Five O’Clock Shadow

Nobody grows a more hideous beard than I do. It’s genetic; the men throughout my lineage were baby faces! I can go a week without shaving and do business without worry. Nonetheless, and ironically, once alopecia had done its worst, I decided to grow a goatee, which most encouraged, with the notable exception of my wife. Once I did that, shaving became even more of a chore and I decided to simply go to a barber every couple of weeks for “the treatment.” This entailed number zero blade mowing of my scalp and and a trim and shave of my face. For twenty bucks and tip the treatment couldn’t be beat, providing serenity along with grooming.

Like everything else, Coronavirus obstructed this routine. Early on in the lockdown I picked up a deluxe Atra razor and blades, determined to shave at least once a week. Never happened. Near three months later I looked nefarious. Forget social distancing, my unkempt head and face warranted nothing less than exile. There is no doubt about it… adhoc hair and beard growth add age, something I need like a trip to Golden Corral.

And so about Memorial Day I faced the reckoning I began in early March. Of course, I had not the slightest clue how to go about it, but I understood scissors would be required before the razor. However, even after a solid twenty minutes with the shears, the landscape was still daunting. Nevertheless, with a hand full of Edge gel and Gillette’s “science-based precision system” I went to work. It was a calamity, like an old rusty Toro trying to cut a farmer’s field after a rain storm. I’m here to say one of the vaunted Atra blades is no match for dense facial growth. Had I not had a full pack to deploy, the result would have been ghoulish. At several points in the ordeal things seemed futile as I swore never to be so lazy again. But relentless determination finally paid off, and by the fourth blade I was clean shaven, albeit with gravely aggravated skin and a drain in danger of clogging. Lesson learned.

Since January of 2017 the face of America has grown unkempt and overgrown from negligence toward our most basic principles and the social progress they inform. And nowhere is this unattended tangle more unsightly than MAGA’s relentless efforts to split hairs in service to redefining what were accepted definitions of racist mentalities, constantly attempting to turn back the clock on what constitutes unacceptable conduct. As bad as Trump’s formal messaging has been – literally written by servile bigot Stephan Miller – his wayward off-the-cuff remarks have been much worse. Think about that one for a moment.

Both sides in Charlottesville have great people was eclipsed by “shithole countries,” which was consumed by overtly racist insults of elected minority lawmakers like “The Squad” and Maxine Waters, providing more than enough stochastic terrorist incitement to endanger their safety. The recent Tulsa outrage laid bare who Trump now considers his only means for political and personal salvation, his only reliable constituency to remain relevant and perhaps out of jail.

This hasn’t been a Presidency from nearly the start; now it’s become an effort by a white supremacist minority – along with fellow travelers consumed enough by Fox/AM nihilism to imbibe racist ugliness – to strong arm a passive majority, many of whom just want it all to go away. The murder of George Floyd provided a tipping point for anger focused less at Trump and MAGA than the pervasive bigotry it has unearthed and too many assumed was dead and buried long ago.

That perhaps a majority of protesters on the ground genuinely believe Biden and the establishment Democratic approach he offers doesn’t contrast enough with today’s MAGA GOP to be considered much more than a “lesser evil” speaks to the shameful tepidness of the party’s support for the Black Lives Matter and Colin Kapernicks of this world. I may have missed it, but I recall no white Democrat anywhere taking a knee when it counted, when it would have qualified as a profile in courage. Now it’s too late to obtain that sort of credibility.

Yet and still, the existential threat Trumpism poses demands a general resistance movement, and our politics still offers only a binary choice. Nothing could be worse than what now governs us, and he at least provides the service of going lower each day, making any sort of claim of equivalence with Democrats an utterly foolish proposition and reinforcing a now growing polling trend he should be gone yesterday. Latest surveys have Biden up by 12-16 points, that’s dead man walking territory.

But it’s not near enough for Biden and Democrats to merely offer sane decency regarding our race problem. That’s a one blade strategy. Transforming how police interact with communities is critically important, but it’s a half measure unless it reflects a broader understanding of why exactly it has to change. Until white America can sincerely demand police afford the same protection of basic civil rights to black America it expects for itself, we’re stuck in neutral. That so many whites seem utterly clueless as to how traumatic actually being arrested is betrays a cocoon of privilege that can’t even imagine being on the wrong side of an exchange with the law. That’s unacceptable.

Communities are defined by shared experiences. Right now in America that is not happening near enough between its white and minority citizens. Spending time together at work is insufficient. A couple hours at kids’ sporting events doesn’t cut it. A national campaign, relentlessly promoted by the Presidency’s bully pulpit, and embraced as an essential civic priority to learn and appreciate our commonality as well where we differ and why has to happen. White business interests must reach out to the black community in search of partners, not simply customers. The goal has to be more than what a balance sheet transcribes. This nation’s future survival depends on embracing the diversity that’s already a fact. We have to become friends, not just acquaintances; it’s as simple as that.

Obviously, MAGA sensibilities fit nowhere in that agenda. A November landslide could go far in punctuating the country’s determination to put regressive populism squarely in the rear view. Sadly, it’s a near certainty that won’t be enough and more than several blades will be required to hack away the beard we’ve ignored for far too long. The salvation of demanding more and refusing to accept less! BC