There is something so delicious in being sick. Not lying around in bed looking at the television for cheering-up, but engaging in a feverish refusal to be bowed down by the decrepitudes of the body. Savoring the strange heat in my hands and feet, the quivering soreness of motion, the sensation that I am locked in a lucid dream and can't remember how to wake up. Susan wants to nurse me -- it's the perfect distraction from her day's work -- but I'm enjoying my change of internal environment far too much to indulge her.

One thing I've been noticing in my strolls around DC is that fur coats are significantly more common than before the Presidential inauguration. I had assumed that Republican staffers would settle across the Potomac in the friendly suburbs, producing little effect on my neighborhood, but evidently I was wrong. Maybe tour buses are bringing them in. In any case, suddenly there are ground-length pelts everywhere.

In absolute moral terms there is little difference between fur and leather attire -- obviously, both involve killing animals and flaying off their skins so we can live momentarily inside their hides. I'm sure it's a rich genetic tradition; our birthright, some might say, ordained by the Bible or the evolutionary fact that we now lack body hair. Whether or not you think it's a decent thing to do in this day and age, you'll probably agree that the two are virtually the same.

But there are cultural factors that set fur coats apart. Wearing leather implies that you've been successfully socialized into common notions of what's fashionable. Wearing fur is more aggressively sociopathic, a big middle finger held in the faces of the many, many people who find fur pretty revolting. Because social pressures have discouraged its use, fur is no longer merely clothing -- it's a political symbol, hate couture.

Rebuttal: In many phases of my life -- particularly adolescence but to some extent today -- I've selected clothing that helps define me as set apart from dominant cultural forces. While I usually experience clothing preference as a matter of personal taste (I don't recall ever selecting attire simply for its capacity to offend), there's no denying that I was picking out togs that were consistent with cultural motifs of counterculture. Why is that any less "aggressively sociopathic" than those who wear the warm furry skins of others?

Argument: Because my selections were not predicated on the death of thinking, breathing creatures.

Rebuttal: That presumes that preserving life is an absolute value. Obviously those who wear fur do not share that principle. To them, expressing dissatisfaction and protest towards one's nation (as my clothes have at times suggested) might be equally repugnant.

Argument [1]: But the thing is, wearing fur is just so fucking nasty. And the people who wear fur know it. The only conceivable explanation for their behavior is that they are desperate narcissists, the kind of schoolroom bully who'll do anything for some attention.

Rebuttal [1]: I think many people are like that. One must only look at bumper stickers to witness the time-honored tradition of making senselessly generalized political statements. Why not focus my attention on the people whose egomania drives them to harm loads of fellow human beings, heading companies or nations that show little respect for the sanctity of life?

Argument [1]: In fact, studies have found that in local elections, candidates with more yard signs enjoy a significant advantage over their opponents. So perhaps visible political statements serve the dual purpose of normalizing certain beliefs, suggesting the range of personal decisions to others who initially lack the courage to step outside the mainstream. But if I believe my energy would be better focused on larger targets -

Argument [2]: why encourage fur-wearers to make their own trivial pro-fur statements? Shouldn't they, too, be leveling their social critique at the real problems confronting society?

Rebuttal [2]: I want the kind of person who wears fur to squander their energies on those kinds of issues. Let them engender disgust from passersby. It only marginalizes them in the end.

Rebuttal [1]: And besides, candidates with more yard signs may enjoy an advantage because they have more money, or better-run campaigns. It's a correlation; it doesn't verify causality.

Rebuttal: In summary, I'm attacking fur-wearers because they're engaging in the same kind of personal political symbolism that I use myself. I'm trying to suppress their desire to tweak the social order by demonstrating support for unpopular actions, solely because I don't support their values. So I'm a hypocrite.

Argument: It's not hypocrisy to speak out against what you believe is wrong. Who can explain the values they see as fundamental truths -- that humans have inalienable rights, or that all life is sacred, or that the forests and seas were placed here by God for us to use as we see fit? There are a precious few things we take on faith, and so we generally cling to them.

Rebuttal: Is that a leather belt you're wearing?

Argument: It always gets personal, doesn't it?

Argument [1]: I bought this belt before I really began to think about whether I wanted to buy leather stuff. More recently, I spent hours looking for the one halfway decent non-leather men's wallet available in the city.

Argument [2]: Responding to that question would only contribute to the common endorsement of the politics of personal destruction. My values belong to more people than just me. No one is perfect, but we're all driven to form ideas of what's right and wrong. Our beliefs show us not the people we are, but the people we'd like to become.

Rebuttal: So people who cloak themselves fur want to become --

Argument: Fuzzy animals. They must be missing something animalian in their everyday existence.

Rebuttal: So I want to be a vegetable.

Argument: Maybe the Zen simplicity of a potato, freedom from self-conflict. Or perhaps the sinless naiveté of a garden.