The Walk of Shame for Amazon Suitors

This story is fascinating and instructive.  A bunch of cities whored themselves out in order to seduce Amazon’s HQ2 – only to lose spectacularly to NYC and D.C. who each actually gave away less in bribes and succor then the losers proposed.

There are lessons here.

1. Cities or states will attract major league business because of who they are not what they offer. No matter what a city is willing to do to attract the next “big thing,” municipalities rarely ever punch above their weight. Amazon ultimately choose the financial and political hub of the freaking world to locate its new corporate centers. Residents of the Columbus’s and Tucson’s and Omaha’s of the nation should take note. You are never going home with the hottest girl at the dance. So stay in your lane and set realistic expectations.

2. The clichés is true: Politicians do things that help themselves, not their constituencies. Look, we all know that elected officials are naked self-promoters, but it sometimes takes a shit show like the Amazon HQ2 debacle to remind us all. The sheer volume of public displays of prostitution by city and state officials to woo Amazon was like a red light district documentary. And the reason that seemingly normal leaders would strap on the kneepads for the online retailer? Because if they got it, they would guarantee themselves reelection and hero worship. No matter how bad the deal eventually turned out for their city, no matter how bad roads and schools and bridges got because of the massive tax giveaways – they could crow about getting Amazon every minute of every day.

3. Which brings us to this: the good leaders of Columbus and Tucson and Omaha aren’t truly stupid. They knew they had a snowball’s chance in hell of landing this whale, but they knew that they had to appear willing to pull out all the stops to try. Unfortunately in our democracy – appearance matters. City leaders have to waste colossal amounts of cash, time and resources to pitch a relocation like Amazon, because if they weren’t seen as trying, they would be lambasted by voters.

4. Another lesson: like most of us, elected officials seek the path of least resistance. It’s hard to fix the potholes; it’s hard to lower crime; it’s hard to do more and more with less and less money. And as a mayor or city councilor, you’re never going to get enough credit for those things, because despite the trends of the last 40 years, citizens still kind of expect and take for granted the basics of running a city.
5. Yet, for average citizens, the behavior won’t change.  Today, a mayor or council member for any medium to large city in America SHOULD step back and realize that courting a huge business to relocate is folly.  There is nothing substantive to be gain by entering into this competition. Tis far better for said politician to publically state that his or city does not, nor will not give away the store to attract a business whale.

But they won’t.  They won’t do it because they want to be courted and seduced the next time a big business wants to relocate. They want to be part of the show. The show is good for their reelection. The show breaks up the boredom and tediousness of actually doing their job, of endless council meetings and discussion of potholes.  Being a mayor is only fun when you get to look important and unfortunately, kissing the ass of a bigtime corporation is considered important by way too many people.

MAKING OTHERS WORSE

It’s important to understand the fundamental appeal of Trump to his base.


White, under-educated men, mostly over 40, who live in rural areas and the suburbs individually and collectively have come to the realization that they are no longer the cool kids. In every cultural outlet – TV, music, movies, and literature – it’s other members of society, the nerds, the urban hipsters, the black boundary pushers, the Latino chic, all of them are ascendant.

And that makes Joe, living a relatively secure, but anonymous life outside of Indianapolis or in rural Ohio pissed. And that anger needs an outlet.  Trump doesn’t appeal to his base because he’s actually going to make things better.  He can’t and they know that. What he can do is try and make things worse for those “other” groups. They didn’t flock to Trump because they saw him as a savior. They flocked to him because they believed he would give them permission to hate and strike out against those groups of people that had surpassed them in relevance.

Trumper’s are almost universally zero-sum: they can’t win unless the “others” lose and winning really means remaining the dominate and most relevant group and pushing the other groups down.

But they couldn’t do that themselves. Hell, in the very deep recesses of their brains they knew the truth: they were becoming irrelevant because they deserved to be. Their skills were atrophied, their ideas were stale and their work ethic had been dulled. They knew that among their ranks the next Mark Zuckerberg, Jay-Z, Lin-Manuel Miranda or Satya Nadella simply didn’t exist. They were beat.  Progress and diversity and sheer talent had passed them by. They knew they were headed to irrelevancy and they knew that didn’t have the industriousness nor skill to reverse that trend. The needed an accelerant.  Some force that would do the heavy lifting for them. Some zeitgeist-whisperer who could sell them the dream that he and he alone could hurt those talented and hardworking “others” so that they would go back to being marginalized and fearful.

In many ways, Trump is like Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys and his base are like the millions who follow the team.  The Cowboys are – in terms of actual football success – a kind of league-wide laughing stock. They haven’t won a meaningful playoff game since they last appeared in a Super Bowl more than 23-years ago.  Yet, the Cowboys are still one of the most relevant (and profitable) teams in all of professional sports. Year in and year out, they go 6-10, or 8-8 or 9-7 and leave millions of fans disappointed. From a purely football perspective, the Cowboys are the Arizona Cardinals, yet the Cardinals are imminently forgettable and the Cowboys are still one of the top draws every season. Why?

Because Jones, like Trump, is a master at selling the illusion of relevance. Jones, like Trump, is a savant at selling sizzle over steak. Trump has always been a pretty bad businessman and Jones has always been a pretty bad general manager. Yet, Trump has built the artifice of “Trump: Master Dealmaker” like Jones has built the artifice of the “Dallas Cowboys: America’s Team.” To their hardcore supporters, the bankruptcies, the massive debt, the unpaid bills and all the hallmarks of Trump’s besmirched business career don’t matter, just like the decades without winning, the endless poor personnel decisions, the revolving door of coaches and all the similar hallmarks of Jones’ besmirched team-building career don’t matter to fans and haters alike who watch the Cowboys on TV.

Jerry Jones, like Donald Trump has a kind of idiot savant quality where they are stupid in one thing and brilliant in another. Both men are actually pretty bad at what makes them famous, where Jones owns a professional football team that doesn’t win and Trump is a business dealmaker who’s been taken to the cleaners on multiple occasions. Yet Jones has built a brand that is unequaled in sports and Trump has created a brand that millions of people equate with ultimate success.

Like a nation that still pays outsized attention to a football team that doesn’t win, Trumpers voted for the man in 2016 because to many “deplorables” around the country, he mattered.  He was relevant. And his racism, misogyny and rage against “the other” was like a hit of pure OxyContin. It felt so good to hear this master huckster say he was going to make them top-dogs once again. And he was going to do it in a mean and cruel way. He wasn’t just going to restore their relevance, he was going to kick those liberal, ethnic, educated, urban elites in the crotch.

“Make America Great Again,” is and was always going to be a dog whistle. Trump never had the talent, skill or even desire to truly make the nation as a whole better and more prosperous.  What he could deliver – at least in the minds of his supporters – was the promise of cutting the “others” down to size.

And in the end, that fact helps explain the cult of Trump. To his fans and supporters – who when they are alone and look in the mirror and see staring back at them a reduced or even failed man – The Donald offers them the only hope left: the ability to drag those people who’ve surpassed them back down to their level.

The Tide is Turning

Watching the NBA awards on TNT tonight.

It is almost entirely black.  The hosts, the award recipients, everything.  It is a show about the NBA, but really it’s a show about the ascendency of black culture, black power, black relevance and black celebrity.

It’s not a great show.  It's like any other awards show….boring, self-agrandizing, etc. etc.  and that is the point.  Millennials couldn’t care less about other award shows. A lot care about this one. This is a kind of a big deal.

Black culture is without a doubt the dominate arts culture in America.  It’s not even close.  When I was younger, smart people would say that black culture was ascendant.  It is no longer ascendant.  It's here. It is what every kid wants to grab hold of and make it their own.

I was also recently watching a documentary about the Lakers Celtics rivalry.  One of the subtexts of the story was how hard it was for Boston to sell out the garden in the 1970s and early 80’s because of the amount of black players. 

It seems ridiculous today, but in less than a generation we’ve gone from a hegemony of black athletes being a loss-leader to the absolute need for black celebrities/athletes/leaders being associated with a brand.

Baseball was America’s past time.  Baseball is fast becoming irrelevant.  Basketball and football, two sports than need black athletes just to open the doors are so much more popular.  Baseball is a white sport and is associated with old men wearing non-ironic hats.

Baseball today only gets by because of history and weather.  Baseball only exists because of summer days, beer and an homage to your old man.

American industry used to worry about products and services being too closely associated with black people and black culture.  Now if you want to attract white kids and Hispanic kids and Asian kids and middle eastern kids to a mass-market product, you HAVE to use black culture and urban hip hop culture to market it or it will never get out of R&D.

 

 

Actually, it's good news

Positive.

There have been a spate of racial and predjudical things happening lately.  White people calling the police because black people are doing things that seem (to the callers) wrong or illegal or menancing.

We know these things happened because we have cell phone video that goes viral on social media. Social justice guardians like Shawn King and there to make sure the terrible deeds get told.

A month or so ago, a woman in Oakland called police on two black men having a BBQ.  She said it was illegal. And so she called the cops.  It exploded.  The video that the two men, and others shot, went viral.  It evoked screams on white privildge.  She’s now called "BBQ betty. " She is now a meme.  She was mentioned not once, but twice, on Saturday Night Live.

Others have happened as well.

Some see and hear about these transgressions and get upset and depressed.  They believe they represent a certain amount of backsliding of our society toward pre-civil rights racism.

I see it differently.  It fills me with hope.

Now, there are so many people – white and black – who are itching to expose this racism. They are poised – cell phones at the ready – to record injustice and, much more importantly, share it with a receptive world.

Indeed Trump won the presidency and many horrible things have happened, are happening and will happen. But the arc toward justice is etched in the hard stone of history.  We will get through this era, because so many people are upset and so ready to dive in.

True, we are and have always been a reactive society. We do not tend toward being proactive. Instead, something bad or untenable has to happen before we act. That is not ideal, but it does work. We see the horrible hatred, fear and ignorance of the moment and we jump into the fray
.
White people who want things to remain the way they were – where they were unquestionably at the top and they didn’t have to change their ways or their ideas – are getting smaller. They are still very large in number, but each year and each decade brings more people who are either of an ethnic or sexual identity that is ready to topple the existing order. Sure, there are plenty of young bigots, but there are more young people who simply don’t see the value in it.

Right now, to paraphrase the great Hunter S. Thompson, is where we just might be able to see where the wave crests and begins to roll back on itself.  Where the old ideas of racial denial and sexual repression are permently exhiled to the minority.

Never foget…Trump is a 71 year old man, who talks like it’s 1976.  His base is much older than the other side. Congress is old. Both sides.

Millenials grow up with black and brown people.  Their heroes are black and brown people.  They’ve already had a two-term black president.  They believe that overt racism should be punished and shamed.  They arent’ afraid of immigrants.  They grew up with latino and black celebrities almost outpacing their white colleagues.  They don’t fear losing a job to a Jose or a Jamal. They only fear losing a job to a C-12312 processor or robot.

They know that everyone has to think globablly.  They are totally used to consolidation and continually corporatization.  They know that in a few decades, it won’t just be companies that merger, it will be nations. 

They know the wave will roll back on itself.

THE BEAR

My favorite clean joke is rather prophetic.  It goes like this:


Two hikers and walking through the wilderness in Alaska. They suddenly stubble upon a snarling, charging grizzly bear.  The first hiker takes off running. The second hiker yells to him: "hey Joe! You can't outrun a grizzly bear."


The second hiker turns over his shoulder and yells back: "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."


This is such a wonderful parallel to life as we know it. It's not that we have to best the best, we just have to outdo the least.


Trump is president not because he was the most competent person for the job - certainly not. In 2016 he just happened to be better than the hapless crew that was running for president. He didn't have to outrun Lincoln or Jefferson...he just had to outrun Cruz and Rubio and Carson.


In fact much of our politics is this. It's not the bears who are running the show - it's just the folks who are more politically savvy, more well-funded and more able to subjugate their souls to get elected.


The Bear is excellence. The bear is truth. The bear is integrity.  In a truly just world, the bear would consume the bad people and the liars and the frauds. Problem is, the bear gets so full of the slower baddies, liars and frauds that the one's who just happen to run a little faster escape it's clutches.

THEM GOOD OL' DAYS

When I was a kid, the Great Revolution in China killed millions.
When my dad was a kid, Hitler killed millions and so did Stalin.
When his dad was a kid the Spanish flu killed millions.
My son is a kid and even though the Iraq War has gone on for longer than any other war in US history, about 1,000 American's have died and 100,000 Iraqis have as well.


When I was a kid, we were told that margarine was good and butter was bad.
When my dad was a kid, smoking was recommended by doctors.
When his dad was a kid, doctors didn't routinely wash their hands between surgeries.
My son is a kid, and he has more access to healthy food, a healthy lifestyle and medical care that would have been unimaginable to all of his forebears. 


When I was a kid, none of us drove with seatbelts.
When my dad was a kid, asbestos rained down from almost every industrial ceiling.
When his dad was a kid, an industrial accident killed 10 to 100 times more people than it ever could today.
My son is a kid and the roads are infinitely safer, as are the buildings and workplaces.


When I was a kid, the world was in turmoil, hot and cold wars raged, a US president was in unprecedented scandal, millions were dying in Africa and Cambodia and the threat of nuclear annihilation was omnipresent.
When my dad was a kid, the world shook from a World War that claimed millions upon millions of lives, nearly wiped out the Jewish people and saw mankind develop a weapon of unspeakable hardship. And millions were dying in Africa and China and other places.
When his dad was a kid, the first World War nearly destroyed western Europe a flu killed more people than currently live in in the entire Pacific Northwest and most people on the planet lived a kind of slave-like existence.
My son is a kid and he lives in a world of unparalleled peace, unparalleled health, unparalleled freedom and unparalleled global opportunity.




Things are most assuredly getting better.  We don't see it, we don't feel it. But it is there. From 1966, to now, my current lifespan, we have seen the end of the cold war, a black president, a massive shift from rural poor to urban wealthy and more. From 1941 to now, my dad's lifespan, we ended Jim Crow, we almost cured cancer, we ended global fascism  and more.


From 1900, my grandfathers birth, to now we have reduced violence, pestilence, disease, hunger and oppression to stunning affect.


Gregg Easterbrook's new book "It's Better than it Looks: Reasons for Hope in the Age of Fear" shows this in great detail.  We live longer, freer, healthier and with more choice, more diversity and more care and understanding then ever before.

KIDS THESE DAYS...

But then again...




There was a group in all this that I didn't count on.  Teenagers. Today's teenagers in 2018.


The Florida shooting unleashed pissed off, media savvy, entitled to the spotlight teenagers and the rest of us adults couldn't handle it.




If you are over 35 and white - the big decisions may be beyond us. We aren't going to stop global warming, we aren't going to stop gun violence, we aren't going to stop sexual harassment.




But these kids might.  and not just the universal "kids."  These kids.


When we were kids we couldn't. We were too scared and too immersed in the way things were.




Today's kids are smarter, bolder, harder to embarrass, out-of-the-box starter kits for talking with the press and politicians. Their entire worldview is based on their belief that they are special and that no adult can contain them.  And damn it, they are right.




And they actually aren't jerks about it.  They grew up believing that they were equal to adults and therefore could talk to adults as adults.  That fact removes the filter that I and we were born with. The filter that told us to comply. And when I say that, I don't mean that we didn't protest and march and roll our eyes at "the man." of course we did.  that is what all kids are supposed to do.




But these kids today...they were born ready to actually talk to adults. To have a conversation - from the moment they could actually speak.  And they have and they are. They aren't protesting as much as they are forcing their way into the  conversation. We didn't. We just yelled.  These kids speak and converse.




And the establishment can't handle it and the establishment might actually cave to them. Because the establishment is terrified of them. There are too many of them and they represent an incomprehensible market of buyers and consumers. Old crusty politicians are afraid of them, because they - unlike us - will vote them out. Retailers who sell guns are terrified of them because they know that 12 of them can get on social media and put a billion dollar sporting goods chain out of business. 




They don't stop, because they don't have to stop.  When we got mad as teenagers, we held a protest, staged a sit-in and then a day or a week later we would have to get back to our lives - to our school or homework or whatever. 


These kids?  They can protest 24-7 and still do all their assignments, keep up with their friends and be entertained all at the same time.




They never go away.




The NRA relies on laziness. On the latest school shooting to last about 1.5 news cycles and then fizzle because we adults have work and kids and dinner etc. 


But that won't work this time. These kids can keep up their grades AND keep up the pressure. 


Relentlessly.

WHY WE LET IT GO ON

Another school shooting.  Another dozen and more kids killed. And it won't matter.

We won't do anything to change our gun culture. We won't do anything to reduce it.

And I finally know why.

It helped to finally crystallize in my mind the insanity of gun violence by looking at the president and evangelicals. Evangelicals love Trump, despite the fact that he has the morality of a wolverine. It just came out that all the rumors are true and that he had an affair with a porn actress while his wife was pregnant with his youngest son. And they love him.

Yes, they love him because he gives them clear support to rail against abortion and to discriminate against gays.  But it's more than that.  They support him because to not support him is to admit that they were wrong.  And they know they are wrong.  They know he is a lecherous, troglodyte who probably has already had sex with his daughter Ivanka. They already know that they were so wrong about supporting him and his character.  They know.

There is nothing more anathema to the American psyche than admitting we were wrong.

And that is the same with legislators and supporters of the NRA and gun rights.  They know they are wrong.  They know they are complicit in all this, but they've gone way beyond the tipping point.

For today, they would have to stand before TV cameras and admit they were wrong.  And they can't do that. They would rather let bullets rip through the bodies of 15-year-old kids than admit they were wrong. 

JUST SO I'M ON THE RECORD...

There is only one outcome of the craziness that we are in.

Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States will resign within six months.

There is no other option. He can't withstand the shots to his presidency, his legacy, his reputation and his family.

He knows he has become a laughing stock and a buffoon and one day very soon, he will look up from his burger and fries and say to no one - "enough."

He will say that the "deep state" was insurmountable and that he decided to declare victory and leave.

And then he will set up his media empire (that will fail within one year) and wait to die.