This is what irrelevance feels like.

It's the sinking sensation you get when you contemplate exactly how metro Detroit shoots itself in the foot, again and again, so bent on clinging to our old divisions that we reject any promise of progress.

Thursday, online mega-retailer Amazon announced that it will build a second headquarters, and took the unconventional step of asking cities across the country to submit pitches.

And the company's request for proposals is dangling the kind of numbers — a $5-billion investment and 50,000 new jobs — that cause economic development professionals to giddily envision new and creative ways to bargain away our tax dollars in the form of economic development incentives.

There are a lot of debates you could have about whether Detroit or metro Detroit should even throw our hats into this ring. It is certainly reasonable to have qualms about how dependent many of us have become on the online giant, at the expense of brick-and-mortar retail that's struggling to compete.

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There are real questions about whether the jobs the company promises to create and the billions it promises to invest will balance the ritualized tax incentive groveling required to attract this company — like a bill signed into law earlier this year that allows certain employers to simply keep employees' payroll taxes.

There are worthwhile conversations about where, in a city like Detroit, such a facility might be sited, at what cost, to whom, and who might realistically benefit from such a development.

But we can't have any of those conversations, because we don't clear the first hurdle.

Metro Detroit simply does not meet the criteria Amazon requires. We start strong: Close to a major population center. Close to major highways. Close to an international airport. And access to transit.

Yeah. About that.

Metro Detroit is home to two bus systems that serve separate geographic areas, with inadequate communication or rationalization of routes between them. And while the bus system works for some, you do not have to search very far to find riders — lots of them — with horrible stories about multi-hour commutes that should take only minutes.

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We had a chance to start fixing all of that with a ballot proposal last year for a millage that would have funded significant transit upgrades, employing a bus-rapid transit fleet along major commuter corridors and a system of cross-county buses. The millage would have empowered a Regional Transit Authority to coordinate the region's combined transit options. But voters shot it down, and so we're back, transit-wise, to square one.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan's spokesman said Thursday that the city will "carefully evaluate" the proposal, and Wayne County Economic Development Director Kahlil Rahal said that he thinks the county stacks up well, and that it will also evaluate the proposal. Irene Spanos, director of economic development for Oakland County, says her county also hopes to attract Amazon.

But this is a heavy lift.

"If they put a heavy value on mass transit, we can’t compete with other cities that have invested and made commitments," said Eric Banks, executive director of brokerage services, principal and partner at Core Partners, a Bingham Farms-based commercial real estate brokerage.

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Banks said he'd make the ask anyway.

"If I were selling Amazon and looking for an angle, I would sell them on the angle of coming into metro Detroit and being a game-changer for the region and can exert their gravitational pull," he said. "That’s game-changing for any American city, and it would seem to fit culturally with Amazon, with its perception of itself — be a change agent versus going where the action already is."

But, he said, any such proposal should be accompanied by a plan for how the community in question would use an Amazon commitment to get its transit act in gear, posthaste.

Our transit woes are part of a broader pattern of disinvestment, said Dan Gilmartin, head of the Michigan Municipal League, that hobble our state economically.

"The gap between what the state does to attract economic development and what businesses actually want in 2017 and beyond is as big as the Grand Canyon," Gilmartin said. "The only thing we come in armed with are tax abatements ... and to play only in that race-to-the bottom taxation game is a loser. Companies want to talk about transit, about talent attraction, they're talking about quality of life, and our 20-year disinvestment in cities and communities means we don't have those things."

These messages simply do not resonate — at least not enough to prompt change.

"We’ve told people that if you invest in things like bus rapid transit, commuter rail, or just improved transit in general, that has an impact in economic development," said Carmine Palombo, deputy executive director of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments. "So far, we haven’t found the right messages."

Just ask Amazon.