Strategy and Tactics

 

Culture War

Though we know the culture war     
We don't know what it's for but       
We've lived the southern strategy    
You know it's never  going to last     
So keep it in the past

If there is a Culture War, what are its Strategies and Tactics?

Strategy and Tactics are not the same thing.  Strategy is about winning a war.  Tactics are about winning a battle.  History has numerous examples about winning the battle, but losing the war. This is where the term Pyrrhic victory comes from, as the name for a battle whose victory is so costly that it is the cause of losing a war.

Concentrating on winning only a battle is appropriate  if you don’t believe in a future.  It seems that one side in the culture war, especially the side with a southern strategy, of supporting the existing caste system, does not believe in a future, or they would not risk everything on a single battle. Strategy is planning for a future; tactics are about winning the present.  The Ants who plan for the future may be boring, but Aesop’s fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant, suggests that it is the boring Ants who plan and believe in a future who will ultimately win over the momentarily exciting Grasshoppers who do not plan for the future.  A strategy isn’t a strategy if it does not acknowledge the future.   

There is an apocryphal story,

“A man had offended the king and was sentenced to death. He fell to his knees before the king and implored, “Oh your majesty! Spare me but for one year, and I will teach your horse to talk!” The king was amazed and granted his wish.

 

The man’s close friend and brother upbraided him, saying, “Why did you make such an absurd promise?”

The man shrugged and replied, “In a year, the king may die. In a year, I may die. In a year, the horse may talk!”

This story often features the ancient Persian Mullah Nasrudin as the man and the king is a Sultan, but the point is the same.  The question should be what is the tactical plan IF the king lives, the man lives, and the horse does not talk, because that is a more likely future.  A tactic that counts on an improbable future is  no different than not believing in the future at all.

Short Selling of Game Stop

 Games People Play 

Oh we make one another cry        
Break a heart then we say goodbye         
Cross our hearts and we hope to die
That the other was to blame whoa   

So who won, who lost, and who was to blame in the Game Stop situation

Game Stop was involved in a short selling situation in recent days.  So what happened, who won, who lost, and who is to blame.  Short selling sounds like a complicated financial arrangement, but it is basically simple.  Let's replace the share of stock with a coat that you purchased for $100 at a store.  A short seller borrows it from you, and says he will return it after a month,  He immediately goes to the store, returns the coat, and pockets the $100.  He hopes that the coat will go on sale during the month, say for $60, and he will purchase the coat at that reduced price.  At the end of the month, you have your coat back, the store has received $60 in revenue from the coat instead of $100, and the short seller has a $40 profit.  This requires that no one, except the short seller, knows that he plans to the return of the coat, and that the store put the coats on sale. 

If someone gets wind of this need, and the price of the coat is reduced to $80 after halfway through the month, then a second owner buys the coat at $80, and lists that coat for resale at $120. The short seller will have to buy that coat at $120 to be able  to return the coat that he borrowed.  In this case, the original owner of the coat still has his coat, the short seller’s loss is $20 for his repurchase of the coat, the store has received $80 for the coat, which is a loss of only $20 in sales, and the second owner  has received a $40 profit for the resale of the coat.  The total value over all individuals is still the same, but the store is $20 richer, and second owner of the coat has a $40 profit, and the short seller has a $20 loss instead of a $40 profit.  It is hard to see how society has a dog in this fight since the net cost is still zero.   The store experiences a $40 loss of revenue in the first case, and a $20 loss in the second case.  The short seller experiences a $40 profit in the first case, and a $20 loss in the second case.  The second owner is not involved in the first case, but has a $40 profit in the second case, by reducing the store's loss of revenue by $20 and taking $20 from the original short seller.  Does it surprise anyone that many of these second owners purchased their stock (coats) through an app called Robinhood?

The situation could not have existed if the knowledge that the short seller would need a stock (a coat) was known only to the short seller.  Since the knowledge that the short seller would need the stock (a coat) became known, then the new owner of the stock (a coat) has profited,  the original owner ( the store) has less of a loss, and the short seller has a loss, instead of a profit. The game has changed from the original short seller profiting to the short seller having a loss.

The Arts

Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)

Now I understand      
What you tried to say to me 
And how you suffered for your sanity          
And how you tried to set them free   
They would not listen, they did not know how        
Perhaps they'll listen now

It takes a very long time to listen to artists, but art is forever.

A Vincent Van Gogh painting was worth very little during the artist's lifetime.  The value of Starry Night has increased by an unbelievable amount since Van Gogh’s death.  During Van Gogh’s lifetime, the news was dominated by rulers, politicians, and the rich.  But I am sure that it would take a lot of effort to determine who were those rulers, politicians or the rich during Van Gogh’s life.  We have forgotten them while we remember Van Gogh.

I can remember only one king in ancient Greece, Oedipus and that is because of the Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex.  I remember King John, Edward III, and Richard II because of the plays by William Shakespeare.  I visited and admired the Coliseum in Rome despite not knowing who fought in, or attended, that stadium.  The Parthenon in Athens and the Pantheon in Rome are famous for their architecture, not their religion.  In the long run it is the arts that endure. 

We may place more attention on politics, sports, finance in the short term, but like in the fable of Tortoise and the Hare, it is not who is fastest in the short term, but it is he who endures to win the race that is remembered. We will be remembered for our arts, not our finance or our politics. 

Patriotism

 I Love My Country

I'm loud and proud

Rolling into town

Hanging out the window

Like a blue tick hound

Ain't sorry, ain't nothing to be sorry about

I love my country
And I love my country up loud 

Loving your country does not mean hating another country.

Go watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeFhSzoTuc.  In that scene from Casablanca, the French national anthem, Les Marseille, was led by Victor Lazlo, a Czechoslovakian, whose wife Ilsa  was a Norwegian, at Rick’s Cafe American.  Yvette, the crying French woman who shouts Viva la France, was dating a Nazi soldier earlier in the scene.  The Nazis were fearful of inspiring the love of a country other than their own.

Now listen to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture to see how ironically the same song, Les Marseilles, was used to indicate Napoleon’s attempted conquest and failed invasion of  Moscow. The Marseilles fades as a Russian folk song becomes triumphant.  This overture of the Russian love for their country has become a fixture of America's Independence Day since Arthur Fidler picked it for Boston’s celebration of the Fourth of July. 

Love of one’s country is to be something to be admired, even if you yourself are from a different country.  Loving your country can be perverted and confused into hatred and domination of another country.  We may not all like the same music, but love of country is not a matter of musical taste.  It also does not mean that we prove our love by hating another country.

Unity

 United We Stand

For united we stand     

Divided we fall

And if our backs should ever be against the wall          

We'll be together, together, you and I

There is a clamor for unity today.  It is important to understand that there is much that unites us.

Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner was a slave owner.  His view of slavery can be seen in the often unsung third verse of the song, which contains the words,

No refuge could save the hireling and slave    
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.

Woody Guthrie, the author of "This Land is Your Land”, while never a member of the Communist Party, was admitted to be a fellow traveler.  His views can be seen in the often ignored fourth verse of that song.

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."      
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.    
That side was made for you and me.

However those are not the verses that are traditionally sung.  We sing verses that proclaim their love of America, “the Land of the Free” and the "Land (that) was made for you and me”.   That love comes through despite wildly divergent politics.  Let’s remember that the love of America unites us much more than politics divide us.

Satire

 

Those Were The Days (Theme to All In The Family)        

And you know where you were then,         

Girls were girls and men were men,

Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again,     

Didn't need no welfare state         

Everybody pulled his weight,          

Gee our old Lasalle ran great,         

Those were the days.

Archie Bunker was an object of satire.  He was not meant to be a taken as an ideal.

Jonathan Swift, in his essay A Modest Proposal, proposes that the country ameliorate poverty in Ireland by butchering the children of the Irish poor and selling them as food to wealthy English landlords.  He meant that as satire, not as a serious proposal.  Those who did not get the satire treated it as a serious proposal. 

Similarly Norman Lear’s All in the Family was a meant to satirize, not idolize, Archie Bunker’s behavior.  You can see that in the lyrics of the theme song.  Herbert Hoover was not an ideal president.  The LaSalle was a discontinued automobile line. Everyone knowing their place was an unfair restriction on those in “lower” places.  You were meant to laugh at Archie Bunker, not agree with him.

It is a sad that there are those who have adopted Archie Bunker and his ideas as an ideal. They have missed the point of the satire.  Perhaps we can also interest them in a recipe for sautéed Irish babies?

The Future

 The Future

Give me back the Berlin wall    

Give me Stalin and St. Paul     

I've seen the future, brother     

It is murder.

The future for Leonard Cohen may have been murder, because too many people did not believe in a future.

If you do not believe in a future, then money spent on insurance, spent on agencies to deal with future disasters, or money put aside to deal with the future is wasted.  For example, if people do not spend on health insurance, then when, for example, there is a pandemic, they may have no health insurance available to deal with that pandemic.  If an employer does not provide sick days, perhaps his employees will come to work while sick.

Social Security Insurance is a government operated insurance program that was instituted to compel people to save for their old age. Insurance does not have to be government sponsored.  I live in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where the ability to register a car is contingent on that car having private automobile insurance.  

That is it wise to put aside money for the future is not a new concept.  Almost 2500 years ago Aesop’s fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper discussed the moral virtues of hard work and planning for the future.  But there are those who do not believe in a future.  That also includes those who believe that the current conditions will not continue because there will soon be a doomsday that is either man-made, (e.g. doomsday preppers ) or divine (e.g. those who believe that we are living in the ”end times”).

But belief in a future is why old men plant trees that they will never see mature and young men go to school to learn something that they hope to use in the future.  The stock market, with its focus on day trading and current earnings, and the political system, with its focus on the next election, may not be the best way to plan for the future.  But those who ignore the future, should not prevent others from planning for a future.   Otherwise the future will be murder.