The Trump Factor Affects So Many Aspects of Life

[PeterRS]

As a youngster my golf mad mother did her best to teach my brother and me how to play the game. We did for a while, but neither had much interest. Nowadays my only interest in televised golf is the biennial Ryder Cup which pitches 12 of the best of European golfers against 12 American counterparts. This is a three day event consisting of two days of foursomes and the last when all 12 are singly matched against another. Played every two years, first in one continent and then the other, inevitably it arouses greater fan participation as they cheer on their own teams. Generally it is an exciting and fun event, assuming one team is not losing dramatically, and it is the home team that often wins.

Last week-end it was held at a course in New York State. The Europeans had won quite handsomely two years ago and most expected the US team to triumph this year. Whereas the Cup is about players and their golf, this year the headline writers had a field day about the bear pit that the huge galleries of spectators had become. For reasons totally beyond most people, the US Professional Golf Association had hired a vulgar comedian to introduce each of the matches. For the second match on Friday, she introduced the world #2 golfer, Irishman Rory McIlroy, by saying into her loudhailer "Fuck you, Rory." This was a total disgrace and the lady was rightly replaced later in the tournament. But it was an incentive to the crowds. While many were respectful of the rules of golf - rules which basically state that spectators are silent when a player is lining up a shot and then hitting it - that "Fuck you" was the start of a whole tirade of appalling behaviour of which "fuck you" was almost a pleasantry. 

European players, McIlroy especially - despite the fact that until recently he lived in the USA and is hugely popular on the US golf tour - were routinely targetted with horrifically disgraceful and disgusting comments about their wives, their being gay (totally untrue), their weight, with McIlroy's wife being hit with a beer can etc, and most happening just when the player was about to hit a ball. Made worse was the American PGA's agreement that one company selling alcohol could put little squawking plastic ducks in the drink. At times these could almost be heard over the abuse.

All the media I have seen and read today mentions the apalling behaviour of this group of rowdies who probably had never been to a golf game in their lives before. You do not see this hideous behaviour at the Masters in Augusta or at the other two PGA major tournments. Everyone, the USPGA included, were perfectly well aware that holding the tournament at this particulr venue would lead to aggressive verbal abuse. But they did nothing to stop it apart from belatedly bringing in some state troopers to protect the European players. Hoologans being ejected was rare. Then again, as one meda source noted, this was a microcosm of what the USA has now become under Trump - who jetted in on the first day leading to many of those who had paid an unbelievable $175 for their day's ticket being late arriving. He who shouts loudest not only gets heard but gets his message across. 

It has been tradition since the Ryder Cup started that players do not get paid. Profits go to a variety of golfing charities. Two years ago on European soil, the American Patrick Cantlay mounted a silent campaign claiming players should get paid. The USPGA caved in. All their 12 this year were paid $500,000, of which they had to give 60% to a charity of their choice. Ironically, Cantlay with a net worth of over US$30 million won only one of his four matches. The Europeans who continued to play purely for pride surprisingly retained the Cup with a 15 - 13 lead. So the USPGA had forked out $6 million on effectively a bunch of losers, no matter that some did redeem themselves on the last day. Even in Donald Trump's America, money does not always win! When the Cup is next played for in Ireland in two years time, so will respect for the game's traditions return. 

[jimmie50]

The Trump factor you mention includes increased political polarization, a decline in public discourse, the mainstreaming of misinformation, and intensified debate over race relations.  Under Trump there has definitely been an erosion of civility.  His frequent use of false or misleading statements gets amplified by social media.  Any attempts by social media to curb some of this information only intensifies among his followers and in some cases even increases this machinery of misinformation.  Some historians have openly mentioned the parallels between what is happening in the US currently with what happened in Germany and Italy in the 1930’s.  Truly are scary times here.

[vinapu]

51 minutes ago, jimmie50 said:

 Some historians have openly mentioned the parallels between what is happening in the US currently with what happened in Germany and Italy in the 1930’s.  Truly are scary times here.

and no excuse that war reparation are crippling economy

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, jimmie50 said:

Some historians have openly mentioned the parallels between what is happening in the US currently with what happened in Germany and Italy in the 1930’s.  Truly are scary times here.

I think those historians are wrong, if only because as @vinapu righly pointed out, the disastrous post-WWI reparations imposed by the victors on both those countries reduced their economies to worse than basket cases. When the people of Germany were in some cases reduced to using wheelbarrows of cash to purchase a loaf of bread, the conditions were ripe for a leader - any leader - to rise quickly to the top, the more so someone like Hitler who quickly spouted almost every reason in the book for the country being in such a mess. Too late the victorious WWI allies realised they had therefore been complicit in the rise of a monster like Hitler 

Trump, on the other hand, took over a country that was doing relatively well for most of its people - although far from all. As has already been written many times on various forums on this Board, there may be some comparison with Germany in the way one man who suffered a wretched childhood and was then schooled by one of the master gutter-fuelled monsters in the USA in the person or Roy Cohn was persuaded that he could do anything as long as he shouted loundly enough for long enough, used the law to his advantage, continuously threatened law suits left, right and centre, and changed his politics and his thinking with some regularity, who then became a national figure with a TV show that polished a fake persona - such a person could not just take on the rotten USA political system, he could actually win. The comparison surely is that Hitler rose to the top because he did basically the same given the differences between those two generations.

With Trump I see some parallel with the lyrics to the great song from Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill's "Ballad of Mack the Knife" from The Three Penny Opera. They wrote the song almost at the last minute to compare the sinister MacHeath to a shark and reveal his crimes that included arson, robbery, rape and murder.

Oh the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear

And it shows them pearly white

Just a jackknife has old MacHeath, babe

And he keeps it out of sight.

You know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe

Scarlet billows start to spread

Fancy gloves, though, wears old MacHeath, babe

So there's never, never a trace of red. 

Many have sung the song, but the original Bobby Darin version is still one of the best