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"Trump's trade war imperils Spanish hatmaker's business with US Orthodox Jews"

- actual news headline

 

Oh noes, not the magic fedoras!

Now, OK, I get Reuters is trying to point out that our presidunce holding the economy hostage so he can extort bribes for special tariff exemptions will have numerous unforeseen consequences in fields you've never even thought about. But you could've just said "hats" and it would've still sounded weird enough. Mostly it reminds me the ramifications work both ways.

 

On a completely unrelated topic: are chain letters still a thing? I have to assume they are, and I'm just not seeing them anymore. Maybe Google or Microsoft's just censoring them out of circulation before they even reach my junk folder. Which I guess would be wrong from a censorship angle (junk folders exist for that reason) but not wrong enough for me to side with spammers. Chain e-mails were a freakin' huge annoyance in the internet's early days almost on par with the standard "enlarge your mortgage" spam. But when they jumped to mind recently I realized something I hadn't considered back in the day: how many of them used religious language like earning favor in the eyes of tha lawd, or "grace" or more commonly curses if you don't forward. And it turns out such stupidity goes back centuries and was indeed from its very inception not merely vaguely superstitious but religious.

 

But then we shouldn't be surprised that tracing irrationality leads back to the fountainhead of irrationality. Is there such a leap from "not breaking the chain" to re-buying the same hat every three years to stay in line with community standards?

 

Yes, side-effects are a bitch. Jews mostly voted against Trump. Or did they? The biggest source of votes for Republican graft and vandalism is the uneducated religious rabble, and promoting the mentality of make-believe, by whatever denomination, promoting the mindset that decisions (sartorial or otherwise) should be based on affiliation to caveman superstitions, feeds that reactionary agenda. Every yutz banging his bowler against the wall voted to go hatless for an entire lifetime before the current robber baron took office.

 

"There are hat factories in the United States, but they are highly specialised in cowboy hats," he said.

... So be jewish in a cowboy hat, I won't give a shit.

 

 

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P.S.: Forward this post to five people you know or great nondenominational guilt-tripping shall ensue.