Nepal, History, Tragedy, and Farce

Writes Mr. Maila Baje at Nepali Netbook:

For a nation hurtling toward a nebulous newness, history is becoming an increasingly hard thing to beat. The political discourse is oscillating wildly between Russia’s October Revolution in 1917 and the storming of the Bastille a century and a half earlier.

Mr. Baje is implicitly referring to – in his essay on history, tragedy, and farce in Nepal – the words of Karl Marx:

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

Perhaps also Mr. Mark Shea's two phases of history – “what could it hurt?” and “how were we supposed to know?” – are relevant for the Kingdom of Nepal?

Considering that more than two centuries have passed since the French Revolution, we should be in the “how were we supposed to know?” phase by now, but lots of people are apparently still in the first phase.