A Members Only jacket means a vote for me!

On first glance, this may seem to be quite a reach for relevancy, but I think it's valid, nonetheless.

Way back in the early 1980s when I was still a young man and gave a toss about mid-range fashion for guys, I recall shopping at a Chess King at South Park Mall in Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte! The Queen City! Which seemed like Southern-fried civilization at the time because we didn't have "fancy" stores like that in Eastern North Carolina back then.

Store clerks worked on consignment at Chess King. I know this because I still remember this weird incident where a store clerk started literally begging me to buy something, anything, to save his job. He did this in front of his manager, and his manager stood by, arms crossed, in a way that suggested he expected the clerk to start performing up to and including genuflecting and prostrating himself to make a sale.

I didn't understand any of this at the time. I found the encounter confusing. Like any good WASP, I also felt deeply embarrassed and annoyed by the clerk's actions. Whether fairly or not, I thought the clerk was very much a loser; in the interactions I had noted between the clerk and the manager before the encounter, and in the midst of the encounter itself, the clerk struck me as someone who had been sliding through life on charm and good looks. He was in trouble now because that had only gotten him so far in a world that was based on sales and results.

And he wasn't even that good looking.

 

I wasn't too sympathetic so I didn't end up buying anything that day. And I *loved* Chess King, so that's saying something. I think Chess King sold Members Only jackets, and I would have genuflecting myself to find one in a color I liked at a price I could afford.

All of this is to say that now I think I might have some insight into how China's Xi Jinping must have felt when Our Fearless Leader, Donald J. Trump, started begging him to buy America's soybeans in order to help him get re-elected.

Key:

Me = China/Xi Jinping

Loser store clerk = Trump

Chess King = America 

Member's Only jacket = soybeans

Store manager = Wealthy Republican supporters of Trump or maybe John Bolton. (I haven't figured this out yet.)