Wall Street Crooks Wear Suits And Ties – On Dressing For Speculation and Bailouts
“Regardless of the culture or its origins, monocultural dress expectations affect people everywhere. In short, to be in business or politics today you must wear the clothes of the Anglo gang, and suffer quietly your cultural crisis and schizophrenia.”
Kent Welton, FreeDress For Success
“In London in February, demonstrators hanged a mannequin dressed in a tie and bowler hat from Marble Arch.”
The biggest robbers wear the nicest clothes, and our very own Wall Street crooks wear the most expensive suits and ties. Clearly, the “Anglo gang” is costing us big time today... so what's the connection?
The reason must be that when you’re selling stuff that is not exactly legit, smells of fraud, is devoid of complete disclosure, lacks economic necessity, and is corrupted by self-interest and deregulation several times over then you need really nice expensive clothing... to fool the “marks.”
Another reason appears to be that we feel the need to camoflauge ourselves and wear a “power suit” because our product or service is not exactly “transparent” as they say. We may do so because we are not exactly feeling authentic, honest, or willing to appear less than authoritative - as defined solely by our “appropriate” dress and that silly colored cloth wound tightly around our necks serving to strangle oxygen from our brains.
I guess doing jobs that do not need doing is tough work, takes a hell of a lot of convincing and, in the minds of the less than honest, requires a big office and fancy suits. One could say that the first rule of corruption is the bigger the flim-flam, the finer the clothes.
Notice the fancy sartorial garb on the bailout artists - whose fine suits served to get us in this mess in the first place. Dressing For Success? Dressing for duplicity? Dressing to make a killing? Dressing to convince others to give you money, and then more money. Dressing to globalize and homogenize every god damn thing in the universe?
Far too many today remain commanded by their masters in the marketplace – i.e., the overlords who understand the first principles of facism, fakery, and financial trickery is to dictate that people put on stiff costumes for work as a means of taking over their identity and lives, and getting them to sell, say, credit default swaps . It’s clearly a test... and one that Zippy would fail.
Clearly too many people have been hypnotized by “standard” business dress, and it is really quite funny if it weren’t so damm serious and costly to our well-being.
Being a student of nonsense, some time ago I wrote a book called FreeDress For Success, A BusinessMan’s Guide To Sartorial Disarmament, under the luscious pseudonym of Max Comfort.
In what was called “a wonderful book about life, business management and the nonsense of the ‘dress for success’ movement” by management Guru, Tom Peters, I thoroughly pilloried the “Dress For Success” agenda which, on its face, is really quite laughable. Such a juicy target we scribblers seldom get.
I had always been mystified by the strange “standard” apparel so common in the professions. Consider that we have a hundred different types and styles of cars, toasters, rugs, appliances and clothing and yet so many of the “best and brightest” seem unable to choose but one dark, uncomfortable, and serious mode and model.
Is this sleepwalking? Hypnotism? A bad habit? A sadistic and intentional infliction of discomfort upon oneself? A simple reflection of sartorial fascism in the marketplace? A deliberate attempt by the “masters of the universe” to efface individuality? A fear of denim? The questions here are legion... but the answers are simple.
Indeed, but how do we account for this peculiar lack of freedom in this so-called “free market” and “free country” – particularly among the money-making-money-producing-nothing professions? It surely must be a nefarious plot... or a shitload of cowardice.
So great... the globalization of uniformity... how inspiring and homogenizing. Its all about “harmonization” remember? Gosh, forced trade and interdependency and linking us all into a global depression – gee, what a great idea. Let’s now act swiftly to remove any remaining local freedom or personal style – then we will know we have a great “free market” all over the world.
One World, One Bank, One Suit. The Fuhrer has spoken.
Loosen up, we’re not on this planet to be uncomfortable or to make others uncomfortable. We’re not here to pretend. We’re here to be ourselves and to enjoy and retain the great diversity of things, places, cultures, and dress. Yet so many keep talking about freedon while they keep crushing it – a sure sign of mental illness, and of a crushing uptightness.
Recovery and rehabilitation, both personal and economic, requires a little more truthfulness in our being and relations with others. However, those who act to take your freedom and money must also first fake their own freedom and money.
Nevertheless, with so many fine suits doing perp walks today, change will come to these last bastions of sartorial uniformity, corruption, and idiocy. Just remember, as president Andrew Jackson said, “one man with courage makes a majority.” So be that man.
Kent Welton,
PanditPress.com,
MaxComfort.com
