This part of the series will be a sticky one, politics. In 2020 I made the grave mistake of trying to remain neutral when asked by customers and others about my political beliefs.

Most of my neutrality came from the fact that I truly didn’t participate and was not informed of a ton of stuff. When baby Bush ran a muck during my adolescence I really tuned that one out moving into adulthood. I checked out when Al Gore lost and as a white American in a rich state even while homeless and being a heroin addict I had the luxury of not having any of that stuff impact me. If it did impact me I was truly unaware of it- heroin and prescription pills really made me blissfully ignorant.

When the mango Mussolini ran in 2016 I was so high on fentanyl I thought it was a joke like when Kanye West made comments about running. I didn’t think people were seriously considering the loser from the reality TV show where people get fired from corporate jobs was even a legit candidate. Boy was I wrong, whoops. I didn’t vote in any of the elections prior to 2024, but my silence was complicity and I will own that one today.

Where I made the grave mistake was offering some DT merch back in 2021 when I honest to god thought that asshat was going to prison. I didn’t realize some of my customers at the time who purchased that stuff were actually fucking morons who supported the dude. I was a fool in thinking Americans were smarter than they actually are, oops again there. I never should have offered the products in the first place. Capitalism and greed won there though and I shamefully offered products to people I truly had no business working with in the first place.

If you’re taking money from crappy people it does inevitably start to weigh on your conscience. I would try and justify it “well they are in a state with trash education so maybe they really don’t know any better”- those were excuses and shitty ones at that. I even looked at my family and justified their support of the guy because alcohol clouds your judgement- again an excuse and a crap one at that.

15 years ago you could shy away from that one when owning a business, today you don’t have that luxury. Remaining ignorant for all those years not only set me behind as an adult but I also had to unlearn a ridiculous amount of misinformation and nonsense- which is a constant battle I don’t think I’ll ever be done with.