Banners Over Wall Street

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“…Forever let us hold our banners high, high, high…”

Opening theme to the Mickey Mouse Club show

“…Long may your proud banners gloriously wave...”

Scotland the Brave, an unofficial national anthem

(The Wall Street occupiers had) No banner to prevent the legion on the street from slowly fading, dimming, dwindling away with a whimper.

Sean Crawford

This morning as I was driving I heard two radio announcers, Mookie and Billy Jo, musing about who would carry the banner for our country at the Sochi Olympics. They said it was a great honor to carry the flag; therefore, they said, the flag bearer would be a great athlete, someone with a good shot at a medal.

As I drove I mused about banners without blood, and effective citizens.

Historically, banners have meant life or death. In ancient Rome, for example, every legion carried a standard with a golden eagle on top. In battle the eagle was held high as a symbol the legion was still a cohesive force, something larger than the individual soldiers involved. The comrades protected each other with their almost overlapping shields, sweating and bleeding, groaning and cursing, struggling for victory. With the banner high, courage was high. If the banner was lost, meaning: if mutual confidence in each other was lost, then the troops would falter, break formation and run for their lonely lives. Homer compared it to sheep being chased and slaughtered by a lion. The casualty ratio of victor to vanquished was always very lopsided.

A legion was a small society, and like any society it unconsciously adjusted: If the goal was success in battle, and if the job of holding up the banner was important, then “holding the banner high” would absolutely be seen as a great honor. For the US civil war it has become a cliché: During the confusion of swirling battle a freckle-faced boy holding the banner is shot—the banner being a prime target—then another idealist rushes to proudly hold the banner high. There is a terrible beauty to boy after boy being shot down, as they hold up the flag to protect the men they marched among. “Rally around the flag, boys.”

There will never be enough money to pay anyone to hold the flag, or to pay troops to go walking through the valley of death. All we can do, as a healthy society, one in which all of us support some of to go off to carry out our wishes, is to honor our armed representatives with a parade before they leave, and give them a heroes’ welcome when they come home, those who survive. …Or put it this way, as this is how armies in non-healthy non-democracies are behaving right now: Darth Vader might pay his men to slay, he can never pay them enough to offer themselves up to be slain.

We civilians have our banners too. In Britain the stylized royal L, for the pound; in America the initials US, superimposed on each other, for the dollar: These are the banners of confident currency. Today, as you know, each dollar is merely a concept, no longer backed by a piece of solid gold: Having gone off the gold standard, the US is relying on the public’s confidence the dollar is good, even as the exchange rate keeps fluctuating. We daren’t lose our confidence lest we set the lion loose.  

For example: Picture late 1929, near Christmas, and two adjacent competing banks. The first bank is very sound; the other, Jimmy Stewart’s, doesn’t keep enough reserves in the vault. As for the second bank, the word gets out, or rumors start, and people run to line up to get all their money out while they still can. Regrettably, the investors who panic “the first-est and the most-est,” like the very first soldiers to break and flee, are the ones who avoid the lion. When the bank goes bankrupt, the rest are sadly out of luck.

The story doesn’t end there: Since panic is unreasonable, investors don’t reason out how the adjacent bank is safe—they panic there too. A bank with ample reserves for bad investments can’t possibly contain enough reserves to handle a bank run—how could it? This sort of panic, after the November 1929 Wall Street Crash had pulled the world down, was a significant part of the Great Depression. Today the government insists on deposit insurance and stands ready to help. If only nonbanks, “financial institutions,” such as Goldman and Sachs, had been subject to such “pesky government regulation.” Apparently, “enough insurance” does not mean a gold bit for every dollar, it means “enough to keep people from panicking.”

Could some modern day Goldfinger take aim at the banner in order to rake in his profits? Yes! The machinations of one George Soros, an American entrepreneur, only 16 years before the Wall Street Meltdown, is described in The Return of Depression Economics and the Crises of 2008 by Nobel prize (for economics) winner Paul Krugman, on page 123:

 “The first stage had to be low profile… established credit lines … to borrow about $15 billion worth of British pounds and to convert that sum into dollars at will. Then, once the fund was … long in dollars and short in pounds, the attack had to turn noisy: Soros would be as ostentatious as possible about short-selling the pound, give interviews to financial newspapers declaring his belief that the pound would soon be devalued, and so on. If all went well, this would generate a run on the pound by other investors, a run that would force the British government to give in and devalue it.

It worked. Soros’s high-profile assault on the pound began in August. Within weeks Britain had spent nearly $50 billion in the foreign exchange markets to defend the pound, to no avail… Soros not only made roughly a billion dollars in quick capital gains but also established himself as perhaps the most famous speculator of all time.”

 Luckily, I’m living in Canada—Praise the Lord. When Wall Street melted down, pulling the world into a recession, Canada had enough government regulation to be the only G-8 nation not affected. Not to say Canada is without villains. As I drove along this morning I thought about how a banner can rally public focus against villainy.

Attend a cocktail party, get a circle of Canadians focused on talking about their national airline, and then listen to the contemptuous awful stories about their only airline—But Canada once had two national airlines: a loser, where the public voted with their feet, and a winner. The bad one was in the red, the good one in the black. Then the federal government changed the rules, just this once, for only six months, allowing just a six-month window for a hostile legal takeover: The losing airline … was not bought out… no, they took over the winning one! The scandal of the bad airline immediately deleting the seniority of pilots from the good airline made the front page. I remember an old pilot finding himself with less seniority than his son.

Right away there was a comedy skit on the CBC where Rick Mercer kept hitting a flip chart with a pointer, sarcastically pointing out the whole dreary affair. Did the masses rise up? Did even one politician have the leadership ability of George Soros to put the pressure on, giving us hope and confidence by holding the banner high, with frequent press interviews, saying he would not let go until there was some action… giving people a banner to focus on and rally around… Nope. Not that I recall.

Our parliament might know how to legislate, but apparently not one politician would exercise the managerial skills of a competent corporate executive. The issue could not, as they say, “get traction.” The infamous six-month window could not become, in terms of social confidence, an issue for the rest of us to rally around to fight about. Instead, for those months we Canadians were lonely sheep, helpless before the lion. At the time, all I could do was think weakly, “The fix is in.” When I flew earlier this month I refused to patronize the big glamorous airline, using instead a no frills airline, even if this meant no in-flight free meal.

As I see it, as an individual I pick my battles; as a society we pick our banners. Obviously, then, President Obama can’t fix every government department all at once, but if he wants us to have even a snowball’s hope for reforming the NSA and Homeland Security then he better get a grip on his banner, and make a public priority of those two.  Meanwhile, naturally, all of our mistakes in our everyday life, or in our government, should be addressed. “Never pass a fault” as we said in my old regiment. Still, for any situation where the government is actively, consciously resisting even admitting to having a problem, let alone dealing with it, a banner is needed.

By “banner” I imagine a constant ongoing thing, such as announcements to the media regarding progress in researching a scandal, or progress in organizing activities, or in achieving change.

An absence of this banner concept, I guess, explains the void known as the Occupy Wall Street movement. As I recall, the only news, week after week, was that the bodies hadn’t left. No one in the movement was using his library card for ongoing research to probe Wall Street; no one was revealing things about Wall Street to the rest of us. The occupiers had no gatherings or leadership conferences to share knowledge or make tactical plans or generate energy. Folks who might have been natural allies, such as economist Paul Krugman, with ideas of what reforms to prioritize, were never encouraged to rally around the flag.

There was no banner to prevent the legion on the street from slowly fading, dimming, dwindling away with a whimper. If only a lion like George Soros, after being given legitimacy in the movement, could have held up a banner for his fellow occupiers, complete with press interviews. But no, it was easier for the big sensitive egos in the movement to “idealistically” keep things leaderless… and a failure.

Of course we can’t raise a banner for everything; we have to choose one focus… just as on a weekend soccer field with the Boys’nGirls Club, even if we have many extra players on the field, we can’t respond by playing with two soccer balls. …

Nor can we go to war with two widely separated banners; we can’t “punch with both hands at once.” But we did: Such madness is partly why ex-President Ford was reportedly furious with President Bush for fighting two wars: As one senior civil servant put it, “In theory we should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, in practice we can’t.”

In my car today I mused, and later I thought some more… I think the concept of banners is as useful as a proverb: ancient, time-tested and practical.

Sean Crawford

Once an eagle

Calgary, Canada

January 2014

Footnotes:

~Update, May 2014: Today I see that a Russian was on my site. Last month the Russians must have reasoned that by using "masked troops without insignia" in Eastern Ukraine the USA would be mystified enough not to raise a banner confidently and firmly for Europe to rally around. The Russians reasoned correctly.

~The Canadian Olympic flag bearer is Hayley Wickenheiser on the women’s hockey team.

~Reference: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crises of 2008, Paul Krugman, W.W. Norton and Company, New York London, 2009

~I wrote three essays covering three categories of Wall Street Occupiers found here in my hometown, archived in December 2011.  

Sidebar: A NATO general noted the role of the soldier is not to slay, but to be slain… 
The concept of “banners” for fighting, even in this age of machine warfare, explains a lot.

In popular culture, for example, it explains the movie Young Guns where Brian Keith’s two-gun character, like an old bull, could defeat the entire brat pack. The young men shared no mutual confidence, and their “leader” had no legitimacy or support.

It’s why the Iraqi police, faced with a few insurgents, would scatter like chickens before a fox. The police wouldn’t hold together "to be slain" under the banner of a government that lacked legitimacy in their eyes. I don’t think their training was the issue.

It explains South Vietnam. The people of that republic, rightly or wrongly, regarded their government as being corrupt and their leader as being “an American puppet.” They must have thought, “What’s the use?” Hence their army fell like dominos before the invasion of the north, although, in fairness, the northern army was not guerrillas in black pajamas: They invaded “with more tanks and trucks than the Wehrmacht going into France.” However, the South Vietnamese could not, man for man, outfight simple guerrillas either. Hence the bitter joke the G.I.s direct at a news reporter in Stanly Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket: (from memory) “Want to buy some South Vietnamese rifles? Never been fired, and only dropped once.”

The US conscripted guys at age 19, while the Vietnamese, despite the alleged urgency of the war, and despite urging by the US, wouldn’t conscript until age 21.

The theory of banners explains why American boys, raised on junk food and pampered in cities, complete with air conditioning, can nevertheless fight as well as lean people raised in harsh third world countryside… And who can forget the young baby boomers at the end of Kubrick’s movie, still retaining their boyish idealism, advancing to the tune of the Mickey Mouse club?

Few Get Involved

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Recently on one of my favorite essay-blogs, by Scott Berkun, someone lamented that “appearances are deceiving,” that the blogospere was not full of thoughtful commenters; instead, the “involved” folks like the ones going onto Berkun’s site were an insignificant minority. People liked my reply:

“If only a minority are involved in life, then I want to be part of that minority.”

This I decided back in high school. At the time, admission to university required certain “academic program” courses, such as algebra and a second language, French.

I coped OK with French for my first year, no doubt because we were on the semester system. The next year I managed to pass too. And the next fall—I failed. Now what? I guess it bothered me that my big peer group, the smart academic students around me, could walk along their academic road leaving me behind. Never mind—I would try French again in the winter semester, along with the other half of the academic students in my grade.  Then, before Christmas, Lady Fortune smiled on us: Surprise! The university announced there would no longer be a second language requirement. Jubilation!

When the winter semester arrived, my golden academic peers totally avoided French—I forget whether this surprised me. For my grade, the school offered only two sections, each filled by only six students. I know, because I was one of them. Call me stubborn!

This time around, to my amazement, I really enjoyed taking French. (I earned a C) As you may recall, young teens, academic and otherwise, are known to talk of feeling bored, trapped and oppressed in their “jail.” They pout, with shoulders drooping, saying, “I hafta (have to) take this.” As I see it: Even if they take a classic about Macbeth and three witches, or Harry Potter and magic, they will complain gloomily, “We hafta take Harry Potter” and for years afterwards they’ll be unable to read him or Macbeth with any pleasure. Furthermore, some of the younger teens will be vandals, supposedly “for kicks” but actually from frustration.

So there I was, with a few kids of high morale, none of us grimacing to say, “I haftta.” How wonderful. Some of the boys and girls in my lively French class, in both sections, went in for track and field. Me too; I have such nice memories.

Meanwhile, at lunch hour, my default was to hang around with a dozen smart academic types who sat and talked of trivial stuff all lunch. I noticed they never joined any clubs, no, not even the audio-visual club. (By the way, this was almost before silicon chips: Next year, in math class, one of us had a slide rule, and only three or four of us had calculators—including me, using my brother’s calculator, as I was desperate to pass… no punch-card style personal-sized computers were anywhere on the horizon, not even as rumors.)

And back in French class, to echo Shakespeare and his Battle of Agincourt, “we happy few, we band of keeners,” were being treated by our French teachers as willing and responsible young adults, being led in the direction we already wanted to go, and not treated as kids needing to be pushed… I decided I really respect volunteers. No wonder my favorite writer and political party member, Robert A. Heinlein, in his book about getting involved in politics, advises: When your party offers you wages, for the work you are already doing as a volunteer, just say no. (To keep their respect and credibility)

Speaking of Agincourt and soldiers, during Vietnam the National Guard was manned by a lot of people who were—“I hafta join”—avoiding conscription, aka Universal Military Training, aka “the draft.” For their training, back then, it could take months, according to a US Marine Corps major I talked with, to bring the group’s standards up. The older man and I would probably never have met over an easy beer—rather, we talked because in the dead of night I volunteered to walk with him at great length when his wife was having a baby—oh, the military secrets I was privy to that night! (I had clearance) I’m sure the National Guard of today is much better.

Meanwhile, I knew well the Canadian reservists. (I was one) They have always struck me as being bright eyed and bushy tailed because they are volunteers, albeit being paid a small salary: If their motivation ever drops below a certain threshold they drop out. As you might imagine, in a time when the city leisure catalogue covers everything from Acting to Zen Archery, when arcades and Gameboys abound, that’s when only a precious few will volunteer to dig a trench in the rain. As compensation, I’m sure, when they sing songs over beer in the warm dry evening, they must find each other’s company quite worthwhile—not a single wimp in the bunch.

Years after high school I entered university. Once again I learned to seek out the involved minority because I found that for many of my fellow students—I couldn’t truly call them my peers—the campus was a glorified high school, something they “have to” attend “to get a good job.”

Why?

Partly because—forgetting about we precious few—standards were lowered for expanded enrollment: My campus had to add a fourth year “at the bottom, not the top, as a (glorified) high school make up year,” according to the V-P Academic. (The province next door still has some three-year degrees, like in Britain) In fact, unlike back in my day, high school graduates now have to take a test of basic English before starting. (Sigh!) I guess if they can’t avoid glaring errors in English grammar then no wonder the university thought they should be sheltered from trying to conjugate French verbs.

On my brave new campus... I found only a “precious few” young scholars getting involved in campus activities and eagerly discussing typical student topics like “the meaning of life, the universe and everything.”

Why? Partly because of human nature. Most students, for their odyssey of education, would choose not to be crewmembers straining at the oars in the brisk wind with an interesting view… but instead to be passengers in the dusky musty below-decks. It’s as if they were clones of their non-university peers, except they got to carry textbooks. These students would suddenly discover their school spirit late on Friday and cram like sardinus idiotus into the bar. Meanwhile, the Student Union had arranged for a temporary liquor license up in a nice lounge for a few hours on Friday afternoon. But unless students purveyed the student newspaper, radio or TV, or noticed a discrete sign in the stairwell up past the bar, they wouldn’t know about the Friday lounge. Result? In the lounge gathered the minority who got involved. While the huge campus contained anonymous multitudes, here I knew all the precious faces. No clones and no sardines.

Today as a middle-aged man I notice how, to quote the creator of the International Outward Bound schools, educator Kurt Hahn, “human nature in very prevalent.” It’s queer: The city puts out it’s activities catalogue, as does the volunteer center; newspapers and magazines are full of articles on things to do and the joy of doing them; at community centers, party headquarters and public libraries there are big inviting signs, beckoning people to get involved. Few answer the summons. As for signs, I remember how the average student would walk past numerous bulletin boards all day without ever stopping to read one.

This week I chuckled over a poster on the Vancouver sky train: A skinny guy with a goofy grin wearing a hockey jersey is holding up a brown ceramic Stanley Cup. The caption: Last winter he was gifted with lessons in pottery—Now he is gifting the whole team!

Every year I read magazine articles about people enjoying meaningful activities that teach people about themselves and life, but I suppose, at the end of the day, the majority aren’t motivated to get any further life experience. “OK, live and let live,” I say. Most people genuinely don’t want to, say, get “character training” through recreation, or “develop their leadership.” Good news, then: In the grown up world, there will always be a spot on the team.

On the Internet, most people will find it easier to click and skim than to stop and read, or to think and comment. Hence a post by Scott may have 20,000 readers (by RSS) but only 2 comments.

As for the motivated minority, maybe they are gifted with different glands and temperament, maybe as children they had issues, and… maybe they were tempered in the fire by failing French.

Meanwhile, the popular media shows a scenario of the “jet set,” the “beautiful people,” those “never caught in the fire,” as being people never doing anything more detailed than, say, skiing down a hill. They go out to beaches, nightclubs and parties and then—apparently—more parties and nightclubs. I can’t imagine Paris Hilton dutifully attending a weekly meeting for, say, scrapbooking or for tending community gardens.

Of course, the media could be wrong about the jet set, just as I was wrong back in high school to imagine most college students would get involved. As someone said on Scott’s blog: Appearances are deceiving.

Sean Crawford

Attending a weekly group or two,

Calgary

January

2014

Footnotes:

~As for the Internet, I proposed that nerds don’t necessarily get involved in reading the Internet, or even books, in my June 2013 essay, Others, Nerds and Readers.

~I archived an essay of involvement, focusing specifically on university, back in June 2010, Of Students, Alumni and Couches.

~Robert A. Heinlein’s book, where he was careful to never reveal the name of his own party, is called Take Back Your Government.

~My favorite web essayist, Paul Graham, wouldn’t conform back in high school, not if conforming meant striving to be popular. Paul Graham writes of being smart in high school in his essay, Why Nerds are Unpopular.

~ Like last week, again I have an excuse to link to the history teachers: Here is Amy Burvall explaining the Battle of Agincourt to the tune of “As Tears Go By” by Marianne Faithful. And speaking of students on an odyssey, here she sings of Odysseus to the tune of “Across the Universe” by the Beatles.