Critics and competitors alike have taken to social media, excoriating the latest ad campaign from Gillette.  The razor company’s clumsy attempt at highbrow public discourse in the wake of the #MeToo movement blames America’s “toxic masculinity” for a litany of societal ills, from bullying to stalking to menstruation, and implores us to “do better.”  Amid the stream of videos showing angry men dumping their Fusion 5 blades into toilets and garbage cans, I would be far from the first to observe that the company is using ardent feminism to promote products aimed at a most mannish attribute – facial hair.

It’s a jumble worthy of Caitlyn Jenner.  Reflexively, our survival instincts prompt us to seek solid ground in this swirl of non-binary gender fluidity and contrived pronouns; we have become, as a result, desperate for certainty.  So if Tim Tebow’s engagement fails to convince us of his true sexuality, we can rather point to Jeff Bezos’ divorce: shelling out $66 billion to upgrade the wife leaves no doubt as to what side of the fence he plies.

Look, I’m not saying that all men are saints.  Paul Anthony Menchaca posed as a Downs Syndrome patient to trick caregivers into bathing him and changing his soiled diapers. Ed Buck’s apartment is apparently littered with overdosed male prostitutes.  The New Jersey Clergy Abuse Task Force just made its first of countless arrests while a comatose nursing facility patient was raped to parturition in Phoenix.

What any of this has to do with shaving is beyond me. Sure, it’s frustrating that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) avows white nationalism with impunity on the House floor. Yes, it’s maddening that Robert Mueller moves slow enough to threaten the time-space continuum even though the FBI has joined the rest of us in suspecting Trump as a Russian agent.  Clearly, the polity remains unquenched with the Special Prosecutor’s weak dribble of indictments.  They care not about the grifters, low level GRU operatives, and the odd oligarch.  They want the orange head!

So too do the 800,000 furloughed federal workers, many of whom are forced to stay on the job without pay.  And all this over a wall that was little more than a coded campaign symbol for I’m-still-pissed-over-Obama white nationalism.  I thought the feckless history of the Great Wall of China or the copious tunnels Hamas and Hezbollah have burrowed into Israeli territory might best spotlight the misguidedness of the President (or rather that of his puppet masters at Fox News), but I was usurped by the 376 asylum seekers who last week dug their way under the border fence in Yuma, Arizona only to turn themselves into Border Patrol agents.

Meanwhile, NBC showed hard evidence that the steel balustrades favored by the White House could be sawn through with those plastic utensils you get with a McDonald’s Bacon Ranch Salad.  It should be noted, too, that after the administration was exposed lying about the apprehension of thousands of terrorists at the border (the overwhelming majority are in fact caught at airports) preemptive reports have circulated showing that nearly all of the methamphetamines and opioids illegally trafficked into this country arrive concealed in vehicles and shipping containers passing through official ports of entry.  The only material drug seizures that occur at the border involve marijuana, which is both far less pernicious and legally obtainable now in almost every state.

The whole notion of the wall is, to put it in Trump’s agonizingly hampered lexicon, a disaster.  To wit: a GoFundMe page established to privately fund the wall returned the $20 million it raised when it became apparent that the multi-billion-dollar target could not be obtained.  However, along with a refund check, donors did receive a Trump 2020 t-shirt that reads:

PROUD THAT MY WAGES

KEEP BROWN KIDS IN CAGES!