The Golfers

I was thinking about golf today because it’s been so nice out and I like walking across greens. I also had a dream last night that I went to Hawaii to play golf. I’ve never been to Hawaii and have only played golf a few times in my life but this sounded nice. And I thought about how understandable it is that businessmen take such a liking to the golf course over the years, especially if they work in an office with florescent lights. 

And there’s this vision among some young hipsters that people who like golf are snobby rich assholes.

And perhaps there is a businessman on the golf course right now who is a nice guy, has worked hard at his job and earned his ability to afford the country club membership, but lately he has been made to feel like shit about himself by people waving angry signs outside the building he works, claiming an absolutism that investing is evil. And so he’s in a bad mood when we he eats lunch at the country club grill, he’s started to internalize what a bad person he must be, and leaves a shitty tip and the waitress takes a picture of this and it floats around social media. And on his way home he listens to the radio and Michael Moore makes mention to the fact that “he makes his money the old fashioned way, he makes things.” And the businessman thinks, wait a minute, didn’t Michael Moore get to make things, films, because a studio INVESTED in him, and his films made money, profit, from his particular niche, and because of this, they’ve continued to invest in his films and he gets to MAKE more things? But investment is an evil? Michael Moore is talking that up? Maybe Michael Moore should work a day job and make his movies via crowd funding, like Kickstarter, so he can get as far away from investing as possible.

Here's a shitty metaphor. The anger of our times needs to drive the golf ball at the hole, target itself at solutions. As opposed to chopping up the grass and pissing on lawns because they think someone is a bad man because they work in the world of money. Frustration isn’t eloquent. And as a result it pushes a cycle of the fortunate to retreat into their miserly side and this is reinforced again and again and they lose the ability to reason around it. And we hate them more. And then they hate us. And then we hate them more. 

I don’t believe the Obama administration is perpetrating class warfare. But class warfare is getting stirred from the ground up, it’s making the air dirty. And for a hot moment I was like, yeah, class warfare, I’m for it! Because I don’t have lot of money and I got excited at the notion of shaking things up. But then I pictured a nice guy trying to earn enough in his investment portfolio to retire and take his grand kids on a golfing outing someday, somewhere nice. And I’d like to someday achieve something of the like and not feel like shitty person for accomplishing such a pleasure. I’d like to someday to get deep financial backing on a movie project and I hope I don’t turn around, like a Michael Moore, and disrespect the act of someone else allocating money on a venture. There are some out there who are wicked in their practices within the financial sector, and they should be dealt with if they refuse to learn their lessons. But absolutism and generality in rage will not create meaningful change, from the top, nor from the bottom. The anger, the resentment must get more specific. The super rich don't need sticking up for, but when middle class members get lumped in and confused as must-be robber barons, the unbalanced equation requires a new variety of questions.