Just going to add two tidbits here, because I’m a bit fan of Paine having spent many years in Lewes.

The first is more incredible, in the sense it’s actually hard to believe: he escaped execution during The Terror because of what amounted to clerical error (obligatory fuck Robespierre)

A chalk mark was supposed to be left by the jailer on the door of a cell to denote that the prisoner inside was due to be removed for execution. In Paine’s case, the mark had accidentally been made on the inside of his door rather than the outside because the door had been left open when the jailer was making his rounds that day, since Paine had been receiving official visitors. But for this quirk of fate, Paine would have been executed the following morning. He thus survived the few vital days needed to be spared by the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794).

Second tidbit: in escaping execution, Paine finished The Rights of Man which, among other things, is one of the few texts explicitly about Deism.

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

I’m a Deist myself, thanks to him and the film Breaker Morant. Thanks again, Wikipedia! We’re doing everything to keep you going!

This story really indicates how old and pervasive the corruption was. It’s repellant and unconscionable.

It’s a shame (and maybe shameful) they couldn’t use the frozen assets. I found this from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, but didn’t want overpost the story.

“Some €210 billion of Russian assets are frozen in Europe, most of them in the Belgian financial clearing house Euroclear. Belgium had objected to the loan plan, calling it legally risky and warning that it could harm Euroclear’s business.”

Think it’s important to see what influence banks have on highly political decisions.

Link to Sydney Herald article, similiar reporting.

I think of so many days of visiting regrets, but I do take your point.

Definitely true. It’s what the story got appropriated as that rubs me the wrong way.

I like the idea, however improbable, of the redeemable miser reformed by seeing the regrets of his past, and only a monster doesn’t cry at seeing the Muppet Christmas Carol, or better still, Scrooged.

But.

Why Christmas? Could be any day, why Christmas? I think it’s to innoculate us against legitimate criticism what a shitty and stressful and endless presents you don’t need time it is. Because if you don’t participate, you’re a scrooge or a grinch. Terms they don’t use against people who are actual Scrooges year round.

I say, someone needs to make a film about someone being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past (playing with the dogs in the snow and that’s a perfect Christmas), Ghost of Christmas Present (stress buying), and Ghost of Christmas Future (no planet).

But that just makes me … something, I dunno. Maybe someone will have a term for it.