Dieter MacPherson 🇨🇦 🚀🌕
132.9K posts
@dmacpher
Perpetual student ,unapologetic universal layman. Maker, He/Him & Research based optimism
"Mark Carney is not confused. He is not inconsistent. He is not speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He is doing what Talleyrand did at Vienna in 1814 and what Bismarck did across four decades of European power politics — playing a multi-layered, patient, strategically fluid game in which the apparent contradictions are features, not bugs."- George Froehlich, Contributor to WSJ, Economist, Fortune. My favourite Talleyrand quote : " Il ne suffit pas de réussir. Encore faut-il que les autres échouent. " As a Quebecker, with ancestry coming from Normandie, my interest in France's history has always been high. So let me tell you of Talleyrand and how I came to know him. Through reading about France's most turbulent time and national crisis : The French Revolution. An important figure before the Revolution, Talleyrand, a noble, managed to keep his head, which in itself was an exploit ! Robespierre's guillotine during " The Terror" spared few of them, and not even Robespierre's neck made it through the turmoil. Then, we see Talleyrand, after a decade of political and military uncertainty (1790's) emerge as an important figure of Napoleon's regime. Then, Napoleon is exiled to Elba, monarchy is restored and "Bonapartistes" are persona non grata in the new Bourbon reign. But not Talleyrand. He manages to become Louis XVIII’s Foreign Minister before and during the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15. Napoléon comes back from Elba! Rallies what remains of his " Grande Armée." But loses it all in Waterloo in 1815. Napoléon goes into final exile at Sainte-Hélène. Talleyrand remains, and has beaten the Great Conqueror - Napoléon- in the long term game of stabilizing France and protecting her from her enemies. ( The French Revolution scared the living daylights of the other Monarchies in Europe and since the Revolution, foreign armies were at France's frontiers). Talleyrand negotiated unbelievably lenient terms for a defeated and feared France at the Congress of Vienna, a Congress that gave Europe a period of of roughly 40 years of stable continental borders without major total war among the great powers. #cdnpoli #polqc #onpoli
Well that’s the closest I’ve ever come to a Vulture.
