Remember David Hogg, the self-righteous little twerp who lectured us all about gun control for a year?  Apparently, he’s starting a pillow company solely to compete with Mike Lindell, the pro-Trump founder of MyPillow.

Leave it to a radical progressive like Hogg to enter a field in which he has no background or expertise just to spite a conservative.

Don’t get me wrong:  I sincerely wish him the best.  So does Mike Lindell.  Unlike Lindell—who was talked over incessantly on Newsmax, of all places—Hogg will have every media advantage possible.  He and his business partner were scrambling yesterday to get a logo together for their Washington Post exclusive (the reactions on Twitter are hilarious, as various designers scolded Hogg’s business partner for offering $200 for a last-minute, rush design review).

Hogg claims he wants to make the pillows in the United States with 100% union labor.  Jim Treacher‘s piece for PJMedia, “David Hogg’s Pillow Company is Proceeding Nicely” (my chief source for this blog post) details Hogg’s various tweets asking advice for a “UNIONIZED PILLOW MANUFACTUER” (they’re “having a hard time finding one”) and asking followers what States “are the best to start a business” (because California’s “cost of living is way too high”).  It all seems to suggest that this kid is in over his head.

Naturally, any business has to start somewhere, and there’s a steep learning curve.  The goal of creating and manufacturing a product in the United States with well-paid labor is admirable.  But little Hogg is gaining a first-hand education in economics:  businesses have to make money to survive, and the higher the cost of inputs (labor, materials, rent, electricity, etc.), the higher the cost of the finished product has to be.  Marketing the product will be a snap, as Hogg will have every elite media outlet at his disposal, ready to give free press to a child with the right politics.  Manufacturing will be something else altogether.

Perhaps I’m naïve, but my hope is that this young Hoggling will begin to understand that designing a pillow that is comfortable and worth paying a premium for will take time to development—not just a couple of months, as Hogg seems to think.  From interviews I’ve heard with Lindell, he claims it took many attempts and prototypes to figure out the right combination of firmness and softness, the materials to use, etc.

Also, what’s their selling point besides “we’re not Mike Lindell”?  I suppose there is a niche of limousine liberals who won’t buy from Lindell because he’s conservative that might buy a $40 pillow from these kids for virtue points, but how many such buyers exist?

Ultimately, there’s the rub:  we’re living in a bizarre phase of late-stage capitalism in which everyday transactions are politicized.  We won’t allow ourselves to buy a pillow unless “our” guy makes it (I think Leftists are far more likely to adopt this tendency than conservatives, who continue to shop at stores and chains that support ludicrous ideologies and movements that hate conservatism).  The products we use and the clothes we wear are political statements.

Of course, if I wore a MAGA hat in public, I’d be assaulted.  But even products that aren’t overtly political carry such connotations.  Remember when the Prius was short-hand for do-gooding progressivism?  There was an entire episode of South Park about the smugness of its drivers, who thought they were saving the planet by driving a car with a massive battery made from non-renewable metals.

Hogg’s pillow company is very likely a publicity stunt—and, if it’s successful, it will just be another vehicle for progressive lunacy.  This endeavor has all of the hallmarks of being a slush fund for progressive causes—and of being a non-serious lark.  Given that the company—which barely has a name, much less a working product!—already has an “activist advisory board” tells you everything you need to know.

At least Hogg has one potential market:  selling his feculent pillows to the reeducation camps for reforming wrongthinkers.

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