Marty's Bon Mots (Selections found in: Glad You Asked)

It may not be a revelation to you.  But when I made the connection, I found it quite revelatory.  I was actually proud of myself for having the ability to connect these dots. 

You see, part of the criticism, if not the main criticism, of the Wall Street Occupation protest is that there does not appear to be any particular brand. 

For instance, in the sixties, the big brand was ‘Get Out of VietNam!”  You see?  That’s a brand.  Simple.  Punchy.  How about ‘Free Huey!”  Again.  Straight from the shoulder type of objective.  Get this guy out of jail.  There was nothing fuzzy there at all here. 

These Wall Street Occupiers do not have the advantage of a nice neat slogan or a brand.  They’re at a disadvantage in this regard.  What are they going to carry on their placards?  “No more mortgage based derivatives?”  Lackluster.  “Cool it with sub-prime mortgage defaults!”   Too wordy.  “Hedge funds are bad!”  Are they?  Are the protesters really foot stomping over derivatives?  Clearing houses?  Hedge funds? Toxic assets? Does a reasonable percentage of the protestors even know how to define any of these things or what role, if any, each of them played in our current economic melt down?   Probably not. 

The Occupiers are making news because there are a lot of them and they’re making noise and there are a lot of signs and they’re on Wall Street and their movement is being picked up in far away lands.  But the best the newscasters can do is to put a catchy label on them: ‘Occupiers’.  Sort of like home squatters with the constitutional right to assemble.

So exactly what is the brand?  What are they selling?  As my good buddy John says, ‘What’s the rumpus?’

Here’s the deal.  There is no single slogan.  There is no objective as such.  There is no serious program insisting on housing, increased wages, job benefits or even a lowered social security age.  The real issue is rage.  Many of these people have been out of work so long they no longer appear on any unemployment register.   Many of these do not have, and cannot buy, health insurance.  Many of these people have been taxed out of a house or out of the ability to buy one.  

Well.  So you may say.  That’s just too bad for them, isn’t it?  Not exactly.  You see, they are not bemoaning their own individual fate.  They are raising fists in the air because they are emphasizing the glaring division between the masses  (which they claim to represent) and the elite within our society.  The claim is as follows:  You, the privileged, the elite, occupy a small percentage of our population yet you indiscriminately lord over our existence in the form of policies, taxation, hiring and the availability, or lack thereof, of public services.   Because of your greed and the obvious practices of backroom winks, you skim off the top, dole out billions to your brethren and, except for the most of the flamboyant, those who widen their wallets in defiance of law and ethics float well out of reach of any form of retribution, let alone indictments. 

“We are pissed!”  And that is the message.

Seems to me that we’ve seen this sort of thing before. 

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.  Then let them eat brioche.  Supposedly this was uttered by Marie Antoinette when learning the peasants were starving and were demanding bread.  If there was no bread, let them eat cake.  Drol. 

This came from a story Jean-Jacques Rousseau, probably manufactured, written in 1765, when Marie Antoinette was nine years of age.  Apparently Rousseau wanted bread to accompany some wine he had stolen.  He felt he was too elegantly dressed to go into an ordinary bakery, so he went to a fancy pastry shop where only enriched pastries like brioche were sold.  He recollected the words of a "great princess" who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: "Let them eat brioche."  This story which first appeared in a German children's book in 1931, "Pünktchen und Anton" by Erich Kaestner.  It  acquired symbolic importance when pro-revolutionary historians sought to demonstrate the obliviousness and selfishness of the French upper-classes at that time.

In Chinese culture, there is a similar story that involves rice and meat, instead of bread and cake: "an ancient Chinese emperor who, being told that his subjects didn't have enough rice to eat, replied, 'Why don't they eat meat?'"  Drol.

The new King of France, Louis XVI ascended to the throne amidst a financial crisis; the state was nearing bankruptcy and outlays outpaced income. This was because of France’s financial obligations stemming from involvement in the Seven Years War and its participation in the American Revolutionary War.  Not the Afghanistan or Iraqi war, however.

In July 1789 Necker published an inaccurate account of the government's debts and made it available to the public.  The King then completely restructured the finance ministry.  Many Parisians presumed Louis's actions to be aimed against the Assembly and began open rebellion when they heard the news the next day.  They were also afraid that arriving soldiers – mostly foreign mercenaries – had been summoned to shut down the National Constituent Assembly. Paris was soon consumed by riots, chaos, and widespread looting. The mobs soon had the support of some of the French Guard, who were armed and trained soldiers.  You know the rest.  Bastille, Tale of Two Cities, Louis and Marie’s respective executions, reign of terror, etc.

Let’s discuss Russia around the 1917 time frame. 

In October of 1914, Turkey left Russia to join the Central Powers.  Russia was now deprived of a major trade route causing an economic crisis where Russia could not provide munitions to their army in the years leading to 1917.

World War I found a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food had become a considerable problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests.  The indirect reason was that the government, in order to finance the war, had been printing off millions of rouble notes, and by 1917 inflation had sent prices up to four times what they had been in 1914. The peasantry were consequently faced with the higher cost of purchases, but made no corresponding gain in the sale of their own produce, since this was largely taken by the middlemen on whom they depended.   Personally I feel there is a direct parallel between this and the conduct of major Wall Street brokerage firms as well as the Insurance industry.  Anyway, the farmers started to hoard their grain and reverted to subsistence farming. Therefore, the cities were constantly short of food.  At the same time, rising prices led to demands for higher wages in the factories, and in January and February 1916 revolutionary propaganda, aided by German funds, lead to widespread strikes. The outcome of all this, however, was a growing criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness.  These factors had given rise to a major loss of confidence in the Tsar’s regime by 1916.

Factory working conditions were abysmal.  Yet, at the same time, urban industrial life was full of benefits. There were many encouragements to expect more from life.  Acquiring new skills gave many workers a sense of self-respect and confidence, heightening expectations and desires.  Living in cities, workers encountered material goods such as they had never seen while in the villages. Most importantly, living in cities, they were exposed to new ideas about the social and political order.  Dissatisfaction with Russian autocracy culminated in the huge national upheaval that followed the Bloody Sunday massacre of January 1905, in which hundreds of unarmed protesters were shot by the Tsar's troops. Workers responded to the massacre with a crippling general strike, forcing Nicholas to put forth the October Manifesto, which established a democratically elected parliament (the State Duma). The Tsar undermined this promise of reform a year later and dismissed the first two Dumas when they proved uncooperative.  Unfulfilled hopes of democracy fueled revolutionary ideas and violent outbursts targeted at the monarchy.

Cue the organ music and bring us to the present.   We now have yet another parallel where we have recent polls expressing the levels of satisfaction the general population has towards their elected representatives.   According to a recent gallup poll, the highest the satisfaction rating has risen was up to 24%.  This, however was right after Bin Laden was killed.  It has since returned to its previous 17%. 

There are direct dots to connect.  The people of the United States who are considered the upper echelon, the elite, if you will, probably occupy substantially more than the 1% the Occupiers currently claim.  But it certainly does not reflect a proper division between lower, middle and upper class citizens.  Ninety-nine per cent is not an even remotely accurate depiction of the division of disaffected and disenfranchised citizens.  But you get their point.  The disenfranchised are the majority.  Just like in France in the 1780s.  Just like pre Revolution Russia.

Look at what has happened when the masses have been ill treated and down trodden.  Look at the historical facts where ruling classes have chosen to either ignore the best interests of their constituency or have chosen the easy path of catering to their well heeled backers. 

First of all, we should recognize that the ground work is being laid for a wholesale revolution.  Secondly, our elected representatives would be best served to take heed and recognize that the rumblings history has created and voiced many times before are becoming more resonant on a daily basis.