Feeling Weakness
I have probably matched the The Equalizer and The Equalizer II each five or more times, but I cannot ever seem to pass it by when its on the cable listing, so I’m watching it again (the original) now. To begin with, like many people, I am a big fan of Denzel Washington. I like the fact that he does as good a job as a bad guy as he does as a good guy. Not everyone can pull that off well, but Denzel has put himself out there in a way that tread that line so very well. In Training Day and American Gangster he was decidedly bad, in Antoine Fisher and Remember the Titans he was pure good. But it is his roles in Fences, Flight and Man on Fire as examples where he walks the line of an indeterminate good v. evil blend. Real life has more of those sorts of people than people who are all good or all bad. In the Equalizer series he plays an ex-assassin of a world class caliber who s trying to make amends to the world as best he can for regular people who he encounters and who need his help to just get through their day or sometimes reclaim their lives. He is a lot like Jack Reacher, the Tom Cruise ex-agent who just wants to live a normal life and be left alone. Of course this is a common theme (Taken, Jason Bourne, Salt, etc.) so it must strike a chord in lots of people besides just me. It is far less about the action sequences when these Uber-tough guys and gals kick ass (though I must admit I like seeing evil getting trounced by good of the moment), than it is about the juxtapositioning of the forces and how they are so calmly played by these stars, none better than Denzel. These people have the ultimate weapon, they simply don’t care anymore so they are all-in on every move. They feel no weakness.
That is actually very far from the story lines we love, they have the ultimate weakness towards a daughter, a partner, an old friend, or a needy stranger. But they have no weakness when it comes to their own pain and life. They have been trained to be oblivious to everything and not feel the pain. That’s the way we all wish we could be, but few of us are. I often say that none of us know ourselves until the shit comes down and we are faced with our own fight or flight reality. It doesn’t matter what I say or how I rationalize it, until we find out how our primordial instincts are calibrated in a moment of reality and need, we simply don’t know what we will do. I do suspect we can train ourselves to act in certain ways, but I’m guessing that doesn’t stop us from shitting ourselves if that is what our cortex demands. In many ways, military training is all about mental conditioning. Train to overcome the natural instincts is what everyone in the military aspires to doing.
We are rarely so fortunate to have good training for our confrontations with weakness. They tend to just come upon us when we least expect them and certainly when we least want them. This is probably why these movies are so popular with us as we work our way through our normal lives of desperation. We want so much to be as strong as these action characters. Who doesn’t want to be the strong silent type? The dispassionate and highly trained professional that does not allow his emotions or fears to get the better of him. The protagonist that just takes care of business, righting the wrongs he sees around him before he moves on to the kindness of the random stranger.
I am dealing with a situation right now that gives me pause. It is an expert case with a person who has made a tremendous amount of money by any standard. I worked on Wall Street for forty-five years and have paid one or two bonuses that were as high as $90 million. That’s right, a one year bonus that falls just below nine figures. I know that is not an astounding number if you are a reader of the Wall Street Journal or the Forbes Billionaire edition. The average big corporate CEO is a bit of a piker if he only exits with that amount, but for the mere mortals among us, that is a shitpot-full of money. That is the kind of money that obviates the need to worry about retirement for you and most any relative you want to include in your windfall. I would never presume to argue that most of these people that earn that kind of money are worth that price. Clearly if you have a brilliant trading idea and skill and make $X and get paid even as much as 0.5X, that is understandable. If you are an internet entrepreneur and monetized a hot idea to launch a unicorn, good on you. Many people look at someone like Jeff Bezos and think its despicable that he is worth so much. I look at him and think that he has changed the world and created a huge amount of value. But that is not the case of the person I am seeing in this case.
I understand that in a cat fight, people on both sides say things in extremis and exaggerate circumstances. In this case, this guy has been paid a great deal of money despite being considered a low-grade performer by a top-notch firm. How in the world does that happen? We used to say that the day we added as much value as a fifth grade teacher was the day we could hold our heads up about our excessive compensation. I know that I benefited greatly from the system, but I always asked myself if I was truly adding value and I believe I was. Despite some significant career set-backs (no risk, no reward), people have continued to want my services, so I must have done something right. But this guy was a senior person who failed several times over and was given a last chance to redeem himself. Most of us would love to be given another chance, especially one that lasts for several years to play out…or attempt to play out. And then when it doesn’t’ take work out, to be given a handsome departure package in the seven figure zone. That’s a person who was born under a lucky star, whether it feels that way at the moment of not.
Not surprisingly, those who are the most fortunate in life tend to feel that they are under appreciated and put upon. Just look a Donald Trump. He is perhaps the most “silver spooned” guy to ever come out of Queens. He then fails miserably in every business deal he ever undertakes, but has learned to never admit defeat (thank you Dad and Roy Cohn). He turned a second-rate reality TV show (some would judge it more favorably than that, but the genre limits its absolute quality in any case) into a pseudo-image as an effective businessman. That he then accidentally parlayed into an amazing political run that surprised even him. Now, of course, he can do no wrong and the entire world is mistreating him and not giving him his due.
The studies on the role of luck in wealth creation are overwhelming in showing that few of those who make a ton of money are as good as they or their sponsors think they are. When things go sideways, as has happened in this case, people who were prepared to give the lucky sod the benefit of the doubt, suddenly get very specific about how unimpressive that person was always considered to be. Get ready for the same phenomenon with Trump. He is slipping off his pony and will have a hard time not coming up covered in horseshit. As one of the major purveyors of that stuff, it may be one of the few times in his life when he will truly deserve what he gets. I heard him say that if he loses the election, “so be it”. Do you suppose he is starting to get that feeling of weakness?