Not the photograph, certainly.  This is the inestimable Jon Hamm, star of Mad Men and general all-round very handsome guy. (Personally I value his talent for comedy over the much-vaunted Mad Men.)

No, the offensive part of this is the shirt.  It’s made by some concern named Berluti, and it costs $730.

The New York Times did a profile of Mr. Hamm—can I call you Jon?—which was innocuous enough: he talks about his rehab, his recent movies, and the death of his dog.  A general puff piece for Baby Driver and the upcoming Marjorie Prime.^[1]  And salted throughout are the typical fashion shots of a good-looking celebrity wearing nice clothes comfortably.

But.

The $730 shirt (and $85 tank top) was just the start.  We also got:

• $560 shoes
• $1,795 t-shirt
• $7,995 jacket

(It was noted that Jon was wearing his own jeans, label unidentified.)

I have issues with you people.  A world in which someone can charge $1,795 for a t-shirt and then someone else can take a photo of that t-shirt and publish it as a clear advertisement for that item is not a equitable world.  My presumption is that the New York Times does this sort of thing because it has readers who will pay $1,795 for a t-shirt.  Readers who can pay $1,795 for a t-shirt.

I don’t know about you, but I doubt the contents of my closet add up to much more than $1,795 and they are certainly not equal to the $7,995 jacket.  If I were ruthless and gave away all the suits and jackets and dress shirts/slacks/ties that I am not likely to wear any more, my entire wardrobe could be replaced for less than $1,000—and even that’s excessive in my eyes.^[2]

My Lovely First Wife and I have often tsked over clothing like this through the years and joke that even if we won the lottery we’d never pay that much for clothes, and I like to think we mean it.  Because in our souls we know that to pay $1,795 for a t-shirt means that you have so much money that cost means nothing to you.  Money means nothing to you, and that’s dangerous in a world where money means life and death for most of the people in it.

Yes, paying more for an item because it’s well-made and likely to last makes sense. (See the Sam Vimes ‘Boots’ Theory of Economic Injustice.)  But paying $200 for a jacket that will last you 10–20 years is one thing; paying $7,995 for a jacket because it has a specific company’s name on it—that’s problematic.

So when you hear the Republican Congress talk about “tax reform,” understand that what they really mean is cutting the taxes of the richest among us: giving more money to the people who can and will pay $1,795 for a t-shirt.

$1,795 for a t-shirt.

—————

^[1] Marjorie Prime is a play I have proposed directing at NTC since it premiered; it is not yet available for the likes of us.

^[2] Although I will confess that the zippers on $10 shorts from Rose’s are not well-made.  So I’ll pay $30 for decent shorts—but not for a t-shirt.

This came across my Twitter feed today:

Technically it was a screen-captured image of the original tweet retweeted by Gary Bernhardt which was then ‘liked’ by Akilah Hughes, whom I do follow.  Twitter can be complicated. Gary Bernhardt’s added comment was:

Yes, we could call it “taxes.”

And there you have the Great Divide in a nutshell: those who understand what the social contract means and those who are oblivious to the idea that if we all pull together then we all will survive.

Three thoughts about this:

1.

This is the same mindset that produces the whole conservative “Why should I pay for pregnancy expenses in my insurance if I’m a man?” shibboleth.  BECAUSE THAT’S HOW INSURANCE WORKS, KENNETH. The idea that we as a society are better off if we all chip in to provide a structure of support for all us—roads, schools, public safety, health care—is alien to these people.  I hesitate to attribute motives to them, but to me the whole thing smacks of sociopathy, and there’s a reason why.^[1]

2.

Years ago I was at the State STAR Student banquet (I am the chair of the selection committee), and the speaker for the evening was someone from the business community.  The man stood at the podium and lectured a room full of educators that if we were able to ratchet up “the graduation rate in Georgia to [some number I’ve forgotten], it would add an extra [some number in the millions] to our state’s economy.” What I heard—and what every educator in the room heard—was that it would be worth it to the business community to hand over a huge sum of money to the schools to make that happen, but of course that’s not what the business leader meant at all.  He meant that we should hop to it and test the children harder until they graduated more betterer.  Again, the idea that all of society had a stake in the education of all of society’s children simply never occurred to him.

3.

These days the hummingbirds are fattening up for their flight to Mexico, and we have provided them with a feeder to assist them in their efforts. We actually provide two, one in the herb garden and one on the back porch, and our neighbor has one of her own, so that’s three feeders with four little flower outlets each.  Twelve little sipping stations, which should be more than enough for the six or eight hummingbirds residing in the hedge.  But hummingbirds are little assholes, and each feeder is dominated by one bully hummingbird who spends most of his time chasing away the other guys.  I watched one of the little buggers defend an empty feeder for a day (before I realized it was empty and refilled it).

To them, the feeders are a zero-sum game.  Chase everyone else away and you have All The Nectars for yourself.  To be fair, they’re birds, and there’s a reason we have the insult “bird brain,” but it’s instructive that birds do not rule the world: mammals do, and it’s largely because we evolved the capacity for empathy and altruism.

I do not understand why this truth, genetically implanted in us, eludes the conservative brain.^[2]

—————

^[1] Go read the article at that link.  It’s disturbing, and I didn’t know any of it until I went looking for a satirical take on conservatives’ lack of social consciousness about health insurance.

^[2] Actually, I do know why: the conservative brain is hardwired to operate through fear.  I have repeatedly referred to them on this blog as “amygdala-based lifeforms.”  See here, here, and here.

This is a serious question: what is the Current Embarrassment trying to pull?

I know, we could spend the rest of the night giving examples of his unprecedented lying, but let’s do just one: at last night’s rally in Phoenix, he enthused (via Twitter, of course) about a “beautiful turnout of 15,000 people” at his re-election rally.^[1]  The fire marshal tells us that the venue’s limit is <5,000 people.

He lied.  Everyone who is paying attention can see for themselves that he lied.  He told the crowd that CNN was not covering his shockingly honest statements—which the rest of us watched on CNN. He told the crowd (of less than 5,000 people) that there were no protesters outside, which every major network was able to show immediately was not true.

Sure, he’s playing to his rapidly dwindling base of dyed-in-the-wool ragebunny amygdalas, but the rest of the nation—the rest of the world, KENNETH—can see that he’s lying.  We all know it. He’s lying.

So, again, my serious question: what is he trying to pull?

—————

^[1] His re. election. rally.  He’s been in office seven months, and he’s running for re-election.^[2]

^[2] On the other hand, he could be attempting to govern.

Here’s an article from the New Yorker, “Why is Donald Trump Still So Horribly Witless About the World?”  Go read it.

As hard as it is for me to believe, there’s still that 27% hardcore lump of citizens who think the Current Embarrassment is actually being successful at his job.  To them, it’s a good thing that he’s like a coked-up bull in the china shop of the world stage.  “Heck yeah,” they shout, “USA! USA! Kick butt!”  Or words to that effect.

It does not seem important to them to take into account All The Things that make up international relations, not history, not protocol, not expertise.  They live in an imaginary world where the Middle East is all terrorists (except for Israel); China is a backwards Maoist dunghill; and the U.S. acts unilaterally no matter what the circumstances might be.  USA! USA!

They never see that, like their leader, their ignorance and bluster will not produce the results they were hoping for.  They’re just glad they finally have someone who will disregard all those effete intellectuals and Make America Great Again.

So let me present an analogy that I imagine many of them will find relatable.  Feel free to share it with your witless uncle.

You’re at work.  You like your job.  You like your company.  You’ve worked there for a long time, and you’ve gotten to know the ins and outs of the command chain, the production process, the purchasing process, the company’s competitors.  You know who to go to in order to get things done: Marcia for requisitions, Bill for project management, Laketha for personnel.  You know Rachel can’t be trusted to keep a secret and Austin’s a backstabber.

Then they hire a new boss. Let’s call him Ronald.  Ron.

Ron is pig-ignorant.  He’s never even been in the industry before, and it doesn’t look like he wants to learn about it.  He got hired because he can “shake things up.”  You know the type.

So Ron issues memos that don’t make sense and often conflict with company policy.  He makes everything personal.  He fires Marcia.  Bill quits.  He reorganizes your department in ways that are confounding.   He promotes Austin because Austin sucks up to him.  He does not ask for input, nor will he listen to anyone who offers it.  He’s degrading and abusive in meetings; Laketha has left in tears more than once.  He will not sign off on your vacation time.

Ron insults your partners and sets up meetings with your competitors.  He cancels longstanding contracts with suppliers.  He announces changes to the product line that have not been tested or approved, and if implemented will destroy the company’s bottom line.  He’s the epitome of both Dilbert‘s Pointy-Haired Boss and The Office‘s Michael Scott.

In other words, Ron walks into the job and ignores everything that’s important about the job and the company.  He dismisses it.  He shakes things up.

The Current Embarrassment is that guy.  He’s your nightmare boss Ron, only with nuclear codes and China and the U.S. economy at stake.

And that is why expert after expert has abandoned longstanding tradition and uses words like “witless, clueless, appalling ignorance, studious rejection of in-depth knowledge, unteachable, completely irredeemable” to describe him.  This is not some liberal plot to discredit the man. This is Marcia and Bill and Laketha (and you) trying to get the shareholders and the board to understand why the man has got to go.

Do you think the Current Embarrassment thinks he is “transforming” the Office of the Presidency?  (I mean, he is, but not in the way he probably thinks he is.)

Or is he just fupping stupid?

Of all the idiotic lies the Current Occupant Embarrassment has told, the most dangerous is one of his first and biggest: that “3 to 5 million illegal votes were cast” in the election, costing him the popular vote.

Only one of the amygdala-based lifeforms (whose very life depends on having enough fear to drive their ecological and biological systems) could believe that fraud of such incredible scope could go unnoticed.  Only someone who must believe that the Truth IS Somewhere Out There could hear quotes like these:

“Throughout the campaign and even after it,” Trump said, “people would come up to me and express their concerns about voter inconsistencies and irregularities, which they saw. In some cases, having to do with very large numbers of people in certain states.”

Kris Kobach, who never met a Democratic vote he didn’t want to suppress, “We will probably never know the answer to that question.”

Anthony Scaramucci: “My guess is that there’s probably some level of truth to that. I think what we have found sometimes is that the president says stuff, some of you guys in the media think it’s not true. It turns out it’s closer to the truth than people think.”

…and think, “Wow, look at that overwhelming evidence!”^[1]

So why should all of us care about this?  The man is gripped by his own egomania and will continue to burrow into his own delusion, which is eyebrow-raising enough when it’s your crazy friend—but this is a person who lives in the White House and can drag the rest of us into his fantasies if we don’t keep our wits about us.

For an excellent take on this, see E. J. Dionne’s editorial at the Washington Post.

Bottom line: the current administration wants to make it harder for you to vote, especially if you are apt to vote against them.  It is easier for them to do this than you think, and even you—yes you—can be caught up in their machinations.

It has already begun.

—————

^[1] There is no evidence. See here.

So, at 4:44 a.m. this morning,^[1] here’s what the President of the United States tweeted:

So many people are asking why isn’t the A.G. or Special Council looking at the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes. 33,000 e-mails deleted?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2017

Besides the Captain Queeg obsession with Clinton’s emails, the thorniest issue here for me is that he misspelled Counsel.  I am reminded of John Stewart’s comment about people wanting to vote for Bush43 because he seemed like a “regular guy,” i.e., not a pointy-headed intellectual: “Not only do I want an elite president, I want someone who’s embarrassingly superior to me.”

We have a long way to go.

(Open note to the White House: I know you don’t do “history,” but get someone to read you the results of all previous investigations into those emails.)

—————

^[1] I don’t know why this embedded tweet says 7:44 a.m.  The original said 4:44; if you click through, it still does.

My internet server has a spam filter on it and catches about 100 spam emails a day.  It’s very good—I’m actually quite surprised when I get a spam message in my inbox these days.

However, it will also occasionally snag emails from people or companies that I want to hear from, and so when I get the email saying that it has messages for me to review, I click and go look.  Mostly I just scan the subject lines; it takes less than a minute to do, and then I click Reject All As Spam and I’m done.

Every now and then, though, my curiosity gets the better of me: what are all these emails that warn me of Hillary Clinton’s devastating plans to oust our current embarrassment and take over the White House?  Since I can check the contents of the email without actually leaving the spam filter, I opened one up the other day and found this:

This was followed by blocks of text that were literally jumbled together by a bot from online sources.

I did not explore past this content; in my experience, these things are setups for sites trying to sell you miracle cures or prepper supplies.

As always, my fascination is with the target audience, the 27% who are going to be clueless rage-bunnies no matter what.  I found it fascinating that in our new reality it’s taken as a statement of fact even by the rage-bunnies that Russia intervened directly in our election—but the rage-bunnies direct their anger at the woman who lost the election eight months ago.

And I love the links to “unsubscribe.”  This is where the cluelessness of the rage-bunnies is delicious: how many of them click on those links and give the spammers their information?

Bless they hearts.