> [...] there was a time when people in Washington were positively giddy about Jeff Bezos’ new mansion on S Street. [...]
> “What he’s going to do is revive the legacy of Kay Graham and her great socializing — bringing smart, interesting people together in a social context,” Jean Case, who with her husband Steve was an old friend of Bezos and his then wife, said at the time.
> It was a prediction that a certain stratum of D.C. very much wanted to believe. The idea of a world-transforming industrialist running the political city’s salon flattered establishment Washington’s perennial hunger for social validation: See, we’re not just a bunch of ill-dressed policy wonks!
> The validation never arrived.
The real story isn't about Trump. The real story isn't about Bezos.
The real story is about thousands of supposedly educated & sophisticated people, who deluded themselves with baseless beliefs, because those beliefs felt SO good to them.
> Amazon’s roughly 8,000 employees make it the county’s largest private employer<
I think the number of employees is closer to 150,000.