Some thoughts on overcoming adversity

 Is there any subject that warms the heart of red-blooded Americans more than that of a plucky underdog having his day?  A real David-and-Goliath struggle of the established bigwigs and a cocky upstart taking them all down.  It's the stuff of legends repeated over the dinner table and across bars all over the country.

Books have been written about the subject such as

• Soul of a New Machine by Tracey Kidder, about a plucky minicomputer company called Data General, which won a Pulitzer Prize
• Moneyball by Michael Lewis which changed the way Baseball operates and most importantly (for Lewis) was turned into a movie
• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight about daring upstart sports company you may have heard of called Nike.
• Car by Mary Walton about the 1996 Ford Taurus which was to lead Ford back to the glory days and fight off not only GM and Chrysler but Toyota and Honda.
• Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand, about a plucky horse with a heart of gold and the team that believed in him.

and thousands of others.  Then there's the real-life stories which I lived through but didn't read about (though I'm sure there are dozens of books on each). Stories like

• Southwest Airlines under founder Herb Kellerher, an irreverent jokester who took on the stodgy old establishment airlines
• Marvel Comics led by loudmouth huckster Stan Lee who mocked and poked the bottom of industry leader DC Comics
• Fox TV, which was mocked by the Big Three networks when it burst on the airwaves but which won a loyal following with edgy and unique programming,
• Amazon, which legitimized online shopping.
• Microsoft which legitimized the PC as a substitute for boring, expensive old Mainframes made by IBM and minicomputers made by Data General, see the first item in the list above.
• Apple Computer with it's iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial and it's legendary front man Steve Jobs poking fun at the staid and business-like Windows computer system.  My, how things can change quickly.

And on it goes.  

But if you look at that list, you'll notice a few things.  Soul of a New Machine, Moneyball and Car were books written about organizations that ultimately failed.  Data General was out of business within a decade of the book coming out. The Oakland A's were poor but smart when Moneyball came out, now they're just poor as the MLB has adopted their secret and, with bigger budgets, can do it better. And the 1996 Ford Taurus was a failure. In fact, the teams behind Soul of a New Machine and Car were ultimately disbanded and ... not fired, but not really rewarded for their efforts.

The other thing you'll notice is that Nike, Marvel, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are now Top Companies.  Apple, Microsoft and Amazon trade places as the most valuable companies in the world.  Marvel owns the Comic Book market, particularly in the cinema.  Southwest is the third largest airline in America and Fox is a major player on TV, particularly in sports.

None of the companies and organizations are plucky upstarts anymore.  There was something fun and exciting about booking a ticket on Southwest, or buying a Mac.  You were cool.  A freethinker who went his own way.  Stan Lee famously and aggressively marketed Marvel comics, portraying it as cool and exciting in contrast to the dull ugly books coming out of DC.  Watching Fox was edgy and hip.  It may be hard to believe now, but having a cartoon like The Simpsons on TV in prime time was different, and if you got it, you got it.  Data General viewed itself as the rebels of the business. They ran an ad saying that IBM was thinking about entering the minicomputer market and "The bastards say 'Welcome.' ".  And Nike's "Just Do It" tagline came from a convicted serial killer's last words before execution.

All the people on that list are either out of business of they are now the establishment that the once rebelled against.  The cliche runs that business if a dog-eat-dog world and the people on this list were either eater or being eaten.

Such is life. But what about our need for plucky underdog, and what does it mean when, as consumers, we can patronize or support said underdog.  Stan Lee didn't just promote Marvel over DC comics, he wanted to lead a movement, complete with a batshit crazy thing called the Merry Marvel Marching Society, a fan club not for Spiderman or Captain America but for Marvel itself.  Kids would get a button and certificate and even a kooky song they could sing along with, presumably as they marched down to the news stand to buy more Marvel Comics.  Marvel.  And kids joined.  Marvel wasn't successful because people liked Spiderman over Superman (though some surely did) but because Marvel itself was cool and exciting and more than a little subversive: poking fun at DC which sold more than five times as many books.

But how can you feel like you're part of a movement that's fighting against bland conformity when the movement is itself the establishment?  You're not a movement anymore, you're just conforming to whatever is dominant in society.  It's like getting a tattoo.  When sailors did it, it was a mark of identity.  When bikers did it, it was a mark of rebellion.  But now everyone does it and it's a mark of insecurity because you don't have the balls to go against the grain.  Sure, you're part of a group, but it's a damn big group and it's hard to feel like it's an accomplishment to be in it.

The Left was taken this David vs Goliath to religious levels with their competitive hierarchy of victimhood, when ever more elaborate intersections of separate victim classes.  But that's pretty weak beer to feel like you belong to an elite society.  It's fundamentally individualistic.  You can't really be part of a movement that honors someone else's battle to overcome some adversity.  You have to have your OWN hardships to overcome.  And if you can't find any, then you have to start making them up.

Currently, one Megan Markle is a former Hollywood actress and model, so you'd be right to assume that she's very attractive.  She also happens to be married to Prince Harry so she's rich.  And famous.  And yet she's still a victim.  It's kind of hard to accept when people are suffering from illness and crime that this rich hot royal chick is also a victim but seen through the plucky upstart lens, she doesn't want sympathy, she wants admiration.  She wants to be Apple. The David that took down Goliath.  She wants to be Seabiscuit: the cast-off gelding that beat the odds and beat the best horse in the country.

Because we don't have David vs Goliath stories anymore.  Everything is so big.  The last big "disrupter" to hit America was probably Tesla, but Elon Musk was a billionaire before Tesla drove it's first mile (and  in fact Musk probably couldn't have gotten Tesla rolling if he were an ordinary millionaire).   Everything that we watch, listen to, eat, drink or wear is produced by a multinational Fortune 500 company, each one of which holds the same values as everyone else.  Most of it's made in China and I suspect that most Apple and Android phones (for instance) are made in the same factories by the same people, then you unbox them and they look roughly the same and operate roughly the same.  There are no rebels who really have anything to lose. Even failing companies offer their CEOs Golden Parachutes worth tens of millions of dollars as the company is crashing to the ground.  

In short, we live in bland land.  About the only excitement to come in the last few years that could be described as a "movement" was the presidency of one Donald J Trump.  But he was a billionaire too, and still is.  And his replacement was a bland establishment hack named Joe Biden who got the band back together from Obama's presidency and ... ashsdflh;l.  Sorry, I fell asleep from the boredom.

It's not surprising eveyone wants to be a victim.  Everyone wants something to overcome.  But something safe.  If you're doing OK, what better way to do better but to make it sound a lot harder to get where you are than it really was?  It doesn't matter if you are living paycheck to paycheck or living in a mansion, things could always be worse, right?  And look where I started!

And things are no better among the faithful. You'd think that a book like the Bible which features murder, rape, war, demons and redemption would grab people's attention and hold it, but the general mood today seems to be of soft universalism where everyone is basically saved unless they really mess up.  We live in an age of peak prosperity, both in the secular and sacred world.  Actually, we're probably past peak prosperity and in an age of decline based on the quality of products and service I get from all these bland Fortune 500 companies.

Life's just too boring.  We need more Stan Lee's and Steve Jobs' and Phil Knights' and Elon Musk's and Donald Trump's.  Assholes, every one of them.  But they inspire people to be more.