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Common Knowledge
Common knowledge bleeds through the streets like a junky’s last fix. Coronations and executions, public spectacles of power and death, not for the king or the condemned but for the hungry eyes of the crowd devouring itself. The laugh track howls, a narcotic rhythm pumped into sitcom veins. American Idol’s studio audience, a pulsing mass…
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Fear and Loathing in the Supreme Court
SCOTUS Smackdown: A Legalized Thunderdome Here’s the CliffsNotes, man: this term, the Supremes have been on a bender, rewriting the whole damn rulebook. So here we are, America, knuckles white around the latest SCOTUS screed. These supposed guardians of justice have been snorting a mystery brand of powdered liberty and it’s got them raving like a pack of hyenas…
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The French Bourgeoisie: A Cut-Up Caper with a Side of Fascism
The French bourgeoisie, oh those respectable frock-coated fiends. Power was their aphrodisiac, and they weren’t picky about the bedfellows it brought. Here’s a glimpse into their sordid little boudoir of political maneuvering: 1. The July Monarchy: 1830 to 1848. A constitutional monarchy? Now that was a cut-up they could dig. A king with a leash, a system that kept the rabble at bay – pure bourgeois bliss! …
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Nero
Emperor Nero (Rome): A teenage viper thrust onto the golden throne, dripping with silk and delusions of grandeur. Fiddled while Rome burned, they say. But the fire was a flicker compared to the inferno raging inside his skull. A mother, Agrippina the Ambitious, a she-wolf in a silk dress, clawed her way to power through…
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Pope Clement VII
Pope Clement VII: A Medici marionette on the throne of St. Peter. A tangled mess of Renaissance finery and political scheming. Mind like a vat of lukewarm oil, swirling with Medici ambitions and papal paranoia. The Protestant Reformation, a gremlin gnawing at the roots of the Church, Luther’s words like a virus spreading through the…
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Tsar Nicholas II (Russia)
A gilded cipher on a throne of bones. Inherited a Romanov zoo of paranoia and privilege. Brain a Fabergé egg, all empty, jeweled cliches of divine right. Stirred the pot of discontent with a rusty scepter, clueless as a cockroach at a coronation ball. A Romanov on a rickety throne, ass squeezed by the iron…
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The Soft Machine Of Versailles
The Soft Machine of Versailles spins its gears, grinding Louis XVI’s indecision into a fine powder. Royal blood seeps through cracks in the palace floors, mingling with the sweat and rage of the hungry masses. Time fractures, spilling centuries of aristocratic rule onto cobblestone streets. Revolution crawls from the gutters, a mutant creature born of…
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Emperor Rudolf II,
Emperor Rudolf II, a man drowning in a vat of his own melancholic bile. His mind, a flickering black and white projector reel of paranoia and dread, churned out anxieties faster than a printing press spewing out papal edicts. The Holy Roman Empire, a ramshackle motherboard of bickering duchies and teetering free cities, reflected its…
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Emperor Ferdinand the Firstu of Austria
Emperor Ferdinand the First of Austria, a man wired wrong from the crib. Epilepsy, a demon electrician, kept throwing his circuits into meltdown. His head, some whispered, ballooned with water, a grotesque parody of hi a crown. Ruling an empire, a vast, glitching motherboard of duchies and kingdoms, was a job for a sharper mind, a more stable hand. Ferdinand, bless his drooling heart, wasn’t up to the task. Every grand…
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Charles II of Spain
King Charles II of Spain, a Habsburg with a family tree more twisted than a pretzel dipped in absinthe. Generations of royal couplings, a genetic cul-de-sac, had bequeathed him with a body like a malfunctioning clockwork automaton and a mind as sharp as a week-old turnip. Inbreeding, a grotesque tango of royal bloodlines, had birthed…
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