Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army

by Steven Paul Leiva

  Then the subject returned to the objects.

  “Why bring all this up? Especially after such a lovely day of fun—fun renewing the battles of yesteryear when we did manage, by the barest of margins, to recover from those jolts and jars and smashes, and fun swimming in the pool of privilege. The joy of an excellent dinner. Superb brandy. Wonderful cigars. Why do I have to be such a downer among you ‘entertaining’ folks?”

  Max got up from the table. “Tunnels dank and dark are often the only conduits to the light. I will take you to the light. Even more exciting, I’ll show you how you can be part of the light.”

  Brett and Abbie started to get up as well, thinking it was time to follow, but Max waved them down with his hand, assuring them that they could sit and relax, it wasn’t time to march just yet. Then he moved around the table and crossed over to the large glass case on the serving table behind me. Those of us who had to, shifted our positions in our chairs to face him.

  He looked at the model of the Titanic, moments before being jolted and jarred and smashed by the iceberg.

  “This was not one of Mr. Hearst’s treasures, by the way. This is mine. Built it myself. I love it. It’s a great symbol. Of what? Of the whole history of humankind, a history that is about to take an unfortunate turn. Unless we work to prevent it, or, if it is inevitable—and there is plenty of evidence indicating that it is—unless we work to prevent the turn from being so sharp that we lose our purchase of the road, spin out of control; crash and burn. The ride will still be wild, but maybe, just maybe, we will not be crushed in a total wreck.”

  Max turned to us, keeping the model to his side for presentation purposes.

  “I’m sorry. I rather dry-docked my metaphor, didn’t I? Well, returning to the perilous waves.” He pointed to the Titanic. “It was called a Luxury Liner. The upper decks were beautifully appointed. Hand carved woodwork polished to a high shine. Marble staircases. Crystal chandeliers. The deepest, thickest, finest carpets. Great chefs working in the most modern of kitchens to create delicious meals for refined palates. Large, spacious staterooms. The most solicitous service ever, making the passage over the North Atlantic as comfortable as humanly possible for the elite, the privilege, the rich, the deserving, the important people of the day who, quite frankly, ran the world to their specifications.

  “It cost, as you can imagine, quite a bit of money to travel on the Upper Decks of a luxury liner, but the irony is, White Star, the company that built and operated the Titanic, did not make their money from First Class passengers. As high as the ticket price was, it didn’t go anywhere near covering the costs, much less pushing the books into profit. The money was made down here,” Max pointed to the very lower decks, “steerage. Not very well appointed, of course. No great staterooms. Just a hole to cram them in to. Who? Immigrants. Millions and millions of immigrants who wanted to get from the old world where they had been ground down into the pavement, to the New World, where the pavement, they believed, was made of gold. In 1905 the North Atlantic trade had its first million-passenger year, and there were millions more waiting at the ticket office. It was a numbers game, like everything else. A volume business. These ships weren’t built big and impressive to impress the big and impressive few. They were built for volume to carry the rank and oppressed many carrying on their backs, so to speak, the big and impressive few in the manner they were most accustomed to. The manner they quite rightly deserved. For I’m not stating any of this as a criticism. I don’t criticize the natural order of things. What fucking good would that do?

  “The deserving—the smart, bright, crafty, talented deserving, have always ridden on the backs of the mass of humanity that wasn’t smart, bright, crafty, and talented, and so, of course, not at all deserving. There’s more of them than us, though, more of them than us. A resource. A vast resource of little flesh pockets of muscles. Muscles to till the land, row the ships, build the Pyramids, and, yes, pick the cotton and take out the garbage and pay for passage to the promise land with every last cent of their meager savings. Have you ever known it to be otherwise? The natural order of things. We all give to society what is ours to give. The deserving give, let’s call it, intellectual/creative/cultural impetus. That is their true wealth to share. The mass gives what little wealth they have: their labor, or the meager savings their labor has acquired. A pitiful pittance per individual, but great, transferable wealth in mass quantities. The natural order of things.

  “Not nature, but Man!” Max mocked a protest as he moved on towards the massive fireplace. “You might suggest that—” He stopped and looked down the long, narrow table at us. “—Well, actually, none of you would suggest that, I’m sure, but maybe some people with their emotions on their sleeves and their brains in storage might suggest that Man divided himself into the Haves and the Have-nots, not Nature, but man is as much a part of Nature as any old—oh—delicate dandelion, for example, or a plague of locusts, or the magnificent Big Horn Elk, or UV radiation, or a gorgeous sunset—caused by Man’s pollution. So let’s not deal with that old argument.

  “Nature throws curves at us.” He pointed down the room back to the Titanic display. “An iceberg. Upsetting that particular natural order of things. 2200 people. 1500 drowned. There weren’t enough lifeboats. Proportionately, more from steerage drowned than those from the upper decks. Because there weren’t enough lifeboats. The natural order of things. Oh, some millionaires died. John Jacob Astor. Benjamin Guggenheim. Isidor Straus. The rich make their sacrifices too. People seem to forget that.”

  Max returned to his chair, Sheila Barnes greeting him there with a fresh snifter of brandy. He thanked her sweetly then sat.

  “Twenty-first Century icebergs? There’s going to be quite a few. First, I think you’ll have to agree, overpopulation in the ‘Developing Nations.’”

  Max took a drag on his cigar then blew the smoke up to the saints.

  “That’s a bit of PC nicety, isn’t it? ‘Developing Nations?’ We used to call them the Underdeveloped Nations. Some did develop. Rather well. Japan. South Korea. Taiwan. Others, though, especially many in the Southern Hemisphere, have not, and they are not making great strides. Why? Because, with some atavistic notions of the cattle value of human life, they keep pumping out babies they cannot adequately, feed, care for, or educate. Numbers add up nonetheless. Volume is filled, nonetheless. Without any corresponding increase in resources, of course. So let’s just have some simple honesty with ourselves, shall we? They are not Developing Nations. They are Non-Developed Nations—and they are not about to get developed anytime soon.

  “Another iceberg? Environmental problems. Very real, I think you’ll agree, and, yes, we in the developed nations, we caused a lot of it, but we are also the ones now cleaning up our act. But the Non-developed Nations, in their futile bid to catch up to us, industrializing with no sense of a world social conscience; burning down the rain forests for farm land to feed their creeping, crawling masses, they are now the ones really fouling the air with their stench, and they won’t listen to reason. They refuse to learn from our mistakes. But, then, why should they? When the Holy Grail image in their head is the clean, comfortable, luxury appointed upper decks of the Developed Nations. Especially as portrayed in our film and television entertainment!

  “Yes! The product of your endeavors. But let’s put guilt aside for a minute. I’m sure I’ll remember to return to it later.”

  It was time for Brett and Thad, Nick, Brooke and Abbie to throw and catch furtive glances at each other, so they did. Lydia kept her eyes on Max—fascinated.

  “And yet another iceberg. Technology. We—” Max gestured to us all “We love technology. No reason not to. It has done wonders for our world, but our world is the developed world that deserves the wonders of technology. The non-developed world, unfortunately, does not equate well to technology. An explosion of technology is, in fact, antithetical to an explosion of population, for the purpose of technology is to relieve laborious burden. That’s why dev
eloped nations decrease their fertility rates. More technology, less need for human labor, less people to share the wonders of technology and its financial fruit. A proper balance is struck. People used to think technology dehumanized us. Of course it doesn’t. Much the reverse. By relieving us of laborious burdens it frees us to become more human. Technology lets us be people not labor. Isn’t that the real way to equal out the distance between the Haves and the Have-nots?

  “Are you getting any of this? Are you understanding? The world is divided between the Haves and the Have-nots. Always has been. The natural order of things. The Haves used to need the Have-nots. To lift the bales, tote the barges, buy tickets in volume, and fill up steerage so that the Haves could ride in comfort in First Class. But less and less the Haves are going to need the Have-nots. The Haves have learned to control their numbers, educate their young, share the wealth—among the deserving. The Have-nots have learned nothing. Pushing their resources beyond the limits. Pushing their masses into our lands. Pushing disaster.

  “This is not a maybe. This is a certainly. The war between the Haves and the Have-nots is coming. It is not a class war. It goes beyond class. Beyond race. All Haves create themselves equally. All Have-nots stew in resentment equally. The war is coming.

  “I am here to recruit you into the army of the Haves.”

  *

  Max took a sip of his brandy, giving us a moment to digest what he had been saying. Another moment to reflect on it. He savored the drink with his eyes closed. The smallest of smiles moved across his lips. He looked contented. With the brandy? With his performance? He had a commanding charisma; there was no doubt about that. Powerful in a one on one, or small group situation like this. He might not have been effective in a large crowd, I suspected. Too many people to make love to at one time, too much spreading of the wealth. A good politician is not always a good campaigner. A good campaigner is not always a good politician. The best of both are the ones who recognize it, and concentrate effort where their strengths lie.

  No one spoke. No questions. No quips. Just anticipation. All eyes were on Max. Waiting for the intermission to end.

  Max opened his eyes and took in everybody in one sweeping glance.

  “Do you like statistics? Of course you do, everybody does. Some people think statistics are boring, but they’re not, are they? They’re fascinating. Like two-headed sheep and albino midgets. Look how perverse these are:

  “In 1825 there were one billion people on this planet. One billion! Abbie is that a lot? One billion?”

  “Well,” Abbie said, “I’d like just one dollar from each one of them.”

  “Yes, I bet you would, and if I could arrange it, Abbie, it would be yours. A billion dollars! I would love to wrap it up neatly and hand it to you, but that’s not my purpose—at the moment.

  “1825—one billion people. A quarter of a century before, that great pessimist, Malthus, saw it coming. ‘Whoa!’ Malthus said, England alone is crawling with too many people. ‘Look out!’ he yelled, we’re crawling all over ourselves, chasing the few loaves of bread available for the many; death and destruction, death and destruction is the only fate of mankind!”

  Max had raised his voice here to a near shout, gesturing with both arms thrust up into the air; his hands wide open to the saints above. Not in supplication. The saints just happen to be in the way.

  Max’s arms came down slowly as his whole body settled more comfortably in his chair. Then he quietly continued.

  “Mankind fooled him, or rather, the smart, bright, crafty, and talented among mankind did. We found clever ways to draw out of the earth enough to feed on. We were happy. We prospered, and we were fruitful.

  “So—1925: Two billion people. 1976: Four billion people. 1990: five point three billion people. One dollar from each, yes Abbie? One dollar from each? 2025, only a quarter of way through our Twenty-first Century: eight and a half billion people. 2050? Ten to fourteen point five billion people!

  “Malthus was right! Just premature.

  “Here’s another statistic. Between now and 2025 ninety-five percent of population growth will be in the Non-developed Nations.

  “Do you see the problem? The Haves really could have the Twenty-first Century of our dreams. The Haves have the intelligence, the self-control, and the ingenuity to build a bright and shining future. The Have-nots hardly have the wherewithal to build mud huts. The Haves, with a few exceptions, almost all live in the Northern Hemisphere. We used to call it Western Civilization. That which gave birth to you and I. Can’t call it that now. The Japanese, the South Koreans, who knows, maybe the Chinese, have joined us. Are the Russians far behind? But what is their key to membership? Adaptation of the principals of Western Civilization. Which is why the Arabs, despite those with riches, may never be able to join.”

  His cigar flared upon inhalation. A billow of smoke followed.

  “Have you ever heard the Tokyo String Quartet play Mozart, by the way? Marvelous.

  “So now we are, the North, and we could have our lovely Twenty-first Century—”

  The stone turned to steel.

  “If it wasn’t for, the South.

  “One would love to see them pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Africa, South America, the nations of Islam, but they hardly have the boots for it.

  “Billions of them down there. Would you like a dollar from each one of them, Abbie?”

  Abbie knew not to answer. So Abbie didn’t.

  “That’s not much more than what many of them make in a week. Lousy markets down there. Just lands of diminishing resources, crawling with people, both resentful and envious of us, streams of them flowing north, up from Africa into Europe, for example, or up Latin America into the good ol’ U S of A. Not that there won’t be plenty left behind to continue polluting the earth to death.

  “You all know what I am talking about. You are bright, intelligent people. Jolts and jars and smashes in the social life of humanity are coming. They cannot be prevented. Two world wars in the Twentieth Century? The Twenty-first will be nothing but world wars. The only question is what kinds of wars? Armed conflicts: North against South? Islam against the rest of us? The Haves against the Have-nots? Environmental conflicts: Hole in the ozone layer, and yet too much ozone? No clean water? No fresh air? Global warming on top of all that? Natural conflicts: Nature against Man? Diseases against Man? The Elements against Man?

  “Any one brings us close to Doomsday. Any two in combination, practically assures it. In a whimper or in a bang? Whatever! “The Twenty-first Century is going to be a bitch!”

  Max looked around to all of us. He smiled a great big, broad smile. “Hemlock, anyone?”

  “No,” Lydia spoke up, “but I would like some more brandy.”

  “Of course. Sheila?”

  Sheila practically ran over to Lydia and refilled her glass. Everyone else offered up their snifters for more.

  “And I would kill for a cigarette,” Lydia complained.

  “Sorry,” Max said as he placed his cigar in his mouth. “Don’t keep any around. Carcinogenic, you know. But I understand your meaning: What’s the use? If the world is going to hell in a hand basket, why not indulge in every death dealing, but enjoyable vice we can afford. After all, it is only money. It is only life. Both fairly fragile and ephemeral things at best.”

  The stone and steel returned.

  “Unless we are vigilant in our protection of them.”

  Brett, who sat next to Max, seemed agitated. He had a jaw on a well oiled hinge, so it’s not surprising his had dropped the most.

  “But—but, well, shouldn’t the government do something about it—or the UN maybe?” Brett asked.

  Max turned to Brett disbelief featured prominently on his face, and broke out into a rapid-fire series of choppy laughs.

  “Government! Governments are passé. Governments are useless. Governments have only two real functions. One is to collect taxes. The other is to fill in potholes. The first being a habit tha
t needs to be controlled. The second being a duty they seem to ignore. Governments have National anthems but no real National purpose. Because there is no purpose to being a nation anymore—it’s a boarder-less world. Haven’t you heard? Twenty-four hour electronic worldwide movement of currencies: Buy, sell, transfer. Worldwide trading on stock exchanges; twenty-four hours a day, the rise and fall of fortunes. Worldwide communication on the Internet, twenty-four hours a day, speech more free than it’s ever been, and all this zipping across borders as if borders didn’t exist—because, for all practical purposes, they don’t.

  “There will soon be only three currencies that matter. The Dollar. The Yuan. The Euro. How soon after that will it come down to two? How soon after that will it be only one? Which one will be transcendent? Or all three might just crash. Then will it be currency credits issued not from the banks of nations, but from stock exchanges? But no matter what you call it, it will still be Wealth, and in the final analysis it will be issued by the wealthy to the wealthy for the wealthy.

  “It’s Wealth that runs the world, not nations, and right now the wealth of the world is in the control of globalized corporations. You know it and I know it. You—” Max referred to the five “All of you, in one form or another, work for such corporations, and they work for their stockholders, but their stockholders have put their trust in fund managers. Fund managers are the new representatives of the people, but only the people who hold stock. It’s no longer One Man One Vote, folks. Whether that one man is a dictator whose one vote is the only vote that counts or whether that one man is one of many, each equal in their one vote. So don’t tell me, Brett, that governments are going to solve the problems of the Twenty-first Century.”