Looking Long Into the Abyss (Part 1)

“Whoever fights Lagos should see to it that in the process he does not become a Lago. And when you look long into a cesspool of corruption, the cesspool of corruption also looks into you.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

Okay, so maybe I took a few liberties with this famous Nietzschean aphorism. Although, I have to admit, my version somehow works almost as well as the original, which is as follows:

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”

Like much of what Nietzsche wrote, these words are reinterpreted as often as they’re cited. But that's the trouble with the infamous 19th century German philosopher: the highly metaphorical and contextual nature of his writings makes them prone to misinterpretation. (He has, notably, enjoyed a subtle renaissance within certain circles of the online dissident right in recent years.)

With Nietzsche, you can't just wet your ankles in the shallows and grasp his meaning, as his ideas flow from one work to another. You really have to wade in chest-deep through his literature to have any hope of understanding him—something I've always lacked the patience and intellectual appetite to do myself.

Nietzsche is so tricky, in fact, that I’d considered reaching out to Dr. Castro for some interpretive assistance, because she strikes me as the type who's meticulously studied his entire corpus. But then I figured she probably wouldn't take my call.

So for this post's theme, I'll have to settle for the popular and more accessible interpretation of this aphorism: that one must remain cautious when fighting a supposed evil, as deep and impassioned struggles have a way of turning people into the very thing they oppose.

This idea isn’t unique to Nietzsche, though he lends it a certain poetic grace. It is, in essence, an expression of mimetic theory, which holds that conflict and desire are fundamentally imitative and that we tend to want things because other people want them—a concept that is strikingly relevant to the latest serving of scrumptious irony from City Hall.

A Midwit’s Midway

As those who closely follow this newsletter know, the initially uneasy dynamic between Mayor Lago and the City Manager, Aimless Amos Rojas, has rapidly devolved into a ruthless internecine war. And if Amos' thoroughly debunked assault hoax against Lago was his Pearl Harbor attack:

This egregious overreach might be his Battle of Midway:

So now we have proof that Amos’ judgement is as paper-thin as his skin, because, really, who puts something like this in writing, let alone the public record? Why 👏 would 👏 you 👏 give 👏 me 👏 this 👏 layup?

Amos' refusal to meet with Lago isn't limited to site visits and agenda reviews, mind you; he has reportedly imposed a personal embargo on all meetings with the mayor outside of official commission proceedings. No soup for Lago.

Let me be clear, there is no universe in which a manager's emotionally-driven refusal to meet with the city’s ranking elected official doesn't violate every professional and civic standard imaginable. There is no reality in which Amos' conduct is anything other than petty, impudent, and wildly inappropriate. There is simply no way that this isn’t a fireable offense. Full stop.

To make matters worse, this isn’t the first time Amos has refused to meet with the mayor. You’ll recall how Aimless Amos began his ignominious career as Coral Gables city manager: by denying Lago and Anderson the basic courtesy of a cursory interview before accepting the most important position in our government.

It’s important to remember this as you reflect upon Amos’ explicit justification for refusing to meet with the mayor, which is that the mayor dares to “criticize and disparage him.”

Regarding criticism, all I will say to Amos is this: Suck it up, buttercup. He’s your boss, he’s allowed to criticize you. In fact, it’s his job. How unbelievably pathetic and embarrassing it is to see you, a senior citizen and ex-cop, adopt the very worst of the candy-ass sensibilities that has made much of Gen-Z all but unemployable.

Come to think of it, it’s a bit too unbelievable. It doesn’t fit your hard-nosed archetype, which is one of the many reasons we all know this was Ariel’s brilliant idea. I hear he proofs a lot of your correspondence.

Regarding disparagement: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to disparage is "to bring discredit or dishonor upon; to lower in position; to degrade.” I cannot think of anything more degrading than effectively telling your future mayor and vice mayor they are too irrelevant to merit even the courtesy of a handshake before you take the helm of their city. Indeed, your very first act as city manager was to poke a giant metaphorical middle finger square in the eye of two of your bosses. And you didn’t do it merely in front of staff during a closed-door meeting, you did it in front of the whole city.

Don't get me wrong, I know exactly why you went through with it, why you let yourself be foisted upon them (upon us all) so rudely and disrespectfully. You were afraid. Afraid that if you hadn't grabbed that job on the spot, if you'd extended Lago and Anderson the bare-minimum courtesy of a perfunctory interview, you might have lost out on the easiest $300K you could ever make. Heaven forbid you'd done the right thing and said, “Look, I can spare each of you five minutes. I'll come back in two weeks to accept the position—after all, I've got my three votes locked in.” Because maybe, just maybe, that Ralph Cutié fellow from the county might have reconsidered and made a play for the job, threatening your tight grip on a cushy job that offered one of the sweetest pay-to-effort ratios known to man.

But that doesn’t mean what you did wasn’t crass and disrespectful. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t “disparaging.” It doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong.

My sense is that the manager isn't long for this city. Even if by some miracle Kirk holds on in April, it's hard to imagine someone as incompetent and injudicious as Aimless Amos holding it together much longer. The thinly veiled sham he and KFC are running can't withstand many more mistakes like this. That's why I called this email blunder his Battle of Midway—things will only get worse for him from here.

The more interesting angle, as usual, leads straight to KFC. Unlike the manager they spontaneously appointed without so much as a courtesy notice to the 50,000 residents they claim to put first, KFC won an election that was defined largely by a potent sense of grievance. Or at least two of them did. The third and most rapacious one simply saw the wave they were riding and thought to himself, "Hot damn, there must be gold in them there grudges!"

KFC's rise to power was fueled not just by frustration, but highly targeted and assiduously cultivated indignation: populist outrage aimed at the "establishment" and a host of monsters they promised to banish. Monsters they themselves have become. And that, dear readers, we’ll examine in part 2.