I have never been accused of being fashionable. My idea of dressing up is to put a bra on under my sweatshirt. And of course, in case of an accident, I always wear clean underwear. Mom taught me well on that point.
My mother was a fashionista. Or, at least as much of one as she could be on the very limited income of a grocer’s wife. The day she died, she was packing to go to Europe. We found her bed covered with new clothes she’d laid out for the trip. I, on the other hand, get ready for my annual out of country trip by making sure that yes, I have enough clean underwear for the full two weeks.
All of this is a prelude to the fact that last week I went to Nordstrom’s and bought clothes despite the fact that after the fall shopping spree I thought I had enough clothes to get me through until death. But then two things happened. One, I remembered I threw out all my summer clothes in a fit of housecleaning a few months back and so had nothing to wear for my girls’ week in Vegas. And two, I wanted to spend money at Nordstrom’s in my modest attempt to extend my finger to the Orangeman in Chief.
You’d think that Orangeman would understand the business principle that caused Nordstrom’s to drop his daughter’s line of whatever it was. Since he clearly does not understand government, separation of powers or the Constitution, the hope was that he at least understood business. But now I’m thinking that’s not so. Because if it were, he’d understand that to make a profit, you have to cut the unprofitable. And Ivanka’s stuff was simply not selling.
Perhaps Orangeman truly doesn’t understand this fairly basic business concept because, if he did, he and his multiple corporate entities would not have to spend so much time in bankruptcy court. And the small contractors who worked for him wouldn’t have to go under and lose everything because he cheated the little guy once again.
This leaves us with the horrifying conclusion that this travesty of a president doesn’t understand business anymore than he understands ethics, conflicts of interest or basic morality. The fact that his female mouthpiece announces she is doing a commercial for his daughter’s products while representing the White House makes it clear that ethics are notable in this administration only by their absence.
So to sum up, we have a White House inhabited by a man who seemingly doesn’t understand business or government; a man who has time to tweet about his daughter’s failing business venture but has no time to comment on the massacre in Canada. So I’m thinking that the problem here might be one of two things. He is either truly too stupid to learn or understand the position he currently occupies or he simply doesn’t care so long as the spotlight’s on him.
Let’s face it, when you are mean to the prime minister of Australia (Australia for goodness sakes), you are definitely not focused on the real problems that real people are facing in the real world. Orangeman spends his time tweeting about judges and implying that our judiciary should not fulfill its role in our system of checks and balances. How about if he used that time instead to craft a decent order to achieve security without hate, racism and insult to an entire religion built into it. Sadly, he truly doesn’t seem to give a crap about anything or anyone other than his own ego.
I find myself once again wishing we had a viable alternative party that could call out this sham of a president for what he is, but alas we have only Elizabeth Warren and at some point she’s bound to get tired of carrying the whole burden. So it’s up to us to let him know that we will not allow him to cheapen the office of the presidency by making it a shill for his family businesses.
Elections are coming up in 2018. I wait breathlessly to see whether the Dems will uncurl from their fetal position by then and actually have valid candidates to offer. But I have little hope of that actually happening. It’s like when the Republicans finally won the majority needed to overturn the ACA and they suddenly realized they’d forgotten to craft an alternative.
So the best we can do for now is to shop at Nordstrom’s and hope the pretty clothes distract us from the disaster in DC.