Shower Before Work or After?

My best friend introduced me to the concept of a “shower beer.” The idea is about as complex as it sounds. You drink a cold beer while taking a hot shower.  It’s a great way to pregame the party scene or to relax and think about the complexities of life. Lots of people get their best ideas in the shower.

I generally start my day with a shower. That may not seem like a revolutionary statement, but in my wife’s family, it puts me in a very distinct community. You see, very few of the men in her family are the type who get up in the morning, take a shower, then head off to their air-conditioned white-collar job. No, the majority of the men in her family are the type who start their days climbing into a beat-up American-mad pickup truck and go to the kind of jobs that get you dirty enough that you take a shower after work. (READ MORE from Amile Wilson: A Hostage Negotiator Reveals the Flaw in Academia’s Economics)

There’s an increasing cultural divide in America and which side you’re on can be shown by one simple question: Do you take a shower before going to work or after?

The Shower-Afters work with their hands. Many didn’t go to college, but they know how to balance their checkbook and they know the dollar isn’t buying what it used to.

The past four years have been hard on the Shower-After crowd. Whether from COVID lock downs (you can’t zoom into a factory job), runaway inflation, or just creating a regulatory maze where it literally takes a law degree to open a small business, we Shower-Befores have really screwed things up.

But it’s not all bad. The Shower-Afters are the ones in high demand these days. (Tried hiring a plumber lately?)

And for the first time in a century, the Shower-Afters are becoming the largest voting block of the Republican Party.

This divide between the Shower-Before and the Shower-After crowds is political, cultural, educational, and financial. I admit that I’m generally a Shower-Before guy. I’ve read Mises, taught at a University and my favorite Conservative group is the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. But my dad’s side of the family were all Shower-Befores. I have a ton of respect for them and, incidentally, for my in-laws.

I’m happy to talk about the deleterious economic driving forces of inflation. My father-in-law just wishes the folks in DC would “stop spending all the gattdang money so they’ll stop printing so much gattdang money.”

He’s as well read as I am — as are a surprising number of Shower-Afters — he just tends to grunt the word bullshit while describing American politics and drinking a beer. I enunciate it a bit more over a scotch or a gin and tonic. But we both feel the same way.

The Shower-Befores are used to being in power. They’re used to the refinements of the politico life and far far too many Shower-Befores just aren’t comfortable hanging out with the Shower-Afters. The cultural divide is too great. But that’s going to be the number one driving question of American politics over the next two decades: How will the Shower-Befores and the Shower-Afters start to work together to unravel the nightmare that the federal government has become. (READ MORE: Cuffing Season and Our Epidemic of Loneliness)

When it comes to politics, Republican Shower-Befores are happy to “lose with honor.” The Shower-After crowd is pissed. And ready to start winning. This may lack the sense of dignity that so many Shower-Befores want. But you know what has dignity? Winning.

Too many Shower-Befores lack respect for the Shower-Afters, and it’s wrecking our electoral politics. For the GOP to bridge this gap, the only solution is for a few more of us Shower-Befores to find the dive bar in the mountains, trade the 18-year Macallan for a pitcher of Coors and actually have a conversation with a few Shower-Afters.

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