I am hardly the expert, and my research certainly is limited. Nevertheless, I will nominate a booth at the entrance of the Daytona Beach Flea Market as the central nexus of the MAGA world. On display and for sale are a tremendous variety of branded merchandise—mostly banners and tee shirts, but also pins, buttons, hats, shot glasses, parasols, and so forth. Everything is printed on fields of bright red or bright blue, with messages in bold, sans-serif font, gleaming white. Choices include the garden-variety familiar messages as well as specialized ones, some playing off the word “Trump” as used in card games. Democrat heroes—Obama, Biden, and Hillary—are the fools and losers, as you might guess. Kamala Harris, curiously, is not referenced. Neither are immigrants or homosexuals, for which perhaps we can be grateful.
The wares in adjoining booths, branded for the National Football League and NASCAR auto racing, pale in comparison.
Also worth mentioning is a non-political tee shirt, proudly displayed above others of its kind, emblazoned with the following text, which I cite verbatim:
“I’m here for the titties and BEER!”
Pictured above the all-cap word is an illustration of a frothy stein.
Think about the design, and it makes a certain amount of sense. The correct choice of the two objects of the sentence was depicted. I will wager that the yahoos who want to communicate the shirt’s message would not want the suggestion of a large bosom heaving out of their chests.
Somehow, Donald Trump speaks to these people. I think he communicates two extraordinarily appealing messages. One is “You are my kind of person, a real winner!” The second is the darker flip side: “Those others are not our kinds of people, and I’ll make them suffer.”
I don’t know how we reach the dyed-in-the-lost-teeth Trump supporters of the world. They’re not going to respond to tote bags from National Public Radio or the eulogies for Jimmy Carter. We need someone like Burt Reynolds or Tom Petty—both Florida heroes, both long departed—to promote the values of easy living, garish colors, truck driving and rock and roll, and liberal economic and political policies. Jeez, why can’t these values go together?
One other point worth mentioning, and the novel writer within me thinks its key: The flea market is mostly deserted. Half of the stalls are vacant, maybe a quarter more are covered in burlap. None of the vendors, including the Trump booth, are doing any business, because no customers are around to sell to—apart from me, and I am not buying. Granted, the time is relatively early on a Sunday morning, but all my previous visits to this venue—maybe 4 or 5 over the past 12 years, because I like flea markets—put me among a bustling and vibrant crowd of cognescenti, not an absent one.
The only action at the flea market is in the farmers’ market section, where vendors of many ethnicities—white and black, Hispanic and Asian, as well as men and women, and nary a political tee shirt in sight—are hawking their grapefruits and strawberries to a few shoppers.
If my visit to the flea market were part of a novel I was writing, I would intend it to symbolize the peak of the MAGA movement and Trump’s hold on the masses—even now, when the man is on the doorstep of re-taking and re-mangling the oath of office. He has already retreated on the promise of lowering the price of groceries, which arguably was the reason he was elected. Plus one of his more famous minions, Hulk Hogan, got lustily booed at a wrestling event.
Could the fever finally be breaking, or could it start breaking in the near future? The thought might be more wishful thinking than cogent analysis. Regardless….we all have work to do. The resistance begins now.
Rewinding the clock by a day. I need an Uber ride to my newly-purchased vehicle. Most of the options on the app are over $100, but one is much cheaper, so I choose it. It’s from Barry in his Kia Soul, a car that turns out to be a little beaten on the edges but not horribly.
Which could also describe Barry.
“Uber takes 70 percent of each drive, can you believe that?” This is almost his first sentence to me.
“That’s awful,” I say.
“Plus I’ve got gas, insurance, tolls. It’s barely worth the effort.”
“Really?”
“And I’m working 84 hours a week.”
“Geez, that’s awful.”
“It’s awful!” he repeats. “But I gotta do it.”
In fits and pieces, I learn the reason. Barry has two grown children and is now married to his second wife, whom he calls manipulative and terrible. But he is extraordinarily fond of her son, now 13 years old, who seems permanently in the hospital in Costa Rica with a laundry list of ailments, including a cancer bout and a limp leg and autism. Barry flies down once a month to see him and foots the $4000 a month medical bills. All earned from Uber.
“I’m sure you’ll give me a 5 star recommendation and a good tip.”
When I leave him, he gives me a fist bump and tells me it was great to meet me.
I give him a 5 star rating. I give him a 15% tip. I would have done that had he kept quiet, without all the story telling. I do believe the story. It’s not something easily made up. But I’ve been wrong before.
One additional Florida escapade: For a quick, mental-health break, I pull off I-95 to visit the Jacksonville Zoo, an institution of which I became aware thanks to a road sign. The zoo is on lovely grounds covered in palm trees and sawgrass and bamboo, and a trail leads to a picturesque view of the harbor. Almost everywhere are colorful sculptures of animals, all bright and modern, and I’ll upload some photos with this post. They also have a carousel and a playground and snack stands and souvenir stations. The only thing missing is….hmmm….living animals. OK, not fair of me. I witness some giraffes, and an attractive sloth, and lots of tropical birds including flamingos, and snakes and turtles in terrariums. But for a place that calls itself a zoo…geez, shouldn’t they have more live exhibits and fewer sculptures?
On reflection, the Jacksonville Zoo might be preparing us for the future. Living, exotic animals are expensive to keep and maintain, especially in replications of their natural habitat. They also, many of them, are going extinct in the wild. An animal sculpture park may be all that our descendants will have available.
I spend the night in Lumberton, North Carolina, at a Best Western conveniently located off the freeway exit, like so many of its kith and kin. I pore my heart out to the desk clerk, who tells me how glad she is that I have chosen Lumberton instead of pushing northward to Roanoke Rapids or Richmond or God knows where. In the room, I open the laptop to complete some publishing work, and for background entertainment, find a Seinfeld marathon on a cable channel. I know all the episodes, of course, but haven’t watched them in years.
Man, that was a well done show. Great characters, fantastic acting, snappy dialogue, profoundly humorous situations, and above all, great intelligence and care put into the script. Line after line is believable and ridiculous at the same time—and not just the catch phrases.
Thanks again, Jerry and the gang. I expect I’ll never crash into a windscreen coffee table while dancing to African music, but am grateful that Kramer did so for us all.
