The Clothes Don't Make the Man

Quick note before we get into this week’s edition. Moving forward, I’ll be publishing on Monday morning to give myself the weekend to get each week’s edition prepped.

On February 28th, President Zelensky of Ukraine sat down with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in the Oval Office. For all intents and purposes, it should have been a normal meet and greet between two Heads of State with a couple pleasantries exchanged and a quick photo op. However what unfolded that day was unprecedented, devolving into a shouting match with Trump and Vance teaming up to bully Zelensky.

But even before the fireworks started flying, there was somewhat of an odd, confrontational question posed by a reporter in the room: “Why don’t you wear a suit?”

Now this isn’t to say that such a question couldn’t have been asked in good faith. Countless official visits to the White House people dressed formally or at least in business attire. But Zelensky showed up in what many have called tactical attire, as he has for every appearance he’s made since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The question of why Zelensky dresses he way he does would provide far more insight.

The easy, obvious answer is that Zelensky is dressing like the soldiers fighting on the front-lines in a show of solidarity. One could also look at the way war has changed the economy of Ukraine to prioritize the production of goods that are useful for the fight. However, the more interesting answer is that the way Zelensky dresses is a negotiation tactic and a challenge.

Americans have developed an odd tendency to value civility, and decorum over all else. We see a lot of injustice, but simply throw up our hands, and accept as some kind of necessary inconvenience of life, with the implication that to change it would require action that might be somehow improper or inconvenient.

We saw this on full display during BLM protests in 2020, where the vast majority of the nation saw what happened to George Floyd as an inexcusable act of cruelty. But when faced with the thought of protests that might cause some traffic, or the possibility that the window of a Starbucks might be broken, people suddenly started to waver on their convictions.

We may be facing systemic issues that see most of us falling further and further behind and finding a basic life more and more unaffordable, but the idea that someone take any kind of action other than voting is something that many find unimaginable.

In a more extreme case, you have Luigi Mangione, who murdered an Insurance company executive on the street, and is currently incarcerated and waiting for trial. But nobody seems to mind that insurance executives profit off of denying medical care to the people they insure, which inevitably leads to thousands of people dying.

It’s safe to say that America will tolerate all kinds of injustice and harm done to people so long as the people doing it dress nice and don’t violate the rules of decorum. That is part of the problem, the system itself relies on our unwillingness to be rude or inconvenienced to continue doing vast amounts of harm to all of us.

So, Zelensky going into a meeting without adhering to the rules and dressing up for the occasion sends a message and a challenge to other leaders. Are they there for PR and photo ops, or are they going to do something meaningful to help the people of Ukraine?

Those are the kinds of questions we should all ask ourselves. What kinds of harm do we tolerate because it’s done within the norms of our social order? Are You willing to be impolite to correct injustice in the world?

Never underestimate the power of music. Here’s Ukranian soldiers singing the classic antifascist anthem “Bella Ciao”.