Dirt Washing.

Over the last 15,000 to 20,000 years of Homo Sapiens existence, as a species, we've lived through all kinds of washing. 

I'd imagine that all kinds of polytheists during the years of 

Akhenaten (3500 years or so ago) pretended to abide by the Pharoah's orders and pretended to be monotheists, so as not to be buried in a heap of ashes until suffocation takes over. I'd imagine a lot of people pretended to be into Yahweh, who secretly kept a picture of the golden calf on their iPhones.

Certainly, 700 years or so ago in what's now Spain and Portugal, a lot of Jews pretended to be Christians so as to avoid Torquemada's personal pan auto da fé. I'd guess in the "new World," there were more Jews in 16th Century lands that are today New Mexico than there are today. But they were Goy-washing. You know, so as not to get burnt at the all you can eat stake-house.

More recently, of course, brands have "African-American-washing," "Asian-washing," "Women's-washing," "LGBTQ+

-washing" and just about "Everything-You-Can-Shake-a-stick-at-washing." Of course, purpose-washing and green-washing are almost everywhere. You can usually spot these when a $16 Billion corporation adds a pattern to their logo on LinkedIn. For an entire week!

Lately, I've noticed a different kind of washing that really makes me feel dirty. Filthy, in fact.

I'm going to call it "Family-Washing."

In a nutshell, Family-Washing is most-pernicious when people and entities who are callous, mean and inhuman reassure you that when you work with them or buy from them, "you're family."

This happens at airlines, hotels, agencies, all sorts "drive-cost-out-of-the-system-and-therefore-service-so-we-can-maximize-profit-and-executive-bonuses-to-the-exclusion-of-decent-treatment" entities. The more an entity operates based on low-bidding, the more likely they are to tell you you're "family."

If your airplane seat is sized to fit no ass larger than that of a  Capuchin monkey (see above) you can be sure that some crackling loud speaker in words so fast you can barely understand what they're saying will welcome you to "Sudden-Drop-In-Cabin-Pressure Air." Who's slogan is "you're as likely to find your luggage as you are to find common courtesy." At Sudden-Drop-In-Cabin-Pressure Air, "we treat you like family." (So what if it's Joan Crawford's family.)

In the agency world, you get traife like this: "I admire people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings." To which, an astute observer would append: "That's why we have a 67% annual attrition rate, offer no salary increases, make people work over-time for no extra pay, and fire everyone over 50. We're Family, like the Mansons."

Then there's my local grocery store, where you couldn't find anyone to ask a question of and the meat slicers rarely have time to take a break from coughing in the pastrami. They're not a grocery store anymore. They're my family market. 

I know, I'll go there and buy two cousins, an aunt, and four nephews. Plus, my family doesn't make me pay for bags, ignore me, make me wait on long lines, and routinely sell past-expiration-date chicken.

Worst of all is my last example. I just deposited some money into my grandson's 529 account. Assuming there's a country in 15 years, it would be nice if he had some money for college. And for the time being, I get a small tax deduction.

Within minutes of making my annual deposit, I got this ad from a company associated with the company I have my 529 with, Fidelity. I "buy" something, and immediately my name is brokered. Thanks, fam.

This humble blog gets about 80,000 readers a week. I presume most of those readers at some point came from some sort of family, even if, like I was, you were raised by wolves.

Have any of you ever posed like the people in the photograph below? 

I can't think of a better way to share head-lice, beard-lice, and general nausea.

We're family!

By the way, back about 75-years-ago, when it appeared the United States and its Allies had defeated the Nazis, many of those who had collaborated and worked for the Nazis and participated in their murder, theft, abuse and generalized horrors underwent a process called Persilschein.

Persilschein literally means Persil ticket. It's named, in part, after Persil, popular laundry detergent. Nazi collaborators and sympathizers (if they had enough money and were valuable enough to Western anti-communists) could receive (for pay or for free) a Persilschein. It essentially stated, no matter how dirty they were, that they had a clean political past. All that Nazi-stuff, poof, disappeared, like your victims.

I would assume, in the spirit of "washing" that is the subject of this post, that many of the trump-cohorts who are now in the process of destroying America's democratic principles, will receive "Swifferschein." Certifications named after the popular Proctor & Gamble excreta.

I am often accused of having a certain kind of genius. I think Swifferschein shows that genius off. Because we clean our homes (Swiffer is a $500,000,000 brand) with one of the dirtiest products this side of trump's cranial merkin.

As Orwell might have written, family are foes. And clean is dirty.