In the Chair For Donald Trump
Read Time:1 Minute, 44 Second
by Glenn R. Geist
The small town barbershop: it’s a place of a certain kind of social interaction, much like the small town bar only more sober. The one I go to regularly, (barber, not bar) is a place packed with deliberate but honest nostalgia, and the decor is straight from the pages of Field and Stream. There’s plenty to look at and enjoy if you like early 20th century hunting, fishing and ammunition posters and vintage firearms. The magazines at hand reflect the hunting, fishing and outdoor lifestyle, I used to feel part of. The owner used to be a gun dealer. Moose Jerky is for sale. It’s almost what my living room would look like if I were single.
As you can imagine, the election of Barack Obama changed a lot of the atmosphere of such places, but the pervasive, ever simmering anger seems to have been replaced by something harder to define and to me, frightening.
One customer in one of the 7 chairs getting a very short cut is telling the barber with a “hey..did you hear this” voice about how Trump is sending a carrier group to North Korea, implying a great leap of leadership and strategic expertise worthy of a Von Klausewitz. He’s an athletic looking college student. The kind of person who is usually the first to die in what General Von K called “the continuation of politics by different means.”
Trump began his campaign by bragging about the size of his genitals. He continues to wave missiles and bombs, possibly from the same feelings of inadequacy. America seems ever to be impressed and the implied manliness.
When I get my hair cut, I try not to get involved in the inevitable sports conversations, as I don’t follow the usual games, but now I simply dread having to listen to massively uninformed, hugely misinformed and ignorant conversations. It’s a shame, but I have to ponder going back to my late 60’s look or go to my wife’s hair dresser who charges ten times more. Maybe the dog groomer?
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Well, not everyone on the Deplorable side of the aisle still loves him. It’s looking more and more like some of them are switching to the bride’s side. It has been a bitterly disappointing turn of events for some of his most ardent supporters in the white nationalist alt-right movement and in adjacent political circles. These are the clowns who have supported Trump from the beginning of his campaign and who were enthralled by his promises to not get involved in Middle East conflicts. Now they aren’t so enthralled. They have no idea this is just the beginning, or maybe they do. To find out I think I need to get a haircut.
Here it is:
“Donald Trump is very real and very sincere. We’re tired of being cheated. The more they try to attack him, the more we love him.” – Sandra Stone, Florida, March 2016
This is how the deplorables feel about him, and that isn’t going away anytime soon.
I try not to hang out in the barber shop for just that reason. My wife cuts my hair anymore. I don’t know why it is the TrumpFucks seem to want to wax illiterate in a barber’s chair.
Why do we try to ignore it in these personal settings? Why do we stay silent? Is it that we just don’t have the time anymore? Or that debate isn’t friendly anymore? Sure, we get out and protest. But when we’re at the barbershop or getting the oil changed in our cars, we shut down.
I actually don’t shut down. I was getting my hair cut a few months ago, right after the election, and the pro-trumpers started to crow, and they were supported by every barber in there. I paid my bill, no tip, and bought an electric shaver. I’ll never go back. There’s my barber shop protest.