He was unlike our current president in many respects: He was extraordinarily indecisive, timid and distracted. He seemed not to know his own country at all, isolated as he was from the public. 

But his position was very like that of President Trump in that he had a mob calling for his beheading.  That the mob succeeded in their efforts changed European history, effectively bleeding the continent’s aristocracy to death until royalty was dealt the final coup de grace during WWI and its aftermath.

“He,” of course, was King Louis XVI, who was guillotined in January of 1793 by Jacobins egged on by the brilliantly evil Maximilien Robespierre. 

 A cartoon of the dead king’s head, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the infamous Kathy Griffin photo of a beheaded Trump and entitled "Matter for Reflection for Crowned Jugglers" soon appeared after the king was dead. Under the depiction of the severed head of king Louis was the line from La Marseillaise, "May an impure blood water our furrows."

Leaders of many of the subsequent variants of the French Revolution, such as the Bolsheviks and Maoists, wind up beheading people, economically, politically, socially and often literally, especially those undesirable classes considered ideologically “impure.” 

Therefore, it is not much of a surprise to see a known figure such as Kathy Griffin, who is very much aligned with the radically ideological Democrats, indicate she wants Trump dead.

It took decades for the Left in America to reveal itself to be as radical as the French Jacobins howling for the execution of the feckless Louis. His father, Louis XV, had seen disaster coming, at one time uttering the famous words, "Après moi, le déluge" ("After me, comes the flood").  American conservatives have been warning about the leftist inclination to tyranny for decades, some seeing the apogee of the leftist tide during the Obama administration; but knowing a nearly beheaded Left is still capable of dangerous talk and behavior.

As the Elizabethan poet John Donne pointed out, a severed head can still give the appearance of life even as the oxygen drains from the brain. He wrote:

Or as sometimes in a beheaded man,

Though at those two Red Seas, which freely ran,

One from the trunk, another from the head,

His soul be sail’d to her eternal bed,

His eyes will twinkle, and his tongue will roll,

As though he beckon’d and call’d back his soul:

He grasps his hands, and he pulls up his feet,

And seems to reach, and to step forth to meet

His soul.

Even so, though the Left has been nearly decapitated, it still natters on as if it has life; as if it has something significant to say.  It still does its zombie imitation, hoping to instill dread and fear into the opposition by impersonating real life and vitality.

Ms. Griffin’s excess is an indicator not only of the deathly fatuity and grossness leftist radicals have been resorted to, but she is also representative of the high tide of an essentially nihilist deluge that has threatened America for decades.

Not even Trump’s children are spared. TMZ reported Barron Trump was watching TV when he saw Griffin holding what he thought was his dad's head and started screaming for his mom in a panic. Former Jeopardy whiz Ken Jennings thought Barron’s panic amusing. 

One is reminded of Marie Antoinette, King Louis’s wife.  Her children were also treated with callous cruelty, the young dauphin dying of what was almost certainly tuberculosis from being in a dank, dark prison cell for two years.  Some historians relate that she could hear her children being beaten by guards. Accused of treason and of sexually abusing her own son, the queen was executed after enduring years of ridicule and baseless accusations, some of which were similar to the accusations leveled at Melania Trump; namely, that she was at one time a prostitute.

In sum, the contemporaneous Left utilizes the same methods as its French progenitors and progeny: ridicule, slander, lies and threats.

The twentieth century is replete with examples. 

Josef Stalin decided to hire an assassin to drive an ice pick through the brain of his ideological rival, Leon Trotsky. Mao Tse Tung, hearing of his rival Lin Biao’s attempt at a military coup, conveniently arranged for Lin’s plane to crash as the man tried to flee China.  Mao also targeted academia for politically incorrect thinking during the so-called Cultural Revolution.  His infamous Red Guards fought against all authorities in every level of society, resulting in chaos and revolt against all law and order.

While here in America presidents are not yet guillotined, the effect desired is the same: effectively killing or completely sidelining an undesirable and ideologically incorrect target one way or another.  While utilizing some of Mao’s tactics, especially in our colleges and universities, here in America, the preferred tactic of the Left is relentless character assassination and the endless manufacture of conspiracy theories designed to render the ideologically impure helpless and to gunk up the legislative and executive processes via what amount to kangaroo courts and the equivalent of Jacobin congressional representatives.

Why? Why the intense hatred and the unbridled desire to decapitate the current administration?

For the Left, Trump seen as illegitimate and the great pretender to the throne, not a duly elected president. He is seen as not belonging to the royal lineage of the Clinton and Obama dynasties. He is considered an imposter, a pretender to the throne, which was to have been forever occupied by the politically correct.  He does not spring from nor adhere to the political class of the privileged. His ideas and behavior are not those of the deeply religious progressives, so he is seen as the equivalent of the antipope.

Trump is seen by progressives as an imposter with wholly fabricated claims.  He is thought of as having assumed an identity that does not belong to him; namely the identity of the President of the United States. Therefore, being a pretender, he deserves the fate dealt the phony royal Emilian Pougatchiff, who was executed in 1775 during the reign of Catherine II of Russia.  Another salutary example is the execution of the Stuart Catholic King Charles I in 1649, whose Catholicism rendered him as illegitimate in the eyes of those seeking the power of the English throne.  His son Charles II was a “pretender” until his restoration to the throne of England eleven years later.

For the fact is that the deeply religio-ideological leftists of America want restoration of their royal lineage as surely as Catholics wanted Bloody Mary and King Charles I on the throne because of their devotion to the Catholic faith; and as surely as Protestants wanted Elizabeth I on the throne because of her faith.  Deeply religious wars permit no peaceful yielding of the throne lest the entire edifice come crashing down.

Politics will always be full of both pretense and pretenders; the good and the bad—often a mixture of both.  It’s the human condition.  The perfectionism of the politically correct has never allowed error or even nuance.  Death to the imperfect.  Off with your head.

However, the truth is that President Trump was duly elected and put into office by the Americans who voted for him.  He did not seize the office.  He was not put there by a coup. He is the legitimate president.

For those who believe the wrong person is in office and that a great pretender is living in the White House, it is high time to remember we do not live under an aristocracy but under the rule of the Constitution of the United States. We do not believe in aristocratic succession to the presidency.

It is high time everyone who desires the exit of any president remembers the great remedy our constitutional republic has firmly in place; a remedy that has been effectively utilized for hundreds of years: Voting to elect the person the American public wishes to be in high office.

And…stop suggesting the guillotining of Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America.

Fay Voshell holds a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, which awarded her a prize for excellence in systematic theology.  She has contributed to many online publications, including American Thinker, RealClearReligion, CNS, Barbwire, National Review and Fox News.   She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com