I’ve been a customer at the same nail salon for over 15 years. The owners are a Vietnamese couple who work from nine in the morning until seven at night, six days a week, to give their children a better life. I’ve watched their four kids grow up — the eldest is now a senior at UC Davis, the younger ones are good students well on their way.
There’s a hierarchy in nail salons. The owners get first dibs on customers, and usually prefer the ones that want “the works” — extensions, nail art, etc. — because they’re the most profitable. Since I’m a boring “plain vanilla” kind of customer, I used to get sent to the junior members of the team. But for the last eight years, my status as a loyal patron earned me the attentions of the owner-wife, “Susie”. Every two or three weeks for eight years, I’ve asked her about her kids, we’ve discussed cooking and gardening, she does her thing, and I walk out with pretty nails.
Last week when I came in for my appointment, Susie was still working on her previous customer so I sat down to wait. To my surprise, her husband “Mike” invited me to his station, Wow, that’s unusual. He always does the inlay-and-airbrush customers. In fact, it hasn’t happened since… oh yes, 2008, when he wanted to ask me my opinion of McCain vs Obama. Sure enough, after a few minutes of small talk he turned the conversation to politics.
This time was a lot easier than 2008. Then I felt I should be tactful, given Mike’s background, so I praised McCain as a war hero who made great sacrifices for America and the people of Vietnam. BUT, I said, that was many years ago, and we must evaluate him by his current ideas for governing and not his past heroism. I gave as my opinion that Obama was the better-qualified choice in that regard, since McCain’s ideas were too much like those of Bush and we all saw where that led. We chatted back and forth on this for a while, but I have no idea how he actually voted.
This year, Mike volunteered that he preferred Hillary. As he put it, “She’s been in the White House before, she’s been in the Senate, she’s been Secretary — she knows what’s going on.” We talked about the general awfulness of Trump: his ignorance, his bigotry, his inability to say just how he’s going to do all these wonderful things like stop crime, defeat ISIS, bring jobs back, etc. “If it were that easy”, I joked, “someone would have done it by now!” We laughed at imagining that shoppers would spend $80 for a shirt made in the USA when the same shirt made in China (or Vietnam) cost $20.
Mike looked up at me, our eyes met, and he asked “He’s so bad, so why are so many people supporting him? I just don’t understand”. “Because he tells them what they want to hear,” I replied, “Nothing is their fault, all their problems are because of liberals, immigrants, taxes, and regulation.” I asked him about how he felt about regulation — did the licensing and inspection laws around nail salons interfere with his business? He was shocked I would even ask, pointing out that they work with chemicals there, they are using sharp instruments on their customers, that if the employees aren’t trained enough to get a license they could hurt themselves, the customers, and even the community if they spread disease. That he wants all such businesses to be licensed, since if one salon messes up it will frighten people and hurt all salons.
We talked about taxes. Mike was adamant that public support for education should be never be cut. “That’s our future”, he said. I agreed, telling him that although I have no children myself, I wholeheartedly support public education because I want all kids to be educated enough to get good jobs so they’ll be paying into SS to support me in my old age!
The Vietnamese community has a reputation for being conservative. They tend to value running their own businesses, which may be why every nail salon on the West Coast seems to be Vietnamese. The supposedly business-friendly, family-values, low taxation, low regulation GOP ought to be very attractive to a small business owner like Mike. And yet…
The Republican party has lost Mike — They’ve lost the country.
UPDATE: Wow, my first time on the rec list and I’ve been posting since 2005! Thanks!!