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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAt the Habsburg convention in Plano
https://thebaffler.com/latest/feeling-blessed-hooksWHY DID SEVERAL HUNDRED PEOPLE in Texas pay good money to spend a beautiful Saturday inside, listening to three living members of the Habsburg family and a scattering of Carlists talk about what ails the world? Its clear what the Habsburgs got out of it: the conference, held in Plano and organized by David Ross, a Dallas-area realtor and right-wing Catholic, was in support of the familys effort to win a sainthood for Emperor Karl I, perhaps the least successful and most tragic Habsburg monarch, who reigned for the last two years of World War I and then died penniless on the Portuguese island of Madeira. The family hoped to keep their memory aliveand maybe sell a few books. What everyone else might get out of it was unclear, at least at first.
Plano, a town of some three hundred thousand people just north of Dallas, seemed an unlikely place for a monarchist conference. The citys name is pronounced Plain-o, which is about as complete a travel guide as you need. It is not unpleasant: its prosperous, peaceful, a good place to raise a kid. It is simply boring. If it has other redeeming characteristics, they are unknown to me. These are the kind of suburbs that foster alienation and a feeling of aimlessness even as they provide material security.
The Habsburgs can relate, perhaps. We dont rule anymore, said Paul von Habsburg, the great-great-great-great grandson of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary, from the stage, so we find other things to do. It is important to stay busy. You might know I have a cousin who is a race car driver, he added. Members of the Habsburg dynasty have been movers and shakers in Europe for a thousand years, during which time they married whom they had to marry and did what they needed to do to keep their family in power and their throats un-slit on top of the continents unending dogpile. Now, like his audience, he found himself adrift, an archduke of nothing. Before, he would have been born with a purpose. Theres no real path anymore, he said. I think thats good.
Tales were told of a time and place when there was a path, whether those paths were being the Habsburg emperor or serving the Habsburg emperor. Eduard Habsburg, currently the ambassador to the Vatican of Viktor Orbáns regime in Hungary, noted that Texas was once Habsburg landthrough the descendants of Charles V of Spain, who oversaw the boom years of Spanish colonialism. To his mind, he said, it still is. The audience cooed.
*snip*
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At the Habsburg convention in Plano (Original Post)
Nevilledog
6 hrs ago
OP
dalton99a
(81,656 posts)1. Corporate headquarters in Plano:
Toyota Motor North America
Pizza Hut
Cinemark Theatres
Keurig Dr Pepper
Electronic Data Systems
Perot Systems
FedEx Office
Frito-Lay
JCPenney
...
Hekate
(90,913 posts)2. Intriguing read at link. There are so many people who are nuts...
I had no idea there were any Hapsburgs left at all.