What was originally merely an occasion-note, has ballooned
to Plutarchean proportions, and is accordingly reposted under a different name.
We begin with the relevant portions of our original post from June the sixth.
~ ~ ~
A factoid for D-Day
I’m currently reading William Shirer’s The Collapse of the Third Republic (published in 1969). The title might be confusing; unlike for his better-known book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer did not retain the political term in the original language; he means La Troisième République. Anyhow, regarding the aftermath of the first World War (whose groaning later echo we commemorate today), he writes as follows about the much-derided reparations, often pointed to as a burden on Germany that fueled the resentments that eventually led to WWII (p. 150):
Actually, Germany never had to pay a single mark out of her own resources. Her borrowings from America bankers,
which were never repaid, amounted to more than her total reparation payments. Naïve American investors footed the
German reparations bill.
The matter is even more curious in light of a companion
fact mentioned on the next page:
Though the United States refused to
take a cent of reparations from Germany, its government and Congress insisted
that its Allies, especially Britain and France, pay their war debts in full and
with interest.
Meanwhile, we are once again not being very gentle with our
former French ally:
[Update, 7 juin, D-Day’s “Boxing Day”, or “D+1-Day”. AKA le lendemain du Débarquement.]
During that post-War period of wrangling over debts and reparations, France and Germany each repeatedly stomped, stabbed, and shot themselves in the foot: bitterly remarking, “Take that!”
During that post-War period of wrangling over debts and reparations, France and Germany each repeatedly stomped, stabbed, and shot themselves in the foot: bitterly remarking, “Take that!”
Intent on not letting a cent of reparations to go to France,
after the Ruhr occupation the German “government deliberately organized the
destruction of the currency, the mark falling to … 25 billions [to the dollar],
becoming worthless” (id, p. 148).
(The folk term for this is:
Cutting off your nose to spite
your face. ) France, facing
much larger infrastructure reconstruction costs than did Germany (a point often
forgotten, since France was ultimately the nominal victor: but the war had been fought largely
on its own soil), was left in the lurch by the French rich, who vigorously
evaded such direct taxes as there were, and squirreled their capital abroad (p.
154). The State was allowed
to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy for years. The tacit strategy of the wealthy was: fiat
opulentia, et ruat respublica :
for if the Republic did fall (as, in 1940, it did) “were there not other
forms of government possible which promised more security for entrenched
wealth? The thoghts of some of the
biggest entrepreneurs began to turn to the Fascist ‘experiment’ in Italy, and
to the growing success of the Nazi Party in Germany” (p. 157). Meanwhile, “instead of raising taxes,
the government raised loans, a habit it had acquired during the war.” As for those (mostly the thrifty
French petite bourgeoisie) who were foolish enough to buy those government
guarantees, “In the end, the state, in effect, repudiated most of it by allowed the franc to fall to]
one-fifth of its prewar value” -- an 80% haircut for those who had retrieved
their savings from beneath the mattress, and entrusted them to the
stabilization of the State.
~
At this point, a light-bulb begins dimly to flicker, in the
mind of the suspicious reader. “Wai-ait a minute! Is this whole thing intended as some kind of allegory of the
Bush Administration, and subsequent obstruction/destructivism of the Tea-Party
types?” Well, it didn’t start out
that way; but as you read along,
the parallels become stark.
And the point here, indeed, is not to rake over the chronicles
of another place, another time, but to remind ourselves that “He who forgets
History is condemned to …” …. to … darn it it was on the tip of my tongue … something-something … Forgotten. Anyhow (to quote our gnomic ancestors again), “If the shoe fits, wear it.”
(Note, and not:
“If the shoe fits, buy it on credit and stash it in your fashion-closet
and then go out and buy a dozen more pairs.”
-- Though actually, that was exactly the scene in Paris, in
July of 1926:
“Along the boulevards, large crowds of women were storming the department stores and the smart shops in a frenzy to convert their falling francs into something more durable” [p. 162].)
“Along the boulevards, large crowds of women were storming the department stores and the smart shops in a frenzy to convert their falling francs into something more durable” [p. 162].)
[For our essays touching on this Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose aspect of things, click here.]
~
And so to the parallels:
The bankers and businessmen, and
even the more thriving peasants and shopkeepers, came to believe, with a
certainty that brooked no compromise, that the political “Left” -- which, aside
from the small Communist Party, was in reality little more than reformist and
middle-of-the-way, -- was incapable of governing the country.
-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of
the Third Republic (1969), p. 166
(Cf. the meme of the centrist Obama as “socialist”.)
The employers’ associations, having
lost their fight to prevent Parliament from enacting the modest social-security
legislation, continued their well-financed campaign in rthe press and on billboards to render it ineffective and to get it repealed.
-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of
the Third Republic (1969), p. 167
(Compare the continued assaults on “Obamacare” -- a program
that Congress itself passed not long ago.)
There are even parallels in the sideshow characters. On the magnate François Coty:
Flattered by the politically
discontented, who used his money to
assault the Republic, Coty began to conceive himself as a savior of the nation
who one day not too far off might be called upon to take over the
helm of state and save it from democracy.
Ridiculous as the thought was, for Coty was a political nincompoop, he
seems to have taken it with growing seriousness.
-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of
the Third Republic (1969), p. 158
Remind you of someone whose name rhymes with “rump”? (A further parallel: Both Coty and Trump made their fortunes
in the degraded armpits of the Lucullan-Bacchanalian economy, the former in
fancy perfumes, the latter in casino gambling.)
~
So, then as now, the picture isn’t pretty. But the wan hope is, that if the
Plutocratic Party ever manages to get rid of that Nigerian-born socialist and
control both houses of Congress,
they will immediately cease their antics and their Wrecker strategy, and
begin to govern responsibly. Something
like that did happen in France in 1926, with the election of the sensible
conservative Raymond Poincaré.
[Note: Readers
of this blog will feel their ears prick up at the surname. Any relation to Henri, eponym of the
Poincaré Conjecture, and one of the immortal heroes of both physics and
mathematics? Indeed; they were cousins. And since I’m not especially fond of
Cousin Raymond, I’ll post a photo of Cousin Henri instead.]
To restore national solvency, the new French President “rushed through Pariliament,
practically without debate, a number of laws calling for new taxes, and
increase of old ones, which the bankers and businessmen and the political
Right would never have accepted
from a less ‘conservative’ government.” (p. 164)
Such is the fond faint hope of the Left and Center, that by
knuckling under and electing a ‘conservative’, some necessary reforms might be
enacted (as happened under Nixon and under Reagan) which the same party would
oppose hysterically they came from the Democrats (compare the very different
treatment of those twins, Romneycare and Obamacare).
The whole financial crisis had been a charade (again,
compare the Republican push to go over the “fiscal cliff”):
In six months, Poincaré had
stabilized the franc. … There was -- there had been all along -- plenty of
French money to restore the finances of the state.
-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of
the Third Republic (1969), p. 165
~
Back when I was a grad student at Berkeley, the fashion in
the Generative Semantics circle
was to construct politically-slanted example-sentences to illustrate
some basic semantic/pragmatic point.
Perhaps the best-known was:
John called Mary a Republican, and
then she insulted him
(with contrastive accent indicated by italics). Here the sentence as stressed and worded necessarily implies a presupposition
that (for John, for Mary, and probably for the speaker of the sentence as
well), for John to call Mary “a Republican” constituted an insult (to which she
replied in kind). Contrast
John called Mary a Republican, and
then she [went and] insulted him
where the presupposition is reversed. (This sort of thing was considered
quite amusing in the student lounges of the time.)
Anyhow, what dredged from memory that moss-worn anecdote,
was seeing Shirer write of President Poincaré,
Though conservative, he was a man
of utter integrity.
The expression sounds quaintly prejudiced, coming from the
pen of a historian. But Shirer
knows his materials; and perhaps
things stood then as now, on the Right.
For the likes of Boehner, Trump, Perry, Rove, Delay, et alia, are not
“men of utter integrity”.
The hope of the Center, that the next Republican President might be a
Poincaré -- or a Nixon, with all his faults -- may be a pipe-dream. Instead of a Nixon, we might get an
Agnew; instead of a McCain, a
Palin.
And not only have the ranks of potential Republican
leaders degenerated after years of
stewing in the vile juices of ressentiment, so too the electorate has taken an ugly
turn. Again, a parallel from
late-1920s France:
A certain proletarianization of a
good many solid citizens of the middle class took place at this time. Like the workers, they found it
increasingly difficult to make ends meet, but contrary to the workers they turned politically not to the Left
but to the extreme Right in
hopes of salvation.
-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of
the Third Republic (1969), p. 165
This is the old problem of “false consciousness”, which in
America (both in this century and the last) has gone under the catch-phrase of
“What’s the matter with Kansas?”
~
Yet another parallel, between something in France of the
1920s, that makes no sense, and something that makes no sense in our own
day: yet together, they may
illuminate each other, with their spectral swamp-spawned light.
The weakness of the
presidency, and the mediocrity of
the politicians who held it in the
last years of the Third Republic,
contributed to the instability of French governments. We have seen Clemenceau confessing
that, in the elections of the National Assembly for President of the Republic, he always voted for the most
stupid candidate.
-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of
the Third Republic (1969), p. 170
But -- Why would anyone do that? Because “The members of Parliament preferred … weak and mediocre men for President”
-- men they could control. (George Dubya, without an idea in his
head, was a reliable mannequin for Cheney and Rumsfeld -- and whoever-all lay
behind those. -- Hugenburg had
thought that the comic-opera Hitler would fill that bill; but Hitler got out of hand.)
So, seriously, ideology aside -- Let us all agree for the
sake of argument, that we all subscribe to the doctrines of Calvin Coolidge,
Alexander Hamilton, Kaiser Wilhelm, Attila the Hun -- whoever you please. Why should the party carrying on that illustrious tradition,
be reduced to the present pack of morons?
It’s effing embarrassing, for one thing. And though I have satirized it, I don’t
really understand it. How did the
party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Luger, manage to drive out
all men of substance from its ranks?
~
The scene in 1937, in the waning days of the premiership of
Léon Blum:
As the first Socialist -- and
Jewish-- Prime Minister in the history of France, he was determined to keep his
word, as he said, “to exercise power only within the framework of capitalism.” His scruples do him credit. But in a harsh world of conflict, in
which it was evident that the economic and financial elite were out to destroy
his government --at whatever cost to the country -- his lack of boldness, of
toughness, proved his undoing.
-- Wm Shirer, The Collapse of
the Third Republic (1969), p. 323
Remind you of anyone we know?
Note: It is no
part of the purpose of this post, to criticise or second guess, from the plush
comfort of hindsight or the sidelines, either Barack Obama or Léon Blum. Both are admirable statesmen. Merely, their
predicaments are similar.
Further:
For anyone who imagines that the perverse obstructionism which our
President has been dealing with, is anomalous, check out Shirer’s account of the premiership of Blum.
Foot-Note: Well
aware (alas) of our shallowness and deficiencies in matters of historical commentary, we can at least play to
our long suit -- linguistics -- in offering this: The surname Blum is pronounced “Bloom” in French.
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