Reaping the whirlwind

Back in 1980, I came up with an idea for a novel.

Ronald Reagan had just been elected president, and many of us were alarmed at what seemed like a lurch toward far-right populism -- anti-regulation, pro-corporate policy that was marketed as somehow being beneficial to the working class.  The buzzwords were "trickle-down economics," the idea that if you gave big tax breaks to the rich, the benefits would "trickle down" to you and me and the rest of the working stiffs.  It was bolstered by a belief that the rich were actually concerned about lifting the working class out of poverty; that it was possible, in the society as it was, for a poor person to become wealthy.

That, to quote Steinbeck, the poor were just "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

It didn't work.  The rich got richer (as intended) and the working class reaped exactly zero benefits from it.  And it generated deep resentment, as corporate profits soared, CEOs raked in unimaginable amounts of cash -- and workers' salaries stagnated.

And I thought: this can't go on forever.  At some point, people are going to get fed up, decide they have nothing to lose, and pull the whole superstructure down.

This was the genesis of my novel In the Midst of Lions.

The title comes from a line from Psalm 56: "Have pity on me, O God, have pity on me... for I lie prostrate in the midst of lions that devour men."  The story is set in Seattle, and centers around five completely ordinary people who are caught up in the collapse.  The attacks are precipitated by a shadowy worldwide organization of violent anarchists called the Lackland Liberation Authority; the "Lacklanders" are people who lost their property from corporate buy-ups of land for industrial agriculture and mining, and because price increases made home ownership out of reach.  Threatening LLA graffiti, in their trademark red spray paint, begins showing up on walls.  

Then the attacks start.  At first, they're scattered and sporadic, targeting a few of the most egregious offenders; but when that doesn't work, they strike hard, and simultaneously, at governmental and business leaders across the world.

The result is spiraling chaos.

Back in 1980 I wrote a few chapters of it, but somehow sensed that I didn't have the background, knowledge, or writing skill to pull off something this big, so I tabled the project.  It was in the back of my mind -- for forty years.  In 2020 I finally decided to tackle it, and wrote it and two sequels (The Scattering Winds and The Chains of Orion), which I published in 2023.  

The reason this comes up is that there's a passage from In the Midst of Lions that's been on my mind for the last couple of days:

“But there’s one thing I don’t understand,” Soren said.  “If they had this coordinated, worldwide plot, planned well in advance, there has to have been communication between different places.  By destroying the telecommunication hubs, they’ve cut themselves off along with the rest of us.  It’s sawing off the tree branch you’re sitting on.”

“I doubt they care.” Cassandra’s lips tightened, the only display of emotion she revealed.  “I’ve read some of the Lacklanders’ manifestos.  They’re no different than the suicide bombers in the Middle East back during the Gulf Wars.  The point is to destroy the power structure they despise.  If they can take down the corporate-capitalist overlords, they still count it as a success even if they go down along with them.”

“That makes no sense at all,” Mary said.

“I didn’t say it was rational.”

The deadly attack on UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson comes from this same desperation.  UnitedHealth is in first place amongst American health insurance companies for percentage of claims turned down -- estimates are around a 32% denial rate.  "Deny, Defend, Depose" was written on the bullet casings -- and the disingenuous media is still saying, "Gee, I wonder what the murderer's motive was?"  Instead of outrage at the violent act, the result has been an outpouring of anger against health insurance companies -- and by extension, ultra-wealthy corporate CEOs everywhere -- coupled with a complete lack of sympathy for Thompson and a celebration of his killer (who, at the time of this writing, remains unidentified and at large).  A Facebook post by UnitedHealth asking for "understanding in this difficult time" got almost a hundred thousand responses -- 77,000 of which were laugh emojis.  

But what gave me the biggest shiver up the spine was the following image of graffiti I saw on Facebook.

In red spray paint.  In Seattle.

I said to a friend -- and I was only half joking -- "I didn't think I'd have to move In the Midst of Lions to the non-fiction shelf quite this soon."

Thompson's murder, and the glee that followed, isn't laudable, but it is understandable.  And it definitely isn't one pundit's characterization of "a sign of the deep moral and ethical corrosion of America."  It's a result of something that we've seen over and over again in history, from the American and French Revolutions to what's happening right now in Syria; if you push people long enough and hard enough, profit off their struggle, empower corrupt oligarchs and expect the working class simply to play along, eventually the whole tower of cards collapses.  People will then take action by whatever means they can to put an end to it -- legally or illegally, ethically or unethically, peacefully or violently.

Something Donald Trump and his ultra-wealthy corporate capitalist cronies might want to keep in mind.

Stephen King wrote, in his book The Stand, "The effective half-life of evil is always relatively short."  It's a line that's stuck with me since I first read it, perhaps thirty years ago.  The power-hungry and super-wealthy -- who are, of course, usually one and the same -- think their riches will protect them.  That's what King Louis XVI thought; so did Napoleon, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot, Ferdinand Marcos, and Muammar Gaddafi.  

All of them were wrong, and several of them paid for that error with their lives.

The problem with all this is that the result of the downfall of dictators is often chaos, destroying economy, infrastructure... and the ordinary people who only wanted to be able to feed their families and have a roof over their heads.  In In the Midst of Lions, it's not just the corporate oligarchs who end up suffering, it's everyone.

I'd like to hope that the people in charge will recognize where we're headed before it's too late, but unfortunately, we have a very poor track record of learning from history.  (Or from cautionary fiction, for that matter.)  The overweening arrogance that comes with wealth and power tends to make them say, "Oh, sure, it may have happened to all those people in history... but it won't happen to me."

It all reminds me of another biblical quote, this one from the Book of Hosea: "Who sows the wind, reaps the whirlwind."

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