Just This Once-ing

Paramount Global controlling shareholder Sheri Redstone

I realize I’m staying late at this party, but I still can’t find a way to understand why on earth Sheri Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Paramount Global, agreed to pay $16 million dollars to Trump in a shakedown about an interview with Kamala Harris that hurt his feelings. I’m not so dumb as not to know that Paramount wanted to smooth the way for FCC approval of their eight billion dollar purchase of Skydance Media, which Trump most certainly made clear they would not get without the payment. Trump doesn’t need the money, but he can’t live without the joy of the squeeze, using force to make someone pay what they don’t owe.

None of this is new.

Nor is it new that Paramount agreed to being hosed because they got something they wanted. It made financial sense to them. In a twisted kind of way, it’s just capitalism at its least subtle.

But what I can’t make sense of is how these people came to their unquenchable lust for power such that they seem unable to say no and no and no. Does Paramount need this multi-billion dollar merger? Did they have to pay for it by admitting to wrongdoing they didn’t wrongly do in order to get more more more more? I don’t mean to spoil the surprise, but these companies already have plenty of money. Is “more money” really the only metric in America? Honestly, what if they had just said no and had not taken the meeting? How quickly would that simple act elevate who we are, give people a model for how to face a bully, give us hope? It reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon I saw many years ago. A man is at his desk on the phone, looking at his calendar and the caption reads “How about never? Would never work for you?” What if the ten law firms who Trump targeted because they represented his enemies, who ultimately agreed to provide Trump close to one billion dollars in pro bono services for clients and issues they find reprehensible, had said, “Would never work for you?”

What if we all said no?

How do we become people who can’t take a stand for what we profess to believe? How do we become people who will pay with our integrity for something we don’t even need—almost always more money, more power or both. How do we become the people who make these trades because of unchecked greed and then justify them so they look noble, or at least strategic—wise in some distorted way? How do we become people who can’t say no?

I keep asking myself this question. But I can’t answer it at the level of billions of dollars. I can’t even picture what a billion dollars looks like. That’s the value of what Trump has extorted from ten universities along with their agreement to stop doing anything Trump thinks is woke or DEI or helps people who aren’t white to get a leg up. What if they had looked him in the eye and said, “Would never work for you?”

How much is a billion, anyway? How much does it weigh? How far would it stretch if a billion dollars in one dollar bills were lined up end to end? It’s the weight of your soul. It stretches from now until the day you die. And probably beyond, in your legacy, in your children’s understanding of how to do business.

I can’t understand these people. I can’t understand who they might have been at seven years old, at sixteen, at whatever age they were when they first started trading their integrity for money and power. But I can ask myself what makes me compromise my own values, my own freedom for some offer. I can look at when I have traded my integrity for something I wanted. I can wonder about that.

As I look at my own trades of my integrity for money or power, I call it “Just-This-Once-ing.” It’s easy to get used to. Just this once I’m not going to say anything when a fellow schoolmate gets bullied on the playground because I don’t want to get bullied back. Just this once I’m going to lie about my work history in exchange for getting an interview for this job, lie about why I can’t bear the thought of going to your party, lie about having finished the book you recommended which I didn’t finish because it was just so awful. Just this once I’m going to order from Amazon even though I said I wasn’t going to support anything that makes Jeff Bezos one dollar richer. Just this once I’m going to let someone get away with saying something racist at a dinner party because, well… dinner party.

These incidents are small. And they are daily. They began in the school yard and continue to play out in dinner parties and conference rooms for the rest of our lives. We get used to Just-This-Once-ing because in the moment it’s easier, smoother, ruffles no feathers, won’t be noticed.

But your soul notices. With each Just-This-Once you shave off the thinnest slice of your soul to pay off The Devil until he owns you and then you lose the will to resist. Just this once is the sweet nothing The Devil whispers in your ear.

We become ourselves one small choice at a time. Every choice we make is a continuing answer to the bigger question “Who am I?” We never get a pass on becoming who we are by the choices we make, big and small. And generally these choices are tiny moments. That’s both the good news and the bad news. The good news is that we generally get to choose every single day. No, I don’t have to send that snarky email. No, I don’t have to use that tone of voice. No, I don’t have to interrupt. No, I don’t have to upstage her story with a better story of my own. Yes, I do have a moment to listen. And blah blah blah. But, because these choices are small, we can consider it no big deal to take the easy route. And so we do send the email, we don’t listen, we play a less-than-worthy card to become the focus of attention. Ultimately, I think the smallness of these choices is what makes them deadly. We can take the easy route—budge in front of the line, tell a wee lie, make a sarcastic comeback to a person who “deserves it.” These all seem small in the grand scheme of things. So we allow ourselves the ease or the pleasure and don’t count the accruing cost.

This is The Devil in ordinary clothes, donning no horns, no forked tail or tongue, no red skin, as he suggests that just the slightest sliver of your soul is a small price to pay for this momentary satisfaction, the chance to move forward, get the job, be noticed, be seen as clever or smart or quick or brave.

Eventually, after enough of these small slivers of payment from your soul, The Devil owns you. You have no strength to choose differently because you have become the person who makes these trades and who justifies them and is promoted for having the courage to make them. “Just This Once” is the Devil’s tagline.

We steer our own souls. And if we trim slices of it in exchange for The Devil’s Offering—usually some form of power—then that’s entirely on us. When it ends with our complete loss of integrity, when we find we don’t have the strength or clarity to choose differently any more, it’s a consequence of our abandonment of who we used to be and could have continued to become.

We can’t be saved from the consequences of our own choices. We are, moment by moment, becoming ourselves. Are you becoming the person some Donald Trump in your life can squeeze? Or are you a person who can look them in the eye and say no, a person who can ask, “Would never be soon enough?”