DECLINE AND FALL: RISING TIDES AND STRANDED BOATS

John D. MacDonald, The Scarlet Ruse*,  1973.

ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL ‘SALVAGE OPERATION’ BY THE INDOMITABLE Travis McGee. And to spoil the ending right off, Travis does end up with his lady—he recuperates at ex-flame’s Cathy Key’s Florida seaside home on Candle Key cove after nearly being killed by the sociopathic mobster Frank Sprengler who killed Travis’s sociopathic girlfriend, Mary Alice. And our hero comes out $40,000 ahead, to boot (enough to fund his ‘retirement-by-installment’ scheme of living for another year or so.) It’s all in a day’s work for our intrepid hero.

And I do enjoy MacDonald’s asides where he comments on larger themes, in this case our greed and preoccupation as a society with acquiring money by any means necessary. The criminals in the novel acquire it criminally, of course,though at the end the wounded Sprengler confesses—or whines—to Travis that the investment business he set up as a cover for his illicit activities (extortion, drugs, etc, the usual suspects) was something he discovered he was “good at” and that he “really wanted to do.” Even stone-cold killers have a heart made of greenbacks when it comes to selling municipal bonds and debentures. Ain’t capitalism grand? It’s energizing and rehabilitating too!

     But not according to Travis’s sidekick and “world-renowned economist” Meyer, whom MacDonald uses as his platform to go off on a riff about the current (1973) state of economic affairs. Meyer, his computer-like brain on full bore, presents the case against the belief that “a rising tide lifts all boats” (similar to the "trickle-down" theory of wealth accumulation, or as I like to call it the the 'piss-down' theory of same) a meme popular with emerging neo-liberal capitalism theorists graduating from the Chicago School of Economics, Milton Friedman and his ilk, etc., that would shortly be adopted by Britain’s Margret Thatcher and America's Ronald Regan a few years hence. 
     I assume MacDonald wrote The Scarlet Ruse prior to the  Arab oil embargo of 1973-4, which sent shock waves through the developed world, and made people pause for a time to consider the way in which the global economic system was progressing inexorably towards the grand carnival (more like grand Ponzi scheme) of “globalization”.

In the 70s there was Nixon and Vietnam, of course, but there was also a fairly robust (if inflation battered) American and global economy with still-vigorous manufacturing and trade sectors, not to mention a whole lot of cheap oil, so things were still speeding along, albeit with failing brakes, toward the nirvana of infinite growth on a finite planet. Workers still worked, bankers banked and so on; people bought homes they generally could afford and the single-income family was, as yet, not entirely a creature of myth.

     But Meyer looks at the American standard of living and the promise of the American Dream, and comments on the state of affairs for his time, which rings loud and clear, even more so, today:

     

"It took a moment for me to realize that one of Meyer’s recent lectures on international standards of living was all too well remembered.

'…so divide everything into two hundred million equal parts. Everything in this country that is fabricated. Steel mills. Speedboats, cross-country power lines, scalpels, watch bands, fishing rods, ski poles, plywood, storage batteries, everything. Break it down into basic raw materials and then compute the power requirements and the fossil fuels needed to make everybody’s share in this country. Know what happens if you a apply that formula to all the peoples of all the other nations of the world?

You come up against a bleak fact, Travis. There is not enough material on and in the planet to ever give them what we’re used to. The emerging nations are not going to emerge—not in our pattern at least. Not ever. We’ve hogged it all. Technology won’t come up with a way to crowd the Yangtze River with Munequitas.

It was okay, Travis, when the world couldn’t see us consuming and consuming. Or hear us. Or taste some of our wares. But communication by cinema, satellite, radio, television tape, these have been like a light coming on slowly, being turned up like on a rheostat control in a dark cellar where all of mankind used to live. Now it is blinding bright, cruelly bright. And they can all look over into our corner and see us gorging ourselves and playing with our bright pretty toys. And so they want theirs now. Just like ours, God help them. And what is the only thing we can say? ‘Sorry. You’re a little too late. We used it all up, all except what we need to keep our toys in repair and running and to replace them when they wear out. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.’ What comes after that? Barbarism, an interregnum, a new dark ages, and another start a thousand years from now with a few million people on the planet? Our myth has been that our standard of living would become available to all the peoples of the world. Myths wear thin. We have a visceral appreciation of the truth. That truth, which we don’t dare announce to the world, is what gives us the guilt and the shame and the despair. Nobody in the world will ever live as well, materially, as we once did. And now, as our materialism begins to sicken us, it is precisely what the emerging nations want for themselves. And can never have. Brazil might mange it. But no one else.'

Good old Meyer. He can put a fly into any kind of ointment, a mouse in every birthday cake, a cloud over every picnic. Not out of spite. Not out of contrition or messianic zeal. But out of a happy, single-minded pursuit of truth. He is not to blame that the truth seems to have the smell of decay and an acrid taste these days. He points out that forty thousand particles per cubic centimeter of air over Miami is now called a clear day. He is not complaining about particulate matter. He is merely bemused by the change in standards.

Now, as I watched the tireless lady zoom back and forth, [Mary Alice is water skiing, as Travis tows her behind the Muñequita ("little doll") speed boat] he had made me feel like one of those regal jokers of olden times who could order up enough humming bird tongues for a banquet. What’s your message, Meyer? Enjoy?" (117)

Okay, Meyer doesn't say we're all heading for hell in a hand-basket for sure, but he does mention the possibility of wars being fought between the haves and the have-nots (say, isn't that human history, and just one of the four horsemen we'll expect to see in the coming years?). I think if we look around the world today, we're seeing more conflicts arising over resource scarcity, something that can only intensify as more countries try to go down the rabbit hole of neo-liberal economic pursuits. As a result of our profligate ways and the bubbling cauldron of resentment other nations feel towards us, Meyer suggests the possibility of global conflicts that will result in "barbarism" and the destruction of our civilizations, and a long "dark age", after which the survivors, a "few million on the planet", emerge and begin again the long climb to civilization. And that was way back in 1973! I wonder what the observant Meyer would make of today's level of conspicuous consumption that we billion or so 'haves' will have to answer for, one way or another, to the five or six billion 'have-nots'. I'm not sure he would like the odds...
      And again okay, Meyer missed a few points, such as the emergence of the Asian economies of Japan, China, South Korea, and India and others, using the same economic tools (and magic wands and sprinkles of pixie dust) that we used previously, but fine-tuned to their own societies’ needs. The result is: today there are more of us in the same basket, stuffing ourselves like Christmas turkeys at the globalization banquet where the game of musical chairs is also being played. And what Meyer says about the whole world not having a snowball’s chance of ever approaching the level of economic security the United States achieved is true. But with the ‘pie’ shrinking, and with increasingly peckish economic giants of both East and West, and the newly-emerging nations of power and sub-national entities including corporations, terrorist organizations, and special interest groups and political alliances of all sorts, when that dinner bell sounds it’s a race to the table, and heaven help anyone who gets in your way or tries to sit at your place!

     Let’s see how the next few decades play out. Let’s see if the ghosts of Thatcher and Regan will haunt us like Jacob Marley's wretched soul when the chimes of midnight begin to sound.

…….

And I can’t resist including another gem from the novel, another of MacDonald’s not so latent expressions of Ludditism. (You go, Luddites!) As Travis prepares for his confrontation with the powerful and deadly Sprengler aboard his houseboat The Busted Flush (he won it in a poker game), he, for reasons known only to the author, has this random gem of a thought: 

     "Think, damnit! Like the little signs IBM used to distribute before they suddenly realized that if it were ever obeyed, if men everywhere really began to Think, the first thing they would do would be to take a sledge and open up the computers. A few are doing it already, sly seers, operating in sly ways. They have to guard the computer rooms these days. A little alnico magnet, stuck in exactly the right place with a wad of chewing gum, can erase a hundred thousand units of information before they find it."

It’s adorable, isn't it! I’ve commented on MacDonald’s views about computers and their place in our world before. But the image of the forerunners of today’s computer hackers using wads of Juicy Fruit and magnets to gum-up a computer’s innards? Priceless! Oh, for a time machine to go back to those simpler days! If MacDonald were alive today, he would be gob-smacked at the power and control computerized everything has over us. And horrified. Will the tables ever turn? Where’s Snake when we need him?

……..

And here’s a nice quote from "Ruse" that I thought to share with readers, to end this Rant on a somewhat optimistic note. As Travis examines the various quirks and character flaws of his murderous girlfriend’s sociopathy, he speculates on how she sees her life and living:

John D. MacDonald
Born: July 23, 1916 Died:Dec. 28, 1986 R.I. P.

"I wondered if she had ever really been able to comprehend the fact of her own eventual and inevitable death. Today, my friends, we each have one day less, every one of us. And joy is the only thing that slows the clock."

Too true, John, too true.

*The Scarlet Ruse refers to a type of stamp. "Ruse" is MacDonald's wry nod to what he thinks about consumerism and the inflated expectations of everyone to acquire the 'good life'. A trick? A con job? Scarlet for shame? Embarrassment?