Like a Million Bucks

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Jeff Bezos plans to donate a million dollars to the coming Trump inauguration. Liberal fingers across the nation wagged. How dare he bend the knee? How dare he acquiesce? And this latest insult following his newspaper’s refusal to even endorse a presidential candidate! Outrageous.

I had the opposite reaction. To me, the million-dollar donation seems less an outrage on the part of Bezos and more another example of the tawdriness of Donald Trump.

Bezos, or those in his circle, must have realized that, with Donald Trump, a very little can go quite a long way. If the price of currying favor with the new administration is a mere million, that seems like a price well worth paying because it’s not a price at all. For Bezos, a million dollars isn’t even a thought. It’s a non-sequitur.

This fucking guy. Photo by Michael Prince.

According to Google, his current net worth is $243.7B. That’s quite a big number, but it’s difficult to make tangible. Another way to think of it is that Bezos is worth 243,700 millions. Again, better, but still hard to conceptualize.

If we shrink that figure down to an economic scale you and I would be more familiar with, let’s make each million worth a dollar. In that example, Bezos is worth $243,700. Now, if you or I had that sum of money and a very powerful and influential person asked us for a dollar, wouldn’t it be in our interests to pay that man his money? It would.

And how pathetic that this powerful man can be bought so cheap.

Further, that one dollar donation is likely to be repaid a thousandfold or more. Like all of our current oligarchic class, Bezos has interests in far-flung enterprises. Amazon, of course, his commercial space company, Blue Origin. He owns a movie studio (MGM) and, more recently, a healthcare company called One Medical. His Washington Post is one of a handful of newspapers with national influence, and it seems increasingly clear that the reason he purchased it was, at least in part, to help shape the national conversation.

Giving Donald Trump that single George Washington ensures that, at least in the short term, all of those interests are likely to escape regulation or scrutiny. Further, that single dollar almost certainly grants him access to further lucrative government contracts that might have been denied had he refused to give. From Bezos’s perspective, it’s like tipping the shoeshine boy a nickel in exchange for winning horserace picks.

On top of that, consider that one of Bezos’s only real rivals in terms of wealth is Elon Musk. Musk, too, is a space and media entrepreneur hoovering up governmental contracts as quickly as his piggy little hands can grasp them. To keep up with the Jones’ (or, in this case, the Musks) requires little more than this paltry sum. That idiot Elon is off in South Florida cavorting with his new MAGA besties and pretending to run a government agency. Meanwhile, Bezos gets to live his best life without having to do very much of anything. It seems to me that Mr. Jeff has gotten the better of the deal.

Obviously, I have no idea what machinations are whirring within the Trump orbit regarding Bezos and his fealty to the new administration. The million-dollar donation is likely to be little more than the initial ask. In the world of cons, once a mark is identified, the only thing to do is to keep milking them until they’re dry. I don’t anticipate Bezos ever being milked dry, but nor do I think this is the last money required for continued entry to the Trump Social Club and Pizza Party.

Politics is always played this way, of course, and so those of us repulsed by this Second Coming of Orange Jesus are, naturally, disgusted with the obeisance being doled out by the nation’s billionaires. But why should we be? Trump has promised them the world and they would be fools not to accept the gift.

Of course, one man’s fool is another man’s traitor. We observe these acts as traitorous because we still cling, like Rose and Jack in the frigid Atlantic, to the idea that America is unsinkable. That her ideals are more powerful than the waves which are currently washing over her. We may yet be proven right, but I am increasingly bracing for an icy swim.

Mark Zuckerberg, too, has promised a donation although one worries whether he can actually afford to do so, considering that his wealth is pegged at a mere $205B. Belts will certainly be tightened in the Zuckerberg household after this, but what choice does the poor man have?

Indeed, this is the conundrum faced by America’s plutocrats. Their personal opinions of Trump are irrelevant. They are, like most of us, primarily concerned with their own interests. And their interests look to be richly-rewarded in the coming four years. Their wealth will continue to grow, their grip on the American landscape will become further entrenched, and their companies will be lavished with governmental largesse.

You or I may wonder what the point of it all is. Which is, I suppose, why you and I are not billionaires. After all, once somebody crosses the billion-dollar barrier, there is little in this world one cannot possess. Except for nations, I suppose.

But now we are seeing that nations, too, are for sale. I don’t mean those far-flung rinky-dink nations which have always been bought and sold by powerful, colonizing forces. I mean the Big Daddy. The one, allegedly, propped high on a hill. The one with the white-bearded fellow who once exhorted the nation’s young man to fight for freedom. Uncle Sam has hung a “for sale” sign on the White House lawn. The price: far less than I would have hoped.