We recently sought the service of a Barber; this time in Kingston, New York. When our turn came, we carefully rose to our feet and, with the aid of our (now mandatory) walker, proceeded to the indicated Barber Chair. After exchanging pleasantries with the barber, we artfully performed our recently developed Cirque du Soleil-style maneuver from the walker and successfully sat, facing the usual large mirror. As usual, we gazed at our reflected face in the large mirror and sighed with a combination of nostalgia but also thankfulness at the reflected gray, aged, albeit still functional senior citizen. The image in the mirror appeared to be looking back in a measure of sardonic recognition, enjoying the rare opportunity for a “time-out” from the contemporary challenging vicissitudes.
On this occasion, we somehow found ourselves again ruminating on the respective political and societal challenges, variously occurring in tandem with the conduct of our haircut and the like state of our respective past self-examinations with the aid of the ubiquitously existing barbershop mirrors. Over the course of a lifetime of monthly haircuts, our respective thoughts and concerns have varied in sync with our awareness and comprehension of contemporary problems.
During the period of our early Brooklyn childhood, our haircuts were cutomarily performed by an Italian Barber who played Operatic Music in his shop and was a gentle and paternal elder citizen with a large white mustache. Even as a child, I his learned to love the Italian Opera as well as the pungency of his Bay Rum. The barbershop mirror reflected back the challenging concerns of World War II. somewhat attenuated by the lollypop customarily awarded to all child customers.
Barbershop mirrors viewed during haircuts in the 1950s reflected the fascistic, un-American activities of the Joseph McCarthy era, in which paranoid and unsupported accusations of affiliation with the Communist Party eventuated in a National program analogous to the medieval inquisitions, which tragically caused the destruction of many careers and lives of innocent citizens. This mirror took years to clear up, but not before the imposition of unjust suffering and reputational loss of innocent American citizens. The Nation, to its enduring credit, survived the evilly inspired Senator Joseph McCarthy and his legions of paranoid inquisitors.
Our barbershop’s mirrored image during the 20 years of the Nationally divisive Vietnam War was one of National roiling discord. The Nation was rocked with rebellion, discord, criminal behavior, and came close to being completely torn apart. The Nation survived, and our mirrored image returned to normal.
On September 11, 1920, the face in the barbershop mirror reflected shock and concern regarding the surprising attack and horrific loss of life and immense damage to the World Trade Center, which was a definitive demonstration of our vulnerability. It took considerable time before our image in a barbershop mirror was inclined to reflect our restored calm and assured confidence.
Our recent exposure to the barbershop mirror, above, in addition to its unremmiting candor regarding the advance of our age, worrisomely reflected extreme concern regarding the great danger to the existential existence of the American Democratic government under the Presidency of Donald J. Trump, the latter motivated by his declaration of intention to be a dictator, his hubristic disregard for the American Constitution and Rule of law, his fascist program of “retribution” against his political opposition, his programmatic Gestapo-style attack on innocent Hispanic Citizens, his treasonous actions, including the purloining of top secret government documents, his bromance with Putin, his arrogation of the right to make war, his cruel deprivation og programs of assistance, viz., food, and medicine, both nationally and internationally, his unauthorized and sophomoric imposition of tariffs, inclusive of America’s trading partners, his unauthorized delusional chutzpah in the destruction of the East Wing of America’s Historic White House and his perverse support of the fossil fuel industry to “drill, baby drill,” his illegal and un-American use of the military for domestic purposes and as a public demostration of his delusional power.
It is our confident aspiration and expectation that in the very near future, the mirrors in the barber shops from which we dutifully request services will reflect a happier and historically appropriate, traditional image.
-p.
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