The Pyriotous Blog
Hope for a future without a Trump presidency.
Starting Conversations
When we started designing our shirts, the purpose was to say more than “we are against Trump” but to also say WHY. As important, we hoped that the shirts would start fun, reasoned, thoughtful discussions. In wearing our shirts around Philadelphia, the response has been overwhelmingly positive and they really have started interpersonal interactions. Success! The shirts almost always get a second look, and the responses have run the gamut from “I don’t quite get it but I like it” to “I must have that shirt, it made my day, where can I buy it??” These interactions have had a positive impact, allowing us to both share what we know about Trump and to hear what other people are thinking. We hope to see these same responses and conversations happening around the country. America needs it now!
We love Trumpcast!
Trumpcast is a show about Donald Trump and why he should never be president. The advantage of Trumpcast, hosted by Slate’s Jacob Weisberg, is that doesn’t make pretense of equal time and weight to each candidate as though they were essentially equivalent characters with varying policies. Every day new lies and illegalities surround Trump and as each new story distracts from the preceding, the media never gives any one story a fraction of the weight needed to fully understand it. Trumpcast is a forum to give Trump’s lies and illegalities their due, and its accumulation of episodes proves that Trump does not have the qualifications, competence, compassion, or honesty to be president. There are too many worthy episodes to mention in this post, so we are reviewing one of our top picks here.
An episode featuring satirist Peter Sagal is one of our favorites. Sagal, who hosts a comedic radio show covering current topics, requested a spot on Trumpcast so he could openly discuss his “sad and woeful” perspective on the “present emergency” of Donald Trump, and what better place than a podcast devoted to that exact horror. As admirers of Sagal’s radio show, we’ve only known the comedian, and we equally liked hearing another side of him as he passionately expressed his concern for the malignancy that Donald Trump is bringing to America. One of his most compelling examples was that while Trump and Hitler aren’t the same, there are parallels between them; early on Hitler was seen as a buffoon who no one took seriously and, for example, how elites thought they could control Hitler once he took power. For us, this example provided a refined view of Trump within the context of a history that the world should never revisit.
Sagal also spoke of the unprecedented challenges of covering Trump on a comedy show: the radio show makes fun of politicians not for their political perspectives, but for their human errs and the shared assumption that they are embarrassed by those errors. But what can one do when Trump’s humanity is clearly absent? Sagal’s solution: to use Trump‘s own words and actions to satirize himself; interestingly, Trumpcast follows a similar approach by starting each episode with a reading of Trump’s actual tweets.
Weisberg and Sagal’s take home message was that Trump’s campaign is not normal, and absolutely cannot be treated as such; not by the media, not by his political opponents, and not by the American public. For the informed discussion and reasoned perspectives, we cannot recommend this episode of Trumpcast strongly enough.
Our Goals
Donald Trump terrifies us as a presidential candidate. It’s not only his vague and harmful policy ideas, but we think he is a dangerous demagogue who threatens our democracy. Our main goal with this website and blog is to add to the communication and conversation around this important topic.
Back during the Kerry v. Bush election, we supported our candidate by sitting at a table in a small town, selling nick-knacks, and talking to people who walked up to the table. We really liked this approach, and highly recommend it to anyone who can get it organized. It was a great way to start friendly and engaging political conversations, and to create important personal connections. Regardless of whether people were for or against our ideas, everyone was friendly and we had no doubt that the conversations were making a difference.
Inspired by that experience, we asked ourselves how we could broaden our approach to reach more people in this election cycle, and came up with the idea of designing t-shirts that would start similar conversations on a local and personal level. Our primary goal is to provide shirts that are fun to wear, can be worn proudly, and will help start conversations. We want our shirts to not just be a statement against Donald Trump’s candidacy, but to say WHY. We hope that the strongest defense against a demagogue are thousands of person-to-person, calm and rational discussions that focus on the facts, and put aside the anger and emotions that feed demagogues. We believe the best way to have those conversations is in person. We hope you think so too.
In most of our designs we have represented Trump’s candidacy using a golden poop emoji, with a little flick reminiscent of Trump’s hair. We like this because although it is derogatory, “poopy head” is probably not the strongest insult that could justifiably be hurled in his direction. We hope it represents many things: a bit of levity, a bit of hair, a bit of poop, and maybe a cheap gold coating on an old turd. Many of our shirts represent a dark and scary truth, but also, hopefully, make you smile, or laugh, or at least smirk a little bit.
One of our favorite shirts is The Demagogue’s Apprentice. It’s fairly pointed, and the reference to Hitler is explicit, but we are also clear that we are not saying Trump is equivalent to Hitler, but that demagoguery is an important commonality between the two. We think this is scary, and we think this is true. To our eyes, Trump acts like a demagogue, or a demagogue in training. We are open to hearing other reasoned perspectives, and the point could be debated, and we hope this shirt may start those conversations. On the back of the shirt we give some guidelines of “how to be a demagogue” to see where Trump may and may not fit these methodologies. There is plenty of material here for a meaningful conversation.
Most shirts, though, are simpler and not so wordy, usually each with one core idea, making clear statements for why Trump should not be president. But, they key word in each shirt is “why”. If people don’t see that in the designs, then we have certainly failed. We hope you enjoy our blog and designs.