still presented as villain, when in fact the entire whole of the western world was constantly fighting him out of fear of the dissolution of monarchies. The French challenged the order of kings and oppression, and because of that, every major power in Europe sought to squelch them.
Interestingly, when reading
The Human Comedy, by Honore de Balzac, the character Vautrin implies something incredibly similar. In fact, this is exactly the reason behind why he took the life of crime -- because "to revolt" against an oppressive government / monarchy / wealthy and powerful authority is still crime nonetheless. (And he referenced Napoleon for the same reasons quite a lot)
Then again, it goes to show that when you challenge the most powerful forces in the world, the stakes are likely to be higher and majority of odds stacked against you (making it incredibly difficult to succeed without help; look what happened to Edward Snowden). Fearing this, people would choose the
other option and simply conform, at the expense of the misery of countless others and essentially making the authority even more powerful.
Me? I create a
Third Option. I'm not good at going head-on with my soft-skull, nor do I like the prospects of cowering and giving up.
