A Hole in One

Last summer, after Joe Biden's stupendous pratfall of the first debate, after Trump's weird iconic brush with death in Pennsylvania and with Biden's hard-won ejection from the race and the substitution of his Vice President at the top of the Democratic Ticket freshly transpired,  I saw one of the most frightening videos I think I had ever seen.    It was a digest of a golf game played for charity -- eighteen holes. Trump played with a golf pro I don't recall the name of at one of his clubs, I believe in New Jersey.   The pro was a clean cut bro with obvious barely contained admiration for his partner.  (They referred to each other as "Partner" so frequently between the two of them that I wanted to call in a gay marriage priest for them after a while.)

The video I learned later was taped within days of the debate-- one of the strangest moments of which involved Biden caught in a fib about his handicap and both candidates talking trash about the others' game-- but before Trump's momentous Pennsylvania rally and Biden's exit from the race.  In the video, Trump did not take advantage of Biden's absence or his sensational weakness to rub his face in his embarrassing self-exposure as a genuine dotard.  The subject of politics-- or of Biden's golf chops-- in fact never came up.  Instead the content of the video was a friendly and lively game of golf with Trump appearing to be in complete control.   He joked amiably, talking only golf as he drove the cart, arm draped over the steering wheel, speeding along the narrow path like he knew what he was doing. On the links he solicited and followed the sage, Caribbean-lilted advice of his wizened caddy, Neville, an oracle on the approach to take on each hole given current conditions and wind speeds and directions.  

I'm no golfer, but to my mind, Trump's game looked top notch.  I thought if Biden had stayed in the race, and this video had gone viral, it would have been over for the Democrats, and probably should have been. It was still a bit early to have formed an opinion about Kamala's chances, but the Trump of the golf video was immensely charismatic and dare I say, likable.  The decency of Trump keeping Biden's name out of his mouth when he could reasonably have been expected to lord his capacities over the dubious shell of a candidate-- of a human, and no doubt of a golfer-- that Biden had exposed himself to be was especially appealing.*

But there was a reason Trump had never seemed so likable to me: he was happily occupied with something other than absconding with the American treasury and imposing fascist rule on the rest of us.  The contrast with how Trump had been at the reins of American power made the point for itself: instead of making himself and the rest of us miserable with the nastiness of a return to political office, why did he not just retire to a life of unmitigated golf for the rest of his days?  What did he need with the headache of some dumb office he had already held that he was frankly lucky to escape with his life from?  Wouldn't it be better for him to happily engage in an activity that I admired his skill at rather than one at which his pathological incompetence kept me in a state of unrelenting pissed-off-ness.  Wasn't it better to have my admiration?  How could I convince him?

Maybe he'll read this and reconsider this fascism thing.

From https://trumpgolftrack.com/ June 30, 2025.  Woodrow Wilson (another presidential dickwad) reportedly played over 1000 rounds of golf in his 2 terms but he had only a 100 handicap. Wilson's green time makes Trump (on track to match his previous term's achievement of over 300 rounds for a total of more than 600 rounds in his two terms) look like a piker but in spite of a reputed tendency to take liberties with the game, Trump has an estimated handicap of 2-- a presidential best.  His habit has cost taxpayers an estimated $52M since January.  Come on, Partner.  It's time to retire and hit the green like you mean it.

~~~~~

* Which, granted, could have been edited out by the channel it appeared on.  It's not like he wasn't capable of it.

Midsummer Intra-Traumatic Dance Disorder

Ladaniva - Shakar

Celia Cruz & Johnny Pacheco - Quimbara

Fcukers - UMPA

Gang of Four - I Found That Essence Rare

Jun Miyake - Lilies of the Valley

Atarashii Gakko! - Candy

Hayk (apricota) & Arni Rock ft. Sone Silver - Taran Taran

Mike Kelley - Tijuana Hayride (from Day is Done - ft Tricia Ridgway)

Jermaine Stewart - We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off

Pascuala Ilabaca y Fauna - El Baile del Kkoyaruna (Dance of the Miner)

Oliver Tree - Swing and a Miss

Angela Autumn - Dancer

Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble - Chollima on the Wing

Cloth - Polaroid

Imani Coppola - Legend of a Cowgirl

Suburban Lawns - Flavor Crystals

The Yardbirds - Over Under Sideways Down

Ian Dury and the Blockheads - Wake Up and Make Love with Me (Live)

Mahala Rai Banda - Mahalageasca (Live)

Strategery

Before:

After: 

They knew what they did.*

~~~~~~~

* See here for an instance of the pot calling the kettle black: 

[Eric] Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” ... Limited in intellectual ability, lacking any moral compass, grossly incompetent and filled with rage at established elites who they see as having slighted and rejected them, they remake the world into a playground for grifters, con artists and megalomaniacs.

They knew not what they did

I've seen a few too many videos lately of leftists barely able to contain their delight over the plights of formerly ardent Trump supporters and voters in the last election who "f'd around and found out,"  a dismayingly large number of whom are immigrants who never dreamed that Trump's campaign promise to deport millions and revoke the citizenship of "criminals" in the process could be made good on themselves or their loved ones.  Several of these made TikToks or social media posts mocking the notion that Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric could have anything to do with the "good ones" like themselves and their extended families.  The priority for these voters was terminating Bidenomics and replacing it with an America made great again by Donald Trump.  

Then there are the teachers and school administrators in Red States who voted for Donald Trump because that's who they are, but who are now shamefully faced with the fact that Trump's delivery on his promises to cut waste in government including elimination of Federal funding from the Department of Education in the service of fulfilling the long term Republican dream to do away with free public education for all threatens their livelihoods and their lives' work.

Lastly there are the laid off government employees and those whose work was funded (or produce purchased) by USAID money.  Again, the priorities they pushed to the fore in making their decision in November were the result of calculations that did not include their own vulnerability to Trump's fulfillment of his promises to his billionaire enablers.

Still to come, those Trump voters suddenly finding themselves dropped from the rolls of Medicaid or finding themselves up shit creek with the Social Security Admin without a paddle or void forbid being inconvenienced along with the rest of us by the impending termination of the US Postal Service.

There's no question that some of these voters were never going to vote for anyone but Trump for all of the reasons that leftists and liberals detest-- right along with the immigrants who needed to believe Trump was talking about other immigrants were farmers and teachers now facing their own unforeseen difficulties as a  result of voting to give ejecting millions of immigrants the try they thought it deserved if it meant a restoration of an America that may never have existed to begin with.   I can understand enjoying a bit of schadenfreude at their compulsive conservatism coming back to bite them on the ass.  

But I derive absolutely no pleasure from the horrified regret of the millions who voted for Trump out of a desperate need to believe that it had to be better than repeating the Presidential politics that they surely thought lay behind the misery of their lives in the 2020's.  For their votes I blame the Democrats for not prioritizing the needs of their immiserated electorate, and I blame the media for having its thumb stuck up its ass (as usual), as much as I blame the self-serving deceitful seduction of the Republicans who are masters at amassing enough votes to get within range of winning for their suppression tactics to succeed and remorseless in punishing the saps who were duped into voting for them with the power they needed their votes to get.  I blame those who let Joe Biden run again unchallenged in spite of his ongoing deterioration (never mind the myopic lunacy of letting him run at all in 2020 in his already decrepit state).  I blame the finality of Election Day.  I blame the founding fathers for devising such a fucked up system and misnaming it Democracy.  

The Democrats assumed the modest infrastructure spending and stabilizing of the domestic economy would help the public to forgive the administration's priorities in foreign affairs characterized by its spending of billions to enable conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.  Foreign wars aside, whatever good Biden did domestically was cancelled out by his eagerness to restore things to the way they were before COVID-- as though prematurely cancelling the relief instigated in the early Trumpian days of the pandemic that accidentally exposed the ability of the Federal government to marshal the resources to make people's lives easier, keep them housed and out of debt would be greeted with gratitude.  Biden thought he was doing a good thing bringing things back to how they were before the pandemic, but people's lived experience belied the rosy news in the business pages and on Wall Street.*

I don't blame low information voters who pinned their hopes for better times on a change in the White House.  I don't blame those so turned off by the process that they didn't vote.  I still have a hard time forgiving those who knew well enough that a second Trump term would be bad news but who withheld their votes from Kamala Harris anyway.  They knew what we were in for with Trump's re-election, but take none of the blame for letting it happen because they are satisfied with what it accomplished: punishing the Democrats.  As if being a democrat isn't enough punishment.

Is anybody happy?  Does misery at least still love company?

~~~~~

* According to a University of Chicago study, a good economy is always good for Republicans.  But who is the economy good for?  More jobs don't necessarily mean better jobs.  When in the last 40 years has the average American experienced anything like the relief from hard times that they got during the COVID crisis that the elite were so eager to bring to a close?