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. 

Generational Pissing Match

This morning I was sitting in my recliner, cat in lap, reading A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. I came to a part where Gertrude Stein was telling Hemingway his was part of a lost generation. Stopping for a moment to sip my coffee, I saw a flash in my mind of Sarah Palin expressing her disgust at me for sitting on my ass and reading an outdated book by a writer she believes to be a lunatic asshole. 


"What's wrong with reading a book?" I asked.


"You read filth that corrupts you, that gives you stupid ideas, and makes you think you're entitled to things you don't deserve!"


"And do you deserve, respect? Your generation is the one that set in motion the end of the world. Whether you like it or not, miss, your generation collectively is the Anti-Christ." I lashed back, an imagined out-let for anger. "My child will probably be born with asthma, thank you very much, smoke stack champion!"


As a disclaimer, there are many in my life (parents, Aunts and Uncles, extended family, landlords, colleagues, clients, friends, friends of the family, etc) who are actually are down to earth, thoughtful, respectful and level headed. They understand the struggles that my generation faces in our young careers. It's the political leaders, corporation leaders of my parents generation that get under skin and where I intend the following expression of disgust. 


I get the sense that the middle aged politicians think so lowly of my generation. But their parents' generation thought little of them, and back on to their parents' generation who thought little of them. A vicious cycle of low confidence in and attempted understanding of their own spawn because they've slowly realized they can only control them so much. And it fuels the pissy angst they feel towards the engine of society they have fed into another complex, mushy disaster. They cling to old philosophies on how to fix this, not realizing it was these old, musty thought processes that caused kinks in the work flow of a society. And they want dish out disparaging remarks on their children's generation because they'd be embarrassed if it was some punk kid that found the solution. 


The problem lies not only in a class conflict. But a generational one persists. We've been taught that we must work hard to get ahead. But many are trapped in a stage of life where hard work is actually, unfortunately not paying off, on a wide scale, because the shareholders are scared to sprinkle what's in the kitty. And those that are out in the workforce as collection agents of sorts to suck in consumer exchange to fill the company kitty, are made to feel like assholes for questioning when the shareholders might feel comfortable enough in the base of this kitty to open its valve.


There grows this distrust in the previous generation for having told them to work hard and reap what one deserves. And then as a result, the old generation in turn gets mad at the kids for being mad at them. They complain that we complain, and then they go and complain with such fervor it would make a mountain hides its cliff face. 


But I will not be discouraged. I will continue to work hard, because one day, when the old generation has to call it quits on their political careers, and people from mine start theirs, maybe things will finally be revitalized.