A few days ago I stopped into Seed to Table, an upscale supermarket in Naples, Florida. Its website calls it “the happiest place in the universe.” I bought a package of veal stew meat.
On my way out I stopped in the restroom, where I was met with the sight above. Inside the urinal is a photograph of Joe Biden. Anyone who needs to relieve himself must do it on the image of a former American president.
I left the restroom, walked back to the register, returned the meat and asked for my money back. I told them I was not willing to shop at a place where customers are made to urinate on the face of a living man, a former American president at that. They handed me back $10.39 and I walked out.
You could say this is a private matter. Everyone does as he pleases and shops where he pleases.
I don’t think that’s true. America calls itself a Christian nation. Wrongly, in my view, but you don’t have to be a Christian to see the point. The owner of this supermarket is a Republican donor, supposedly a supporter of a conservative party. Trump shirts are for sale at the entrance. On January 6, 2021, when the Capitol was stormed, the owner sent buses to Washington.
I don’t believe partisan politics belongs in a supermarket where anyone can shop. But everything has a limit. When a man’s likeness is reproduced inside a urinal so that people will urinate on it, that is dehumanization. That is fascism. A man you can piss on is a man you can do anything to. And so are the people who support the party whose president was the man everyone gets to piss on.
This violates basic human rights and human dignity, including the Christian belief that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. It desecrates the Creator as well. I say that last part because the Republican Party is supposedly the guardian of “Christian values,” as against the Democrats who supposedly have none. By their own definition of themselves, they should be the first from whom respect for human dignity is expected.
As for the store’s self-proclaimed Christian identity, it is especially pronounced here. The same supermarket that displays Christian political iconography also has Biden’s image in a urinal. It is as if the two spring from the same source. But what could Jesus and the cross possibly have to do with making people urinate on the faces of political opponents in a restroom?
Alfie Oakes, a farmer and businessman and the owner of the store, held a post representing Collier County in the Florida Republican Party. He is a Trump supporter and a promoter of Covid-19 conspiracy theories. He is an opponent of Black Lives Matter, and the man who called George Floyd a “disgraceful career criminal.” He who has ears to hear, let him hear. The restroom in his store is consistent with that worldview.
The problem is not that it happens to be Joe Biden inside the urinal. It could be anyone else, Donald Trump, or a man nobody recognizes. It would still be unacceptable.
The essence of democracy is that everyone may support whichever party he chooses. You don’t have to like every politician. You are not required to agree with anyone. You may express your disagreement. But there are limits. Not only legal limits, but moral limits and limits of taste.
In Naples, the great majority of voters are Republicans. Seed to Table is an elegant, premium supermarket where crowds shop every day.
Has it occurred to no one to object that a former president’s picture is in the urinal, and that the owner of the store has thousands of people a day urinate on a president of the United States? Regardless of which party he belongs to in this American democracy? Joe Biden is an American. Has America come to this, that citizens are made to piss in the face of a fellow American who was president of the United States? What do they expect of anyone else?
Is this an American value? Is this Make America Great Again? Is this Great America? Naples is one of the most attractive resort towns not only in Florida but in the entire country. Tourists and visitors come from all over the world. Is this what they see that America has sunk to the point where Americans urinate in the face of their own president? If this can be done, where is the line? Doesn’t this trouble the town, the local residents, the mayor, at least their sense of decency?
Many of us came to America because we longed for freedom, democracy and respect for human dignity, hoping that we would never again have to witness this kind of brutality.
Former presidents are symbols of America, a little like the flag. But Joe Biden is also a living, an elderly man in declining health. And a store owner has his customers urinate on him, because he is a Trump supporter? Whom does Biden harm? What has he done to deserve this? Does a Trump supporter not respect American presidents? If a person is a Democrat and an opponent of Trump, is he not an American? Is he not human? How much further can this country sink?
I don’t imagine Alfie Oakes is any poorer because I returned one package of veal stew. That is not what makes him poor. But what about the town, the community, that lets this pass in silence? What makes it think it is rich?
This op-ed was first published by Amerikai Népszava, the oldest Hungarian-language newspaper in the US.
