Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Violating the Good Comrades’ Dress Code
Last week there was some sort of bother about a pair of festively-decorated shoes. A wealthy man who can afford a haircut – indeed, he could buy and staff his own dedicated barber shop – but chooses not to expressed his airy disapproval of the foo-foo shoes, and the multinational corporation with which he enjoys some sort of association withered before his mood like an orchid in the desert, and will not manufacture that particular shoe they had promoted.
Or, rather, the multinational’s – and thus the rich man’s - underpaid obedientiaries in the Far East will not make the shoe.
The rich man does not like how some people are abused, and associates the shoe design with that abuse. The poor people who work in the corporation’s factories, further enriching the rich man, are exempt from his sympathies. They work on and on, for very little pay, breathing the toxic glues that keep the parts of his approved shoes together, and suffer beyond the comforts of his members-only pity.
A further irony is that the shoe was to be ornamented with a patriotic flag symbol so that the people wearing the shoe would with each step tread upon the flag that should not be treaded upon.
And yet a further irony is that I write this on a machine built by underpaid, overworked poor people in yet another factory-camp in the Far East, which is now Communist China’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (those few who have read history will understand).
The final irony is that oppressed people with few choices in life must work in terrible conditions to make the symbols and tools of freedom.
No one seems to ask about this, or about why people will pay great amounts of money to advertise for multi-nationals. If a manufacturer expects you to wear the names and images of his company, shouldn’t he pay you for that? Why would you pay him to advertise for him?
This is not merely an American thing.
In London last week there was a riot because a man who violated a certain law was sentence to prison for it. A number of his associates disapproved of that, and so appeared outside the Old Bailey (London’s central courts) to express their disapproval by yelling at people they didn’t know and beating up journalists (the man who was imprisoned claims to be a journalist) and making rude gestures to the police.
The rioters / revolutionaries / The People were not so focused on the cause of the prisoner that they did not wear advertising. It’s as if George Washington’s made-in-China blue coat sported a slogan for a brand of beer, or if David Crockett at the Alamo wore a made-in-China gimme cap with the line VOTE FOR SAM HOUSTON stitched onto it. One imagines President Lincoln’s made-in-Indonesia hat scrolling an ad for GONE WITH THE WIND, or Amelia Earhart’s made-in-Viet-Nam flying jacket reading “IF IT AIN’T BOEING I AIN’T GOING.” Winston Churchill might have said, “I HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER BUT BLOOD, TOIL, TEARS, SWEAT, AND MY PERSONAL BRAND OF CUBAN CIGARS AVAILABLE AT BETTER TOBACCONISTS EVERYWHERE.”
It does seem a foolish thing to ornament ourselves in the livery of our would-be masters.
Finally, while one never trusts the InterGossip to be reliable about anything, here are some InterGossip discussions (unreliable, remember) about the clothing you’re told to wear:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nike-workers-pay-kaepernick/
https://u.osu.edu/nikeshoes/manufacturing-process/
https://www.newsweek.com/nike-factory-workers-still-work-long-days-low-wages-asia-1110129
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