Image: Joe Biden
Joe Biden's campaign has mostly run on pleasant associations with Barack Obama and Biden's considerable, but waning, charm. The only thing I truly love about this campaign is this one piece of merch: a bottle of hand sanitizer that has the entirety of Biden's plan for the pandemic printed on it in teeny tiny text.The Joe Biden Hand Sanitizer, which he sells on his campaign website for $8 dollars for a pack of two, immediately looks most similar to a Dr. Bronner’s product. Like Dr. Bronner's soap, the entire label is utilized to print what might be described as a screed that uses convoluted language to get across a rather simple message.
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Emanuel Bronner, who was not a doctor, used the label space of his soap to promote his idea of the "Moral ABC," a life philosophy that incorporated the ideas of Christianity and Judaism in the effort of creating an "All-One-God-Faith." Bronner's life story is tumultuous; Born in Germany, he was able to immigrate to America before the Holocaust, his parents stayed in Germany and were killed by Nazis. In America, he eventually received shock treatment for his promotion of the Moral ABC. Before the soap, and its deranged label, found a new life following a documentary about Bronner, it was mostly found in health food stores and those weird stores in the mall that sell essential oils. Now it's sold everywhere from CVS to Target, and has achieved broader popularity.Biden's hand sanitizer uses the aesthetic form of Dr. Bronner's soap in a way that appeals to the kinds of voters who'd be most likely to buy it anyway: people who shop at health food stores and weird stores at the mall that sell essential oils.Whenever I've used Dr. Bronner's in the shower—it's great soap—I find myself reading urgent sentences from its label. There's personality and specificity to that label, and it allows me to empathize with its author, no matter how outlandish his claims. I disagree with a lot of Biden's politics even though I desperately want him to win, and I find myself having the same response to the aesthetics of this hand sanitizer. "Build now towards a future, flexible, America-sourced and manufactured capability to ensure we are not vulnerable to supply chain disruptions in times of crisis," the bottle reads in barely decipherable text. In my head, I finish the statement with, "Heal soul! All one!"