The Union label / Uncanny campaigning

Today: Gabriel Snyder, Editor and Publisher at The Fine Print; and Fahad Shah, an award winning journalist and editor based in Kashmir.

Issue No. 39

Belt Buckle
Gabriel Snyder

AI Infects Elections in South Asia
Fahad Shah

Belt Buckle

by Gabriel Snyder

Ah! I am very glad you asked me about my belt buckle. When I was growing up in the South, I kind of always had an obsession with big leather belts with the showy Honky Tonk buckles. They were a little glamorous, as well as a little menacing–especially to anyone who as a child had found themselves on the business end of that leather strap, as I had. But I never got one until someone gave me a leather belt, but no buckle, in early 2017, just after the Trump election.

I had a visit back home to Nashville scheduled that spring. “Oh!” I thought. “That will be the perfect place to find one.” But when I got to the thrift shops, I found only belt buckles with Confederate flags or names of trucking companies I’d never heard of on them. Neither theme resonated with me, so I returned to Brooklyn empty-handed.