It was St Patrick’s Day in West Chester, and I had people from the other side of the world with me at a table for eight on the busiest night of the year for a very popular Irish Pub. March Madness was on TV, the music was loud, and there was green beer, as much as anybody could ever want of it. The people I was with had come from a long way to see me, so I wanted to show them the festivities of how Americans celebrate such a unique day, and they were having a lot of fun witnessing the cultural phenomena. But we were all dressed in expensive suits and still had on our ties, which for me is usual. We felt lucky to have a table with such a large crowd when the rest of the place was standing-room only. There were a lot of people singing and dancing everywhere, so having a nice seat in the back of the room to see it all was quite a nice experience for my guests. It was a great evening, but our table attracted a lot of attention because, as I’ve explained before, I don’t dance, and I certainly don’t loosen up, and I was still dressed and would continue to be dressed as if I were going to a formal occasion. That prompted a really large lady in her middle years dressed all in green with Irish-inspired pom poms to slide her chair over and lobby us to take off some of our clothes and loosen our ties. Obligingly, some of the members of our table did so immediately, and the gazes all turned toward me. That’s when I explained to the lady that this was as loose as I would ever get. I put my fingers between the collar of my shirt, fully buttoned, and my neck and explained that if I could do that, that was loose enough.
Well, this lady had invested her entire reputation in this action, and all the people at her table, who looked like another train derailment in Ohio by the way they were dressed and behaved, chided her quickly that her magical womanly charms didn’t seem to be working. My action was not anywhere in the script of social behavior for pub behavior, so there was an awkward moment. So she rewarded the people at my table who had taken off their ties and loosened their shirts with ostentatious flirtation as if sexual opportunity might have been even a remote possibility. But I refused to budge and proceeded to make fun of her loose clothing and her entire table. I have a rule in life: I just don’t do the kinds of things she asked under any social pressure. I usually would never be in such a place where drinking was the key activity and singing to the music of classic rock songs played so loudly that it could burst your eardrums. But we were far enough away to at least have a conversation, even if we had to be so close to each other to speak that intimacy was the very next option. And my refusal was a grave disappointment to this woman who obviously thought she had the charms of a young woman that could easily get young men to do anything she asked for, promising further sexual contact. Once the others at our table realized I wasn’t going to budge, which was no surprise to them, they stopped feeding her encouragement and kept their dress respectful, and that’s how it remained for the rest of the night. The woman went back to her own table, upset and pouting. After another twenty minutes of uncomfortable glances, they all got up and left, and that table was quickly replaced by people standing and waiting for a chance to sit down.
That wasn’t the only time when people took notice of our table and tried to figure us out. Several of the people with me were taken aside by members of the room and asked what we were all about. People thought we were members of the mob sitting like we were without any dancing and wearing business suits past 8 PM at night. People were very suspicious of us the entire time we were there, and when we finally did get up to leave, there was an odd joy that the people in the room expressed. It was a fun evening and a chance for me to see how other people live in the world. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the basketball. I know my guests had a great time. So it was everything we wanted it to be, but I couldn’t help but notice the negatives, and that traces back to a real problem in our culture, this stupid notion that people can work from home and still be productive and that we can have “casual Fridays” as a rebellion against professional attire, and still maintain the greatest economy in the world. People who think such things are smoking crack. For me, wearing a tie and business attire is the same as wearing weapons of war on a battlefield. It’s a necessity for productive commerce. Nobody wants to deal with some slack-jawed loser with some loose Hawaiian shirt while exchanging business for millions of dollars. This whole notion that such a thing was possible was given to American culture by the lazy Europeans and insurgents of communism around the world looking for sameness among their individuals. Not individual expressions of professionalism, which has always been the standard in America.
Being loose is not a value system I have any value for. I think Americans should never have accepted the dumb, liberal idea of “hanging loose,” as they say in Hawaii, and bring back from their vacations to Florida, Hawaii, and other places in Europe these dumb ideas about relaxing so much. It should be clear to people by now that all the propaganda we have received about working too hard, avoiding heart attacks and stress, and going to work more casually were all prequels to the kind of work-from-home policies that would come from the Great Reset, a communist takeover of all our industry and to weaken the workforce from warriors of capitalism to mask-wearing submissives who follow instructions from centralized authority and to then become the new standard bearers of a collectivist approach to a new partnership between business and government that provided much less to the consumer than the massive options we had under more freedom and capitalism in general. I dress well because I respect work and enjoy work and pressure. Meanwhile, the government takeover of all things productive was to speak against work, to expand government so that everyone would eventually be a government worker in some form or another. You could see in the court filing that the Biden administration just lost regarding the Covid vaccines the original strategy. The government showed its hand in that one trying to portray Biden as a CEO of the entire Federal workforce, including any contractors, and that a single-point policy infusion would be possible. Of course, the government lost that case because it was unconstitutional, just as all the Covid attempts at a Great Reset were. But these maniacal characters have gotten away with thinking such things because of the kind of barflies that were at that Irish Pub on St. Patrick’s Day.
Loose clothing types who think hanging loose is a value system and that all those uptight, suit-wearing people out there are just working themselves into an early grave with heart attacks and bad health. All of that is untrue. Those beliefs are just early versions of the Covid scare, where health officials could bring communism to our culture through fear of overwork and psychological safety. Drink more. Have more sex with strangers. And waste your time singing to depressing classic rock songs while your country burns to the ground. No, I’ll continue to wear my tie and business jacket even past midnight in such social conditions. And I am very proud to do so.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 