This guy thinks he’s real slick.
There’s other guys who think they’re slick in the comments.
(You can read my response to assess my relative coefficient of friction.)
LinkedIn is full of people who think they’re being slick.
This is not a strictly American phenomenon. “Vichy France” should suffice as an example. (Dr. Faustus is another.)
Lift a big enough rock and you’ll find a mass of people whose “fight or flight” response is to lick a finger and stick it up in the air.
By contrast, the number of people who would stick their neck out for an idea (i.e., justice) let alone a stranger (e.g., the queer hairdresser currently being tortured in El Salvador, with your tax dollars and supposed consent) is quite small.
“We’re better than this” was the Big Lie before “January 6 never happened”.
You simply don’t know until you test.
We develop the skills we need to survive. In affluent societies, elites need not acquire the skill of bravery. So they don’t.
As Frank Rich noted with painstaking care, Donald Trump was produced by New York City’s elites. Full stop.
But he’s hardly the only monster to come out of our materially wealthy, morally impoverished elite.1
You know who else thought they were being slick?
A popular parlor game in political circles in recent years has been dissecting the shifting relationship between Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media mogul, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Two years ago, there were signs of a thaw, with Mr. Murdoch, who owns The New York Post, not only endorsing Mrs. Clinton’s bid for a second Senate term in his paper, but also organizing a fund-raiser for her.
A popular parlor game.
A parlor game.
A game.
What has Rupert Murdoch wrought? The scientific literature abounds.
Here’s one headline to focus the mind:
Under oath, Murdoch concedes Fox stars 'endorsed' lies about 2020 election : NPR
The rich play games without ever paying the consequences:
Asked whether he could have told Fox News' chief executive and its stars to stop giving airtime to Rudy Giuliani — a key Trump campaign attorney peddling election lies — Murdoch assented. "I could have," Murdoch said. "But I didn't."
When the rich and well connected play clever games with the truth, who loses?
Ask Andry Hernandez Romero.
Chances are, you know when you’re being slick. You also know when someone else is being slick. You probably work with people who think they’re really slick.
I sure have.
I’ve never had tolerance for people being slick because my father was beaten for ten years in a Cuban prison so that I could, as recently as two months ago, be told by a white kid, fresh out of college, some bullshit about Che Guevara.
Of course, my experiences are hardly exceptional.
Here’s an easy to follow story about Eartha Kitt having the audacity to question the (FAILED AND FOOLISH) American war in Vietnam while being Black:
If you click one link, make it this one.
I’ll close with another anecdote from LinkedIn.
I recently shared a story from The Atlantic about American authoritarianism with a simple preface about my DOMAIN EXPERTISE on the subject.
(If you’d like a certificate, I’ll be happy to send you the one the Cuban state provided me at the time of my birth on that prison island.)
Afterwards, I received a private message from someone I’d worked with almost 20 years ago.
Out of respect, I’ll paraphrase their message:
I can’t share my beliefs on LinkedIn but I’m glad you do.
As much as I sympathize with their fear, I can also objectively state: this is why we can’t have nice things.
The Pledge of Allegiance most of you have made at least once in your life is a binding contract.
There will always be people rich enough, connected enough, to believe that contracts can be litigated away. That promises are made to be broken. That the rules don’t apply to them.
They think they’re slick.
But the death that comes for us all does not, in fact, take place at the time we shed this mortal coil.
It happens when we shed the moral coil that binds us to one another.
We let go of our fellow humans, in their time of need, at our own peril.
We hold each other to our highest standards because that is what makes us human.
Animals eat their young. We know better. Especially when we think we’re being clever.