For those of you who may have forgotten the vital details now, in 1831 the French nobleman, Alexis de Tocqueville, made a six months long dash through the United States on a mission that everyone else at the time recognized was tragically foredoomed from the start: The search to discover even a single American chef capable of whipping up an acceptable batch of any one of the five mother sauces of French cuisine.
Tocqueville's tearful and heart-wrenching departure from the port of New York on his way back to France is today just as thoroughly forgotten as it was back then. In fact, I seem to the sole historian on earth these days for whom his departure is just as fresh in my memory as if I had myself only minutes ago thunk it up out of nothing.
'Alternative facts' my butt Kellyanne Conway! You weren't even in your first diaper on the day I received my doctorate in alternative facts from Pumpitout University. Pfft!
Moving on, while on his galloping quest though the young American nation in search of getting properly sauced, Tocqueville made a number of trenchant observations, albeit significantly fewer than most of them were not merely trenchant, but also trenchantly accurate. In the opinion of this hardworking and honest historian, the single most under-appreciate observation that Tocqueville made about America, which is also accurate and true is...
Upon his arrival back in France, Tocqueville spent the next several months creating the design for the T-shirts he hoped to sell that would not only commemorate his travels, but mark his rejection of the day's fashions, for the notion that he himself might even once be caught wearing the dresses that the French noblewomen wore at the time was a prospect that thoroughly nauseated Tocqueville, and that which he almost violent dismissed as beneath his dignity. History records that he kept true to his vows, and never even once wore a dress, although history also records that Tocqueville often enough tried to get into a dress, so long as it was being occupied at the time by a Frenchwoman.
In yet another one of the many unforeseeable tragedies of Tocqueville's life, his plan to sell T-shirts was brutally frustrated by the astounding bad luck to have invented the T-shirt design significantly before the invention of the T-shirt. A remarkable, yet in no way out of the ordinary, case of getting the cart in front of the horse.
He then turned to writing Democracy in America, the book his grave is most sued for to this day.
Uncle Sunstone
"Telling the Truth Like the Truth's Never Been Told Before Since 1960."
Tocqueville's tearful and heart-wrenching departure from the port of New York on his way back to France is today just as thoroughly forgotten as it was back then. In fact, I seem to the sole historian on earth these days for whom his departure is just as fresh in my memory as if I had myself only minutes ago thunk it up out of nothing.
'Alternative facts' my butt Kellyanne Conway! You weren't even in your first diaper on the day I received my doctorate in alternative facts from Pumpitout University. Pfft!
Moving on, while on his galloping quest though the young American nation in search of getting properly sauced, Tocqueville made a number of trenchant observations, albeit significantly fewer than most of them were not merely trenchant, but also trenchantly accurate. In the opinion of this hardworking and honest historian, the single most under-appreciate observation that Tocqueville made about America, which is also accurate and true is...
[this part of the OP is actually true] when he noted that Americans were in the habit of either bouncing off each other to gin up their belief America was an ideal nation, the most blessed nation on earth, or Americans were bouncing off each other in a race to morosely depress themselves with the opposite idea. Furthermore, there seemed to Tocqueville to be no in-between. Americans either portrayed themselves and their nation as the best people and nation on the planet -- or -- the very worst. He even speculated that the trait was not so much an American trait, as it was a byproduct of democracy that was likely to be found in any democracy, but not necessarily in all of them. [/reentering alternative universe]
Upon his arrival back in France, Tocqueville spent the next several months creating the design for the T-shirts he hoped to sell that would not only commemorate his travels, but mark his rejection of the day's fashions, for the notion that he himself might even once be caught wearing the dresses that the French noblewomen wore at the time was a prospect that thoroughly nauseated Tocqueville, and that which he almost violent dismissed as beneath his dignity. History records that he kept true to his vows, and never even once wore a dress, although history also records that Tocqueville often enough tried to get into a dress, so long as it was being occupied at the time by a Frenchwoman.
In yet another one of the many unforeseeable tragedies of Tocqueville's life, his plan to sell T-shirts was brutally frustrated by the astounding bad luck to have invented the T-shirt design significantly before the invention of the T-shirt. A remarkable, yet in no way out of the ordinary, case of getting the cart in front of the horse.
He then turned to writing Democracy in America, the book his grave is most sued for to this day.
Uncle Sunstone
"Telling the Truth Like the Truth's Never Been Told Before Since 1960."