Essential BAD Thoughts T-Shirt

Chief Jonny
May 5, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Jun 4, 2025

"Happiness belongs to the self sufficient."

- Aristotle?

In Chief Thoughts #098: I discuss my general feelings on tariffs and the importance of American companies, manufacturing their items and goods using labor, as many parts, accessories, ingredients, and the other materials that help businesses actualize their goals as possible, in America. I understand in this world we can get a mango in Seattle all year around. Maybe we should pay a lot more for that luxury. Maybe deals will be made and we will barely feel the dreaded price increases or maybe they are just an excuse for us to be fucked out of money by the government and big business, one more time. But I do see that it is inherently good that we, as Americans, build the items we want to buy and ensure that they are beholden to all American standards. If I find that untenable and my feelings wain as we are still at the very beginning of this trade war. The tariffs went into effect a month ago and many ships that are subject to the new tariffs are just arriving or leaving American ports. Maybe it just is too big of an ask to reverse decades of globalism in one month. If anything at all, I hope it encourages me to stop spending money on luxury or it can help me become more discerning in determining what is a need, a want, and a luxury. It's time I sat down with my wife and we made a committed evaluation for each other and our family. Truthfully, an evaluation we should have always been taking as seriously as possible.

Furthermore, I believe our society needs to reckon with our materialism and how our feelings are attached to it. It could be argued, that companies, advertising agencies, have used psychological manipulation to tether our emotions to what we buy to our great detriment (that's exactly what they did!).

For example, just type in your favorite search engine "tariffs suffer" and most of the articles are reporting or editorializing that we are going to notice an increase in price of non-essential everything! Everything we cannot purchase that will make us suffer unbearably, like a, house fly trapped between a mesh screen and window pane, I would argue, is not necessary and if the item(s) worth was truly evaluated, it would be determined that the item was not only useless, but absolutely a waste of money. Our inability to purchase these, what I surmise are non-essential goods, the luxuries of a hyper materialist society, will cause unceasing, unmanageable, pain and anguish in all of our material conditions. We will suffer because big business will suffer and China will suffer.

The legacy/mainstream/corporate media, whose most prominent revenue streams are advertisements from corporations and conglomerates in all industries that have outsourced manufacturing all over the globe to bolster their coffers, of course care about Americans wallets! They just want to continue us to spend with them and not truly evaluate how we are spending our money.

I always forget how the media and the corporations eased our anxiousness and assuaged our worry during the pandemic. These same pious prophets (profits), in all their magnanimity saved us all by claiming they were too big too fail, or close, and that they were most essential. They could not help that their profits were exploding while Americans were suffering. Weren't they lucky? Crazy how their prices and profits (prophets) go up, our wages go down, and our clamor for their necessity grows. I am so glad that these corporations and the media have our well-being at heart! Who would look after us if they didn't?

It's just a brief thought. This is also an announcement for the new Bad Thoughts Essential T-Shirt. Support American luxury and PRE-ORDER the Essential Bad Thoughts T-Shirt in Black or White today!

the BLACK

Elevate your everyday style with our black and/or white 100% Organic 100% Cotton Bad Thoughts Essential T-Shirt, proudly Made in the USA. Crafted from ultra-soft, sustainably sourced organic cotton, this tee delivers superior style and comfort and has been created using methods that all the Climate Clowns agree is "sustainable".