My people have called these shores home since before the American Revolution. My ancestors fought in that war and also for the Union in the Civil War. We still think of ourselves as “Swamp Yankees.” Our motto could very well be: Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do or Do Without.
As a child, my Christmas stocking always had a fresh orange nestled in the toe. I guess it was to remind us of a time when getting an orange for Christmas was an unbelievable luxury.
Later, as a teenager, I came across a copy of The Preppy Handbook. I knew nothing of summer homes (or even summer camps) but I discovered that the upper-class version of my home embodied a similar aesthetic. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, don’t be flashy, having your name in the paper is vulgar, money can’t buy you class.
I encountered similar versions of these values later in life when I met African American families whose people had come north during the Great Migration, and once again in a group of Midwestern farmers with whom I spent some time. Your word is your bond...many hands make light work...welcome the stranger...share your blessings because you have been blessed.
Today, as a grown woman, I have accepted such values as my own because I find them to be good and true. That is why, out of everything we have endured since the MAGAts have come to power, we need to have a serious talk about Paul Manafort’s hideous $15,000 ostrich coat. And his $18,500 Python skin jacket, his $10,000 karaoke system, and his ginormous M-shaped flower bed.
I know Judge Ellis has told the jurors that Paul Manafort is not on trial for his lavish lifestyle. That is good advice for the jurors. We need them to make a clear-headed judgment about the $16 million dollars he tried to hide from the IRS. But for those of us sitting in the court of public opinion, we need to have a serious discussion about this class of men who go to work every day to disenfranchise voters, cut the social safety net, and bloviate about family values, only to go home to cheat on their own friends and colleagues, their wives and, predictably, the U.S. treasury.
We all know that national defense, building and maintaining infrastructure, running a legal system, and educating the next generation (just to name a few functions of government) costs money. Most Americans have no choice but to simply pay whatever tax liability their employer reports to the IRS. Who do men like Manafort and Gates think they are to excuse themselves from this effort?!? Who do they think they are to push their share of the tax bill over to you and me so that they have the money to set their mistresses up with big city apartments? Heaven knows the US has big bills to pay and Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago aren't going to pay for themselves.
These men are shameful. And vulgar. It seems to me that once upon a time a wide swath of Americans could easily identify these men as grifters, hucksters and flimflammers and be able to call them into account. Yet even my own parents, who spent so much of their lives “making do and using it up,” are giving such men a pass because reasons. And so are some of the Midwestern farmers, the very same people who never once went out of the state in 40 years of marriage because the cows always needed milking.
So, yes, we need to talk about Paul Manafort’s ostentatious ostrich jacket. Men like Manafort and Gates don’t just want low taxes, they want low taxes on what little income the government knows about and they want to pay no taxes at all on the rest of it. They embezzle from their own friends and colleagues, and stick the rest of us with their unpaid bills, all so they can strut around town in hideous clothing with paid-for women.
We are a nation of chumps if we can’t figure out a way to call out this shameful behavior from an entire class of powerful men and stop it.