Beard Politics
Why all men of congress and executive power should be required to sport facial hair.
I was at my local coffee shop this morning doing my daily writing practice when I looked up to see a commercial on the television. Why anyone would mount a t.v. in a coffee house I am yet to figure out. Regardless, it was an advertisement for a revolutionary new technological advancement in the design of the single blade men’s razor.
For whatever reason it caught me off guard and I felt compelled to disrupt the man working on his laptop at the table across from me to exclaim “Oh shit man, it looks like we have come full circle with our razor shaving technology.”
Humoring me, he turned around to see the screen and digest this amazing bit of information that I had just discovered. He smiles, and then proceeds to tell me about an entire store at the Bellevue Mall that is dedicated solely to men’s facial hair removal. “It’s very fancy and expensive.” he says.
Leave it to Bellevue to have the customer base to support such a douche niche market.
While I could expound upon the symbolism of the ever increasing amount of razor blades present in the Gillette Mach 3, 4 and 5 generations of expanding razor blade shaving contraptions and leave behind stubbled trails of metaphors to read about America and all the problems caused by our bigger, and more is better attitude (though I would reserve an exception to say that to be an accurate assessment when it comes to whisker representation), what got me really stirred up is that men shave their beards clean off at all.
Ladies you think you want a man with a smooth clean shaven face, but you don’t.
Okay, so first off lets forget the hipster trend of beards that has revived the sensibility of keeping a beard in the first place. It is important here that we don’t go backward in some kind of revolt against this very important trajectory we are on to reclaim our manliness. Men growing beards is progress that brings our demanded sensitiveness in line with the need for a resurgence of genuine masculinity.
This is not a macho manifestation to reclaim some kind of false notion of lost power or status, but a destination in which men will arrive as deep thinking individuals with conviction. Follow me here.
Once a man shaves his beard he is immediately met with a sense of loss. He is lacking something. If we have learned anything from centuries of men being in charge is that nothing good comes from men in power who feel that they are coming up short somewhere. They will either fill that vacuum with expensive toys, bully other boys (or women if they are weak as well as inadequate), or they will just blow shit up. It is just how it goes. Ladies, you do not want the man who feels he lacks.
A beard helps a man think. The stroking of a beard is not a metaphor for masturbation. The soft skin of a clean shaven face is more like a penis than than the wild thickets of a mans scruff. It puts him in touch with his inner rugged survivalist. The stroking is a genuine function of deep contemplation. It is a meditation apparatus.
A man with a beard is more likely to find himself dragging his balls through the underbrush of an old growth forest with a Robert Bly influenced group of men on a self discovery mission to ponder the meaning of wildness than turning against those he perceives as a threat and destroying them with whatever means they have at their disposal.
Okay, so what about those Islamic radicals you ask. The terrorists have great big beards and they are out there fucking shit up too. This may be true of a small group of radicals. However they are corrupted by twisting the politics of their religion. But I guarantee you that they have thoroughly contemplated their actions and are motivated from a place of deep conviction, not because they are lacking what we Westerners think is absent from their antiquated life experience.
Every man of congress, executive, or institutional authority should be required by law to sport facial hair.
The clean shaven face is the same as greased palms. Nothing sticks. Any idea or policy that is worth a shit to the vast majority of people just slips right through. That’s why our leaders are fed with silver spoons.
Think of the clean shaven politicians face as a ice curling sheet. Okay, before I get too deep with this let me first say that Curling is a cordial “sport”. It is most popular in countries that are considered more polite, are rarely caught up in wars, and not so coincidentally, I believe, are the realms of men who by vast majority wear beards. It is a game where opponents applaud each others great shots. Thank you nice people in the lands of Canada and Scandinavia. I am not intending to offend those participants or fans of curling, may be a little (come on a sport, really), but I found the terminology ironically rich in helping me to make my point.
The faces of men in congress are curling ice sheets, the slick rink upon which the game is played. The stone, or rock that is released is a policy moving its way to the house of representatives and senate. In curling, the concentric circles that the players are aiming for is in fact called the house. The center circle is called the button. Those bastards keep pushing my button.
The person who releases the stone is called the skip, or captain. Lets view this person as a corporation or some other big money interest. The zone they release the stone from is called the hack. Think of this loosely as a hack point of view, the screwed up place of elite self interest.
From the hack perspective, the stone cold policy is released, given a slight twist, or curl (agenda) and is guided across the slippery face of politicians by people with brooms, sweepers. Lets call those sweeper people lobbyists. They have the job of delivering the stone to the house where they knock out all the other competitors stones. The ones with the most stones in the house wins. Sounds about right.
99% of Americans are getting fucked over because the game is being played by men who shave their faces.
I think if these guys really desire that clean look, they should be old school about it. Let someone else stick a knife to their throat and remove it for them. Preferably wielded by someone who has stood in line at a soup kitchen, has spent time on a Native American reservation, or who has known the true neglect of government policy toward the poor.
One last point on the importance speaking the truth of beards to power. Abraham Lincoln, who is so often considered to be the greatest American president wore a beard. A great thinker and a man of conviction most would agree. Indeed he shared his wisdom and has shaped democratic ideals and philosophy in a positive way for over a century and a half. However, I do have to wonder if FDR, my personal crowning preference for greatest president, had not limited his commitment to fantastic facial fur to just his upper lip, though a full mustache it was! - if we would not see in our great time of inequality, a genuine democratic revolution for workers that appears to me one of our most dire needs.
Beards of the world unite!
