Corporate Elites: “Cry Havoc! and Let Slip the Dogs of War”

In Act 3 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, alone with Caesar’s corpse after his assassination, imagines Caesar’s ghost rising up to demand revenge. Soldiers, “let slip” by the breakdown of civilized behavior, will wreak havoc in Caesar’s name.

In Shakespeare’s Henry V, there are war hounds named Famine, Sword, and Fire.

Mark Antony isn’t grieving for Caesar; rather, Antony is cynically planning to use Caesar’s funeral to rouse the populace against the assassins so that he, Antony, can seize power. He knows that emotions at the funeral will be raw, because Caesar was popular with the plebeians of Rome’s tenements and streets. How easy it will be to sway them to act for Antony’s advantage!

Hannibal Barca crossing the Rhône (1878), by Henri Motte.

In our own time, we are confronted by a disorienting assortment of potential havoc, as if Hannibal has suddenly reappeared with squadrons of war elephants. A virus pandemic; our own physical health and that of those around us; our ability to survive financially if we can’t work; rumors of war with Iran, Venezuela, and Yemen. An economy in free fall due to an oil price war and uncertainty about the economic effects of the pandemic. The climate crisis.

Each of us will be affected differently by the pandemic. My own income and health insurance are secure, but my son, who is an hourly worker, may be in jeopardy. My daughter is returning home because her college is shutting down; classes will be delivered over the internet. I have lung disease, so a COVID-19 infection will likely be fatal; on the advice of my pulmonologist, I’m self-isolating at home.

While coping with the personal impacts of the pandemic, we must be alert to the breakdown of “civilized behavior” and for those who, like Mark Antony, will seek to gain economic and political advantages from our growing sense of personal and collective shock.

The poor response of the Trump administration may be in part deliberate, designed to numb us with disaster while the corporate elite steal even more wealth. Naomi Klein, in No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, has a term for this:

“The term “shock doctrine” describes the quite brutal tactic of systematically using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock — wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes, or natural disasters — to push through radical pro-corporate measures, often called “shock therapy.”

“ . . During Trump’s first week in office, when he was signing that tsunami of executive orders and people were just reeling, madly trying to keep up, I found myself thinking about the human rights advocate Halina Bortnowska’s description of Poland’s experience when the US imposed economic shock therapy on her country in the midst of Communism’s collapse. She described the velocity of change her country was going through as ‘the difference between dog years and human years,’ and she observed that ‘you start witnessing these semi-psychotic reactions. You can no longer expect people to act in their own best interests when they’re so disoriented, they don’t know — or no longer care — what those interests are.’”

The flurry of Federal Reserve and Treasury Department actions are warning signs. The Fed dropped its interest rate by half a percent, to 1.25 percent. Since the inflation rate is 2.5 percent, the Fed interest rate is effectively negative, making it easier and more attractive for banks to lend to corporations. The Fed then dumped $1.5 trillion into the economy to protect the Treasury Department’s ability to offer financing. It’s the same game Obama played after the 2008 crisis: feed the rich and starve the poor, all the while shouting Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité as wealth was sucked upward into corporate coffers and the pockets of the elite.

However necessary these cynical attacks on the public treasury might be to prevent an economic crash, they certainly enhance the power of corporations compared to the rest of us, who lack such generous economic protection. The paucity of public health and financial support for ordinary people, like the proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare, are also warning signs. The Trump administration is blocking attempts by states to expand Medicaid coverage during the pandemic. The administration is also warning that Medicare and Medicaid may not cover all treatment costs. nor has it delayed the start of additional restrictions on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, more commonly called food stamps). It hasn’t confirmed that a vaccine, once available, will be affordable to all, despite the fact that the government is spending billions on vaccine development. Republicans in the Senate have blocked an emergency paid sick leave bill. We are offered austerity, while the corporate elites move quickly to take advantage of the shock to our body politic — a shock that’s only beginning — to enhance their profits and maintain their power.

And it’s not just Trump. The DNC would be very happy if the Democratic National Convention was sparsely attended because people couldn’t — or weren’t allowed to — travel to Milwaukee. Fewer people means less resistance when the party’s ruling elite move to ensure the nomination of Biden, their preferred candidate, who has promised to do nothing to change the economic and environmental catastrophe of capitalism.

It’s difficult, at the moment, to determine how we should react. Clearly, there is and will be efforts to further consolidate corporate control of the government. The masses are far away, too sick or too frightened to travel and, in any event, attempts to “shut the government down” through mass action may inadvertently spread the virus, creating more misery and danger.

What to do? For now, we are left to shelter in place, to care for each other in acts of solidarity, to track corporate thefts as best we can, and to make plans and develop alliances.

Once the pandemic is over, we can marshal the pent-up frustrations and anger that we all feel into a fiery determination, call up our war elephants, and execute our plans.

***

While we are waiting for our time to act, there are some responses we can make to the pandemic and the nation’s faltering economy. The list can obviously be expanded, but small acts of personal resistance like these are psychologically important because, instead of isolation, they give us socially useful work to do; they also offer us a chance to build relationships that can lead to partnerships and coalitions.

And remember, right now keeping a “social distance” will help to slow the spread of the coronavirus. It may be frustrating to sit at home instead of marching on Washington, but keeping a social distance by staying home is an act of solidarity. You may only experience mild symptoms if you’re infected, but you are also contagious and can infect someone whose body isn’t as resilient.

Acts of Immediate Preparation

• Maintain social distance. Minimize group activities — meetings, church, theaters. If you can work from home, do so.
• If you’re an hourly worker, staying home isn’t an option, so you must do the best that you can. If possible, maintain a social distance of six feet from your co-workers and customers or when you’re on public transportation. Wash or sanitize your hands frequently and avoid touching your face. Perhaps you can organize an informal buyer’s club with your co-workers, pooling money to buy groceries and other supplies in bulk.
• Plan meals, buy staples, don’t hoard. Don’t forget pet food. Plan carefully, to minimize trips to the grocery store and exposure to the virus.
• Visit the library for books to read. Ask if your library has ebooks available.
• Make hand sanitizer to use you’re away from home. Instructions are online.
• Perform self-care. Talk to friends online or on the phone. Don’t isolate yourself into depression. Meditate, read, take walks (but avoid crowds!). Now is a good time to write your first novel. Here are some other good ideas.
• Check with your local health department or the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for information about the pandemic. Avoid spreading misinformation, as this increases the shock and disorientation we’re all feeling, making us vulnerable and passive when confronted by authoritarian actions by the government or corporations.
• Seek medical advice if you develop symptoms of a COVID-19 infection. Follow their protocols. Avoid, if possible, showing up unannounced to a crowded waiting room, because that’s a great way to infect other people.
• Arrange for at least a one month supply of prescription medicines (if you can afford it!).
• CVS Pharmacy will deliver medicine and other essentials for free during pandemic crisis.
• Put together a personal/family disaster kit.

Acts of Solidarity

• Every time you honor the idea of social distance, you’re acting in solidarity. Do it.
• Enlist your social network to send emails and make phone calls to pressure Congress to respond appropriately to the pandemic. What is appropriate? Frank Emspak developed great list for his article, “A Health Emergency Demands Treatment NOT Tax Breaks,” which was published in RedMadison.
• Lobby your city council and/or state legislature to declare a moratorium on evictions and utility shut-offs for the duration of the pandemic. Tips on lobbying are available. Code Pink has an excellent toolkit for a variety of actions.
• Identify family, friends, neighbors who may need help. Call them periodically to see if they’re doing okay. You might offer to deliver groceries or library books.
• If someone is struggling financially — an hourly worker who can’t work — rally your social network to donate money for food, gas, and even rent. Find resources in the community. In some states, veterans may receive additional help.
• Donate to a local food pantry.
• Without guilt, binge watch whatever it is you binge watch. Ditto for gaming. Read that big, fat historical novel.

Acts of Future Preparation

• Watch for attempts to start a war in Iran or Venezuela. Initiate an email and phone calling campaign against the war. Make plans for actions once the pandemic ends.
• Monitor news and social media for attempts by the government to permanently restrict freedom or restructure tax laws in favor of corporations. Make plans to take action as soon as the pandemic subsides.
• Catch up on your reading: Naomi Klein, No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need; Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine; and Thomas Picketty, Capitalism and Ideology.
• Working virtually, make contacts with other activists and organizations to share information and discuss plans.
• Follow the advice of Molly Ivins, journalist, political commentator, and humorist: “So one thing I have learned from Johnny Faulk, Texas, and life, is that since you don’t always win, you got to learn to enjoy just fightin’ the good fight.”

Decisions

I’ve mentioned several times about “planning for actions once the pandemic is over,” but we might need to consider more immediate actions, despite the pandemic, due to extraordinary circumstances. Decisions might include:

• How to respond to a war.
• How to respond to a blatant attempt by the Trump administration to drastically alter tax laws, environmental protections, or worker health safety regulations.
• How to respond to National Emergency Declaration. A NED is a very dangerous thing: it greatly expands Trump’s ability to arbitrarily ignore laws, issue Executive Orders with impunity, suspend the Posse Comitatus Act (which would then allow federal troops to act within the U.S.), and perhaps declare martial law.

***

John Mooallem, in “This is How You Live When the World Falls Apart,” describes his feelings while researching how ordinary people responded to the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964. He was sifting through the moldy life records of an earthquake survivor and discovered a mountain of evidence that she lived an ordinary, mundane life. Yet, the woman who left the records had acted heroically during and after the earthquake.

“Looking through Genie Chance’s boxes, slowly unburying myself from under the rubble of her life, I inevitably started picturing my own boxes, in one of my own daughters’ basements one day, and imagining how many other sets of boxes are already out there, and how many people hadn’t left boxes at all. Here it was: all the joys and agonies of one person’s life, but so blurred and compressed that it was impossible not to recognize the form that all our lives assume from such a telescopic distance — a forgettable blip, a meaningless straight line from birth to death.

“And yet I also knew that, sealed inside this minuscule segment of that line — this vulnerable little snow globe we call present — life feels anything but forgettable and meaningless. And that, somehow, recognizing the starkness of those boundaries enriches the fragile space we occupy within them, imbues it with immediacy, legitimacy and preciousness. It liberates us into the present, just as a disaster does, and gives us the opportunity to expand those boundaries the only way we can: laterally, by connecting our lives to the lives of others, by thatching our lines together like a net.”

We must have hope that we can rise to the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic, the machinations of the DNC, and the rapacious corporate elite who are intent stealing or poisoning whatever they can before jetting off to an island hideaway. Corporations are human creations, not acts of God; we can dismantle them.

We are in a time of testing and preparation, of doubt and determination, but soon it will be our turn to rise above the mundane and Cry Havoc!