O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,
The soldiers coming…
We're in Paris right now, on a brief visit, sitting in the Place des Vosges, the oldest and loveliest square in the city. Nearby is the infamous Place de la Bastille, and although the Bastille itself was long ago destroyed and scattered around Paris, our proximity to where the mobs gathered to protest the despotism of their leaders pushes my thoughts back toward our own protesters today.
We'd better listen to those sounds coming from the gatherings on Wall Street, a rumbling that's already spread like wildfire. The day we left for Paris, people with signs were walking along First Avenue S. in St. Pete: "STOP Corporate Greed," "Disaster Capitalism," or, more simply, "Wake Up!" Across America, the riot police have been called. Some protesters — but no bankers — have been tossed in the hoosegow: this is part of the problem.
In troubled times, Jeanne and I like to listen to music, so before flying to France we caught Paul Wilborn, Eugénie Bondurant and Frank Bowman playing old cabaret songs at American Stage. Great show, but our favorite was their performance of Gus Kahn and Raymond Egan's 1921 hit, "Ain't We Got Fun." Ah, those were the days, just before the Depression, flooded with gorgeous music and smart lyrics — a bubble worth dancing in!
The song's spunky and familiar theme rings true today: "The rich get rich and the poor get…" — and the audience chimes in with 'laid off!' 'children!' etc. Even back then, Kahn and Egan didn't have to fill in the rhyme. Like those audiences, we shake our heads and smile ruefully at the hopeless injustice of it all; what else to do?
Well, there's something we can do, after all; and people have been doing it for centuries: We can march, and we can gather. Zuccotti Park isn't (yet) Tiananmen Square — but watch out! Republicans dismiss this disorganized crowd (in an echo from the recent past) as "dirty hippies." "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" ("Let them eat cake"), Marie Antoinette famously advised — a statement too good to be true. But Democrats recognize this throng as natural allies, although the crowds themselves aren't yet certain where they belong.
Karl Marx wrote Das Capital in 1867, and like political parties, its fortunes have gone up and down. Communism put some of his ideas under an authoritarian umbrella, and they came crashing down with the Berlin Wall in 1989. Jeanne and I lived under communism in Poland during 1978-79 and, believe me, it was a disaster. But Marx's prediction that unregulated capitalism would lead to a divided society, with the rich devouring the poor, is looking like a fair description of America in 2011.
There's spooky symbolism in the baseball playoffs, where the rich clubs have been ambushed by the poorer ones, and the highest paid players — Ryan Howard (5-year $125 million deal), Alex Rodriguez ($27.5 million a year through 2017), and the ex-Ray Carl Crawford (6 years left on $142 million contract) — all flopped. These are ludicrous salaries, and they didn't work.
Wall Street salaries are similarly ridiculous. Somehow, they think they've earned these obscene sums, but they haven't. Many of them should be in jail, or at least fired. They've gamed a decent system, and now we're all in trouble.
These times — like 1789, when the Bastille fell — are more dangerous than most people think. In 2012 we'll be one bad choice from the greatest split between the rich and the poor our democracy has ever seen. There's fault on both sides — but not to the same degree. We'll be choosing between an unhinged capitalism and a flawed democracy. I think that by next November the Wall Street marchers will recognize this.
In 1790, General Lafayette gave the key to the Bastille to George Washington (now on display in Mount Vernon). I don't recommend knocking down Wall Street, but maybe we could get one of its gongs and hang it up in the Capitol Building where our congressmen can see it when they enter.
O it's broken the lock and splintered the door
O it's the gate where they're turning, turning;
Their boots are heavy on the floor
And their eyes are burning.
—Both quotes are from "O What is that Sound" by W. H. Auden (1907-1973)
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 2, 2011.