Go ahead, Google it.
According to the ‘about’ tab on the website, this is “[a] message designed for you to let the world know how badly you want to be part of the island that was once the greatest place on earth”.
If you Google ‘the greatest place on earth’, you get a bunch of hits for Norway and Disney. Plus, you get a link for an apparently white supremacist melody by an artist called Rebel Son.
If you Google ‘the greatest place on earth’ + ‘island’, you get Vanuatu, where people are apparently very happy.
To find ‘Puerto Rico’ on Google, you must Google ‘Puerto Rico’. And to peruse this particular website, you have to try really hard not to laugh.
Basically, they sell hats. Like the one Trump and his supporters wore during the campaign. Only they’re black instead of red. Only they say Puerto Rico, instead of America.
Hats come in two models, The Daddio and The Double Take. One’s floppy, one’s not. Each costs $20.00.
Customers are urged to take pictures and videos of themselves wearing them.
According to the website, “[b]y wearing this message, you are making a promise to create a conversation about what the future of PR could look like and how we can get there”.
‘PR’ stands for Puerto Rico.
‘The future’ refers to a time and place where Puerto Ricans will have twenty dollars less than they have now and will use ridiculous names for the hats on their heads.
‘How we can get there’ is not explained on the website, which is troubling considering that you would very much like to avoid arriving at such a bleak future by accident.
The website’s logo is reminiscent of the symbol for the Deathly Hallows. Only it’s gold instead of black. Only it has an outline of the island that intersects the triangle. Only it’s not like the symbol for the Deathly Hallows at all. And certainly not as popular.
The copy for The Double Take reads as follows: “They’ll look at you like another guy wearing a cap. Wait a second, does his hat say…wow.”
The hat does not say ‘wow’.
The hat says ‘Make Puerto Rico Great Again’, which is a slight variation of the official campaign slogan for a white supremacist president.
It is a message designed for the wearer to let the world know how badly he or she is in need of imagination.
On the website, Puerto Rico is imagined as sunny, with white men lounging poolside. How we got here is a question of the past that the hatmakers want to make new again.
It kind of makes you want to say ‘colonialism’. Which, in 2017, is very much like…wow.
