All’s Fair In War
Posted on 07 February 2010
I was having coffee with a friend, who finally opened up and admitted she was in dire financial straits, hadn’t worked in over a year. Her features were equal parts relief and misery for she had spoken to almost no one about this. Yes, she had heard rumblings of others in similar circumstances, of course, around the edges of her life. But no one had come forward until now – until I had told her about my own circumstances – which had made me sell my homes, downsize massively and actually find wild joy in the process. She was finding no joy, had been a vastly successful part of Hollywood. (The thing about us entertainment folk is that we have all often struggled between our high-paying gigs, so the devastation had snuck up on her.)
I joked about my belief that 85% of the recent plethora of extremely expensive Bentley convertibles on the LA streets was people on their last 25k, leasing these monsters of extravagance like mental patients, hoping against hope that Obama’s hope would pull them over their approaching abyss, despite the growing “For Lease “signs from downtown LA to the Santa Monica beaches.
I then found myself talking to her about another friend who had looked at her dire circumstances, had talked to experts (she’s an up-and-coming hot lawyer in town). Armed with a careful strategy, this lawyer had defaulted on everything – credit cards, mortgages. Everything. She had renegotiated the whole mess down to paying back thirty to forty cents on the dollar (depending on the various banks). If she hadn’t done this she would have likely lost everything – house, car, grocery money, probably her job. (I should repeat that this is a brutally hard working, very successful lawyer, with a grown daughter and a top-notch mind.)
My friend with the coffee had never even imagined doing this (neither had my lawyer friend – by the way – she had gone through six months of agony before bringing herself to the kind of behavior she would have thought abhorrent a year earlier).
Funny, isn’t it, how our leaders have felt no such agony in bailing themselves out? The rich, the powerful, the arrogant who screwed up everything with their strange beliefs that they knew everything, that they had a right to everything, that they still have a right to everything and anything (even now) that they can grab.
Up at the “top of the world” everything’s still whizzing along like bang busters – massive bonuses, a (more or less) wonderful Stock Market, bigger mansions (a few of those Bentleys paid for with pocket change from these guys, I’m sure). And I’ll bet our friends over at GM and Chrysler are once again looking down at us from their Lear jets.
And yet my two well educated, highly ethical, very hard-working friends are going through agony. They may still go under. I may still go under. But I’m not going to do it without a fight, a nasty, brutal, gloves-off fight, because these guys at the top are dead wrong, They are thieves, liars and arrogant fools and they’re still running this country completely without a hint of consequence for their crimes and inhumanness.
And then I found myself drifting to another strange image with my coffee friend overlooking the hippest part of Melrose Avenue. “Do you want to just let em cart you off to a camp somewhere?” I asked when she told me she just wasn’t sure she could do what my lawyer friend had done. (I had been visualizing Nazis, of course, carting her away – I can be overly dramatic, I admit it.) Nonetheless the theme of fighting back grew stronger on my side of the table. She had smiled, had shrugged, then had laughed – had felt too embarrassed about the whole thing, I guess. But maybe that will change.
And I agree with her: there is something deadly wrong with not paying back all your debt. It eats at the soul, at the very fiber of what it is to be human. It lowers the head, makes the feet shuffle. But it hits me as I remember her now, sitting across from me at that table off Melrose Avenue that we are in a profound war today with an enemy that lies to us constantly on TV, the internet, billboards; that a kid on an airplane blowing up his pants or whatever is a small time terrorist compared to the ones running so much of our country in their fine suits and silk dresses who have their hands on the real weapons of mass destruction – just ask the people over there in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan.
Nonetheless, the last thing I could have ever imagined myself saying to a friend would have been don’t pay back your debt – default instead, finagle, renegotiate, save yourself. Be prepared to fight another day. And hold your head up high as you do it because you are living in a time that will be remembered as a war, as a civil war, perhaps, as a brutal war against the Goldman (let em eat cake) Sachs’ mindset and the Bank of (let em charge us three bucks per ATM transaction) America/Citibank/AIG. These are hard-hearted business geeks who will pull out the money they have gutted from our grand country and take it to wherever else they can dupe trusting, hard working people – China, India, Brazil, Indonesia.
Yes, it’s a war. And sadly, all is fair in war. It’s a terribly sad truth, desperately sad. But others have been here before us. Others, sadly, will most likely be here fighting after we’re gone.
Whether we like it or not, we have been drafted into this long, complicated, yet proud lineage of warriors fighting for what is right. It isn’t easy, far from it. Black becomes white, your debt becomes something you do not pay off – easy to get lost in a war of this kind, easy to be destroyed, to become soulless. But we must win somehow, as others have won before us. And we must risk our souls to do it, I suppose, for no less than the Republic depends on us. No less than the well being of our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren are at stake. As for the soul, what else is it good for, but to risk it for that which we love?
20 responses to All’s Fair In War
Now you are talking as everybody ought to do, straight from the heart and soul! Thank you; very well formulated both about the state of the world and you own situation.
But isn’t it much more to be said, now when the cork is out of the bottle?
H.
Soul deep: sometimes you really DO ‘hafta do what you gotta do’ to live, to eat, to continue. You have to survive to be able to nurse soul-searing regrets.
These kinds of war are epic in their infinity. We have to be soldiers whether we’re prepared or not, and wage the kind of war/s that we can endure, survive, and live with afterward. All hail humanity?
Stephen, politically, I am a conservative (as you know) and likely we do not entirely agree on how to get out of this economic mess. However, your humanity shines bright in this piece and I happen to agree with you. Although it is exceedingly difficult for us to get our government to do anything other than continue down its destructive path of more spending and more deficits, combined with less manufacturing and energy production (all economic knock-out punches), your concept of individually fighting back rings true. I admire that you may be down but you’re not out. None of us are. Stand up. Don’t roll over. Our preacher back in Coalwood, West Virginia, used to say if a door is closed, just be patient. God will open another. My mom retorted, “If somebody ever shuts a door in MY face, I’ll knock out a window and crawl through it!” Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Stephen.
You’re welcome. And it’s good to hear from you.
And you might note that (as I wrote in the above piece) as I changed my life, divesting it of so much, I found a real joy in the simplicity and in the unexpected power of living with less — this website and what I write are a reflection of that. Life, I have come to believe, is far better with far less…
Linda and I miss you, Stephen. We really do. Come see us in Huntsville or when we’re in St. John, a great place to relax and reflect. My email can be found on http://www.homerhickam.com under CONTACT US.
In my small suburban town outside of NYC a 50 year old man jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge into the freezing cold Hudson River two weeks ago. At the last moment he changed his mind – Another man tried to save him but was unsuccessful. The Jumper had lost his job, had three kids in public high school, a wife, a modest house and saw no way out but this. He did not have fancy cars, nor plural houses, nor any of the trappings of Hollywood- just a middle-aged man who probably commuted dutifully every day in and out of Manhattan to support his family. HIs family is left to pick up the pieces and live with this unnecessary tragedy. Somehow this is our own Theodore Dreiser moment in time-
Alright, as token Obama supporter and person who recently lost her job at a financial office, I would like to first comment that your continued insistence on blaming Obama for everything baffles me. I’m sure you’re right about people spending the last of their money on superfluous luxuries (it happens outside of Hollywood, too), but why bring Obama into that? No one is on their last $25k in Hollywood because of Obama. They are on their last $25k because for decades in this country, we have believed the bullshit that has been fed to us…that debt is somehow an asset, that money (not work) makes more money, that we all deserve to have whatever we want, regardless of whether or not we can pay for it. We spent like drunken sailors, turned our backs while the banks did whatever the hell they wanted, and never stopped to think about the consequences.
So I think we ALL have a share in the responsibility here. Yes, the banks pulled some big ones over on us. Yes, Congress failed us on the legislation front. Yes, there are people who are getting richer right this very second, while the rest of us suffer. But you always seem so angry at Obama for not single-handedly saving us with the wave of his hand. You seem to mock those of us who still wake up every day thankful he, and not McCain/Palin, are in the White House.
But I agree with you completely about defaulting. Do it. Most of them were shitty deals to begin with and all we’re doing is filling the pockets of those who screwed us over to begin with.
I worked in an office where I was let go because my boss, a manager of other people’s money, could no longer afford to keep me. I wasn’t making a great salary, and you’re damned right I’m angry that I, with my honest but lowly job, wasn’t affordable, while other people in that same industry are so invaluable that no amount of money is too much to keep them.
The system is *wrong*, but it’s been wrong for a long while, and while we’re fighting the people who got us into this mess, maybe we should also look at what drove us to trust them to begin with. Yes, they’re getting rich off of us, but only because we let them have our money to begin with. It’s a war where we gave them all of our weapons. We were *greedy*, and now it’s bit us in the ass.
I don’t know your financial situation or that of your friends. Even extremely responsible people are in trouble right now; we’re all connected in this mess, and I certainly don’t mean to insinuate any of the people mentioned in your blog are anything less than victims. But the way we think about money and wealth in this country needs to be collectively reassessed.
Because as bad as it is in Hollywood, there are a lot of people in the rest of the world who would have loved to have had $25k to spend to begin with.
I agree with so much of what you say and, sadly, I’ve read too much history to remotely blame Obama for where we find ourselves — I also hold myself responsible for much of the mess I found myself in financially. Luckily, in my case, I figured it out before last October’s shit hit the fan. I got out and cleaned up my mess. I am vastly luckier than most people — and, come on, I’m directing TV episode. How bad could it be for me?
But returning to Obama – my beef with him is that many of us did one big thing that was right — we VOTED for him. And we did it for a reason. We wanted change. Real change. We wanted out of a war. We wanted the financial mess cleaned up. And we wanted the enviornment dealt with.
I believe Obama had a moment in history (now gone) where he could have stopped any more money going to the banks. He could have either let them fail or he could have renegotiated in a major way when he started to let them fail — he could have been murderous on those CEO’s salaries. He could have let GM and Chrysler collapse. He could have put money into new car companies (ala some version of Jet Blue or Southwest Airlines).
He could have pointed to the past, vast financial disasters (absolutely correctly) as the fault of the Republicans from Reagan through the Bush family (not to mention the Clintons to a lesser degree). He could have let a lot of this financial structure fall away and he could have had the Republican Party (and the Tea Party lost souls) reeling.
He would have been hated for it, sure. He might even have been assassinated (who knows how all that shit works). But to have knocked off Obama, allowing him to turn into a myth, could have ultimately been even worse for the bastards who might have contemplating doing it.
In short, Obama could have been a visionary and he could have been brave. And, frankly, that’s what he projected just before and after the election — real bravery and vision. Then he created a cabinet that was jaw-droppingly un-visionary. It was downright retrogressive so that the Bush/Reagan policies have absolutely continued down to even the green initiatives.
You did not need to be fired from your job, Becky. The stock market didn’t have to come roaring back for the rich while so much of the rest of this country suffered. None of this needed to happen this way, but it would’ve taken a great man.
It seemed, I think to all of us, that Obama could have been that great man – that’s what he exuded. He has turned out not to be. Now (to whatever small degree I can) I want to push whatever I can around him so that he moves at least a little further away from the McCains and Palins we both so hate (and I fear.) So, despite how it appears, my rages at Obama are actually an admittance that I still have left in me some of that Obama hope…
Thank you for that reply. You have many great points and I agree with much of what you said. Maybe the only real difference in our political ideologies is the degree to which we have hope…naive or no, I’m not ready to accept that these opportunities are all lost already… But change does seems to be much harder to bring about than any of us (Obama included) ever anticipated.
I also agree with what Topsey said below about the Tea Party movement. As misguided and devoid of ideas as they are, the Tea Partiers do know how to organize and stick to a message, which is something that those of us on the other side of the aisle have repeatedly (and inexcusably!) failed at. Right now, unfortunately, our greatest unifier is our general frustration. But another thing I’m hopeful about is that that will change, and when it does, when we start to rally around ideas instead of emotions, we’ll start to make some progress in this country… Fingers crossed!
I AM SENDING THIS RESPONSE ON BEHALF OF AMAR COURNOYER AS HE ADVICED ME!
“I read All’s Fair In War just now with responses and I agree with Becky: February 8, 2010 at 12:49 PM”
A gross oversimplification to blame Obama. That focus is too narrow. I don’t regret voting for him, but I’m old enough to not expect much from him. It’s just that the alternative was too terrible to contemplate.
What we have is a rapidly evolving corporate police state. For at least the past 30 years we’ve been in the process of formalizing that. No single individual is up to the task of dismantling it. It requires a “movement.” As anyone can clearly see from the implications of the global financial meltdown, the problems are not only bigger that one person, they are bigger than one country. The multinationals are a tough ruthless gang.
There’s a new normal out here. People have to fight back, because no one is going to rescue you. I’ve “simplified” my life, too. I’ve never needed a Bentley or any other kind of trophy to confer status on me.
For me, financial security represents freedom. When you restrict me, you take away my freedom. What’s even worse, is the notion that we discard people. We assign value to them the same way we assign status with Bentleys. As a loved one once told me, “Nobody wants to feel throw’d away.”
As I look at the hundreds of thousands of people, many from my own community, trying to reshape and restate their lives, confronted with a reality where basic needs like food and shelter are an issue,all their illusions are shattering.
Witnessing the inertia of our system of government, it’s unwillingness and it’s inability to effectively address the abuses in our financial services industry, or to reform healthcare, or to provide a decent public education, it is time for a great many people to emulate Homer Hickam’s Mom.
We have elections this year. We have an opportunity to do something. We are both appalled and amused by the antics of the Tea Party crowd, but we should take a lesson from their tactics. We can replace a few thousand extremist clowns, with millions of voices, not hoping for change, but insisting on it. I’m not willing to surrender to the Frank Luntzes, the Karl Roves.
Someone once said that capitalism would eventually collapse under the weight of its own inertia, but what frightens me is the sharp Right turn we’ve taken. We really do have to try to put the brakes on this mess.
Forgot to say, we are must assuredly in a war, but in a war, it helps to know who the enemy is.
I’m very much confused when I read that all this is the fault of :Obama, the banks, the CEO and their big salaries…Well I come from a small family where we had to work very hard in order to pay all our bills in general (wage: 1200 $ against 1000$ of expenses (gas, water, electricity, cartaxes, wage taxes, incometaxes, insurance etc) Belgium is rated as the number 10 in the world to pay the most taxes on everything. I made it in this world as been a successfull CEO. How? I worked alone, did all and everything alone. I fly economy, I stay at the Motel 6 or Studio 6 when I travel or go for contracts abroad. I’m not afraid to say that I live very simple. I drive a 1200cc motorcycle: but YES I have 3 houses, 1 flourishing company, no overdue bills anymore and still standing. It is not necessary for the rich and famous to spend 25000 $ to a trip; while you can do it with only half and still have fun!! A lot of people buy on credit these days, well, I don’t even have a Citibank or cc card. I used to have one, well I ended up with a 5000 $ dept. NEVER AGAIN. I learned from my mistakes. Most of the people don’t. It’s sad and hard to say it, but most of the people who find themselves into real trouble, are 90% themselves responsible for their own downside.Hope you didn’t take any offence by this, but I see what Hollywood is doing, it’s not because your famous that you can’t get a coffee at McDonalds instead of Starbucks, it’s less expensive and even better
)you can buy clothing at Sears instead of 5000 $ top that you only will wear once 
. My education tought me that nothing lasts for ever; so be carefull with it, it could be your last. I lived a great life and still can do what I want. If I can’t pay it cash (no credit) I don’t get it. Simple as that. Hope this can help. There is nothing bad to say that you have problems and that you’ll have to work again just like Jack joe next door (9 to 5) Miljons of people do it everyday and they never end up on the internet 
( Take your own life in hands. Don’t lend money, if you don’t have any to give back. Thats making a whole to fill another one. If anyone has trouble, they can always ask how I did/do it. I’ll be more then glad to help them to good ideas to make it further, before it’s too late!. Hey Stepen, you can pass your friend my mail address. I might give her some tips to make it again in no time! Greetings to all and hope that things will go better
Amy
here it is
info@abeventservices.com
I’ve never written on your website before but I have often dropped by to read on the recommendation of my friend, Incognita. I’m glad to see you voice the frustrations and struggles of all of us during these desperate financial times.
For me the greatest frustration was watching our great economic minds miss the point about the banks faltering under their own mismanagement. This happened before – remember “Black Tuesday” in 1929? The “Great Depression” was a cycle, and what came out of it was creativity, new businesses, and new jobs. Economically this was supposed to happen; the sad part is that the powers on Capital Hill didn’t let it run its course for our nation to then experience its natural process of economic re-growth after the dust from the crash settled.
As Topsey stated “Someone once said that capitalism would eventually collapse under the weight of its own inertia, but what frightens me is the sharp Right turn we’ve taken. We really do have to try to put the brakes on this mess.” How right you are Topsey, and what a frightening sharp right turn it is going to be, we are just now beginning to feel the spin of that maneuver; too bad the brakes have been removed.
- Sheryl
Wow. What a dialogue has unfolded here. From all of you. I feel honored to be a part of it, frankly. So many facets here — like a cut jewel. I’ll try to keep on my toes, to learn from you and to speak my mind as clearly as I can.
I want to respond to everyone but it’s a lot of work trying to keep all of these pieces coming on the website — a mix of politics, poetry, film, Hollywood, un-Hollywood, et cetera. Trying to just be human in the strange world that we all live in — and to sense increasingly how the voices that have been speaking here are from all over the world — it makes me aware of how close together we all are on this planet, really.
I hope I’m making some sense. I’ve been shooting all day in the rain out here in LA. It was colder than it should have been for Southern California and I’m pretty much exhausted — but I wanted to express my gratitude.
Just wanted to add that we appreciate your responses to our replies here, Stephen; when you jump in, your reactions really add to the dialogue. Sounds to me, reading through this, that you’ve touched on an important theme; maybe you could find ways to explore it further?
Though you may feel a certain “responsibility” to cover a wide range of topics, it seems that what people appreciate is just getting a genuine sense of who you are, and of how your voice resonates with the concerns of our time.
Stephen,
I think you are too harsh, a gillion years ago when we were lads a young president named Kennedy came along and decided he couldn’t let Soviet missiles be parked at our doorstep and we almost ended up with a nuclear war. We are one year into a presidency and lets see where it ends up. I think it is far too early to tell if he is a visionary or a dud.
We have a fiscal perfect storm heading our way with 1/4 of the population ready to retire, health care costs that year after year outstrip the inflation rate and a national debt that would choke a heard of elephants. Not to mention the unfunded medicare and social security obligations.
Joe
I hate to mention this, but regression has been going on for over 10 years now. I used to work for US companies such as Johnson Wax (taken over by ça-va-seul France:1992,250 let go)Fiat Auto Belgio: moved to Italy:1994,175 people let go, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, closed 6 companies world wide 4500 people let go 1998, Planet Hollywood, 1998, 12 stores closed worldwide, including one of London&Brussels top stores, Emmis Broadcasting, sells over 40 broadcast studio’s 2008, and I miss a lot of them…this had been going for years, but no one ever said anything. In Belgium, during the last years of the ’90, more then 12000 companies went broke (Renault,Sabena & DHL took 60.000 joblosses for their count in 2 years!!!), where sold or taken over by other companies…This is not new, it’s just a fast forward of what’s been going on for years. Sad to mention it, but strikes don’t work either. If you go on strike, your don’t work, so your not productive, and no one is paid to do nothing. So no work, no money, so jobloss.
I truely hope that things will get better. I can’t say personally that I suffer the crisis, because I don’t, but my crisis has been eversince my 18 years of age, by closings, taken overs, etc…my time of moarning is over…
In my own simplistic way (and I certainly don’t profess to be a great political or intellectual mind)it seems that it is always the small, family run companies that suffer and go under first: the decent people who are struggling to feed and clothe their own children. Those people who, when someone owes them a paltry few thousand dollars/euros/pounds it is a REALLY BIG DEAL. So, are you advocating saying “Well, f**k everyone else except me and my own family”? Dog eat Dog?
OK, perhaps I get your point about having a what-the-hell-attitude to defaulting on debt to some large faceless corporation, but down the line somewhere in that corporation is a Mr/Mrs Joe Bloggs (plus family)who loses his job because profits are down.
From our own situation “downsizing” has involved moving from the UK to France: setting-up and trying to run a business in a foreign language/culture, living in a house which we cannot afford to do up and which by UK (let alone US) standards would definitely be termed uninhabitable – cracked windows, exposed electric wiring, no heating… But we no longer have a mortgage and very very little credit (this only necessary because of people/larger companies witholding payments to us). I can pretty much say we are happier now. We have space and freedom. Our children are bilingual, they go to small intimate schools, are learning to appreciate good food! France doesn’t seem quite as bitten by the superficial materialistic bug as in the UK. It doesn’t bother me that I drive around in a battered car that has seen better days, that I hardly ever buy new clothes, that I can’t afford to have my hair cut more than once or twice a year. But life is still a huge struggle – there are still utilities to pay and food to buy – and a huge part of our monthly outgoings is to insurance companies – the biggest parasites/crooks of all. My husband worries hugely about finances but I know neither him or me could contemplate defaulting on payments. Then again that’s probably why we’re still where we are in the grand scheme of things: we’re just not ruthless enough… the meek certainly won’t inherit the earth.