Political Correctness

A perfectly good hat

I came out of the closet carrying a fairly new, perfectly good hat. But I will never wear that shit again.

The hat with the obscene gesture is fine. San Diego is OK. It’s the other one that’s the problem.

It just has a Nike swoop, no other words or images. But it’s the most offensive thing I own. It’s red.

It’s not even the Trump red — but it’s close. Kinda like somebody tried to wash the stink off it after carrying an AR-15 to stand on the wrong end of a Black Life Matter march.

It’s not just my political opposition to the red-hat-wearing Trumpanistas. It’s not just that I’ve been pushed far away from my Eisenhower Republican roots to feel better in blue.

It’s just fucking embarrassing.

With any other politician, I wouldn’t care if people thought I supported the wrong person, the wrong team or the wrong party because I had a hat with a color or word that could be mistaken.

But to be part of the red-hat wearing party is to sign off on kids in cages, selling out American elections to the Russians or the Chinese and endorsing the policies that will probably kill half-a-million Americans.

I can’t let anyone think for a millisecond I might be on board with any of that.

Now I don’t know what to do with the damn thing.

At some point, I paid good money for this thing. It rips at my non-existent soul to waste money like that.

If I give it away — or leave it at the thrift store or Goodwill, it could end up at a Trump rally in Fountain Hills on top of a cheap-ass, pointy-headed racist chanting “build that wall” and “lock her up” (Yes in 2020, they keep going back to those tired memes).

If I throw it in the trash, it could be fished out and end up on an even poorer pointy head.

I’d burn it, but the Arizona skies are already full of smoke from California and laden with dust since it hasn’t rained here since April.

I’m just going to have to force that thing back into the closet. I know that’s a destructive lifestyle for anything else. But for this damn red hat, it’s never coming out of the closet.

My father, the historian, is always sure someone in the future is going to dig through his papers and artifacts to really “reveal” what life was like in the 20th and 21st Centuries. His letters to friends read like Adams writing to Jefferson.

Shit. Now I’m going to have to pin a note to this red hat like a letter in a time capsule explaining that this old white guy never supported the Orange Putin Puppet.

it’s not like the Nazi flag in your great uncle Wolfgang’s closet in Hamburg. I’m not saving this shit as a sign of allegiance. I’m burying it deep like Tolkien’s precious “ring” hoping nobody else will ever find it and use its powers for evil.

“To whoever finds this red hat. We put it here not to praise Donald Trump, but to bury him so far behind the old shoes, suits that are too small, and the unused boxes of tile that no one will ever find it again.”

Note pinned to red hat

12 replies »

  1. Dumb Ass, It is my hat. I bought it years ago….long before MAGA. I promise I haven’t worn it n years and will never wear it again.
    Bear

  2. I was going to say you could just hold onto it for years until Trump is just a distant, unpleasant memory, but then you run the risk of forgetting about it and eventually dying and somebody in a future generation finding it and going “Man, I never would have guessed he was a Trumpster.” And that becomes your legacy. I say this because my mom’s friends who are in their eighties had a wooden swastika carved by one of their family members, who was German American, but carved it a couple decades before Hitler. They assumed it was created because the swastika is an ancient symbol of luck. But then it was stolen out of their house, probably by this teenager they had house sitting once, so now it’s probably being spread around that they are secret Nazis.

  3. K-man,
    When i see a MAGA hat it is always, always on a old white asshole.
    To me it makes them easier to identify. It’s funny i have the same dilemma with a red Texaco hat I have. I liked its old Iconic look and the old “you can trust your car with the man who wears a star” slogan that is not on the hat but implied. IT is not hidden in the closet -not to be mistaken for the red hat of shame. Also, here it is 2023 and we are still having to deal with this self centered meglomaniac . unbelievable .
    -Butterpants

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