Hope We Can Believe In

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Nazis, Racists, Bigots


Hard to fathom that so many extremists have emerged as viable candidates.

Is this all that we've learned about living?

To paraphrase another John Mellencamp lyric, America "once upon a time ago, was the way it was supposed to be?"

Or was that a shared delusion by the fortunate few?

Perhaps more apt is that what has always been wrong in America was not quite as obvious to some as it is now. When the supreme court absurdly declared that racism no longer exists, that "news" should have been released on the Cartoon Network.

There have always been American Nazis and American bigots as well, similar to underfed reptiles lurking in the shadows. But since the 2016 election, massive numbers of these creatures slithered out of dank alcoves to reveal their purpose in plain view, primarily because of the "success" of one terminally inept and unprepared presidential candidate — who has taken incompetence to uncharted lows. Thus, these venomous dregs of society have been welcomed in parts of the mainstream.

When a sitting U.S. president insists that there were good people on both sides in regard to the mess in Charlottesville, that's a vastly evil moment, equaled, if not surpassed, when that same sitting president claimed to trust an ex-KGB operative over the FBI and CIA.

If only this were a Netflix Original film — a dystopian fantasy in which Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, Darrel Issa, among a cast of thousands, terminate Medicare, Social Security, the EPA, erect a barrier around the entire 48 states, construct gated communities within gated communities, force millions into what is essentially slave labor, and basically thrive with the mantra, WE'VE GOT OURS, FUCK YOU.

Information, particularly in the 21st century, rules. Thanks to the relentless efforts of a far right wing TV network, misinformation — lies — has become standard: most people believe what they want anyway, as long as it is what they want to hear.

Fact has no bearing, nor does evidence, particularly when the war is not ideology, but rather WHAT IS as opposed to WHAT WE SAY IT IS. Our culture has meandered into a dark realm where repetition is all that matters. Fox News and Trump are using the ultimate authoritarian tactic — It's not what you say that matters as much as how often you say it.

The wisdom of P.T. Barnum reminds us that some folks are going to get fooled all of the damn time. Sadly, this is not the only Ozian-circus metaphor. Lions, tigers and clowns, oh my.

Trump emerged because he understood that many of those marginalized yearned that a candidate drop the politician's mask and tell it like it is. Tragically, they believe Trump, whose association with truth is a coincidence that happens about as often as a certain comet comes into view every 75 years.

Some of the Trumpies are too "gone" to ever come back to reality; all the while having no clue that they endorsed their worst enemy — a charlatan con man who invaded the political arena for just one purpose: the power to make more money FOR HIMSELF.

That so many who truly need government assistance with medical care and eduction voted for a vile imposter who will rape their social security accounts to help pay for the tax cut for the .05 percent, while dismantling Medicare and funding for public schools, as well as destroying the environment. It is impossible to get more tragically misaligned with reality than that.

But in many ways, none of this shit is new.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have always shimmied around basic truths with hyperbole and axioms intended to inspire and seduce. MSNBC is a cousin of Fox News with an agenda, though MSNBC does not engage with as much "construction" of truth as it does with revealing it. Fox News, on the other hand, particularly the morning and night crews, has almost as much disregard for fact as a certain orange-hued, petulant, stubborn, arrogant, corrupt, corpulent menace.

Please stay with me that the one positive from The Trump Error [sic] is that this phase of evil has revealed just how much serious change in politics is needed.

My view is that the first step is to remove the corporate aspect. Citizens United has always been a terrible idea, and it is just as obvious that most people in politics might claim an R or a D, even an I in some cases. But what really should go in that slot is $.

Billionaires are currently running the country ... into the ground, some fear.

Money and politics are an unhealthy mix ... such as a BMW, a quart of moonshine, and a winding mountain road.

What is baffling is why the Koch brothers can continue to get away with their crap. And even more puzzling is how Betsy DeVos became so bored with her life as one of the wealthiest people on the planet that that malaise inspired her to destroy education for the masses. This is a huge WTF.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come along at the perfect time. She upset a powerful, old school democrat. And when someone is labeled an old school democrat, it means he's taking just as much corporate lobby money as those allegedly on the other side on the aisle. The path to the bank does have two sides, going in and coming out. Has nothing to do with belief.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Are we destined to get fooled again?

I choose to believe that the rise of Ocasio-Cortez is a sign that is clearly an omen. In essence, a blimp circling above us with a sign that reads:

Hope we can believe in.

Carnoustie and The Open

Two posts about Carnoustie Golf Links, which hosts The 147th Open Championship next week for the eighth time.

Carnoustie: The Concept of Evil.

The previous Open winners at Carnoustie:

1931 — Tommy Armour.

1937 — Henry Cotton.

1953 — Ben Hogan.

1968 — Gary Player.

1975 — Tom Watson

1999 — Paul Lawrie.

2007 — Padraig Harrington.

That’s quite a group. 

It’s not hyperbole to believe that the horror genre owes an enormous debt to Carnoustie Golf Links. I suspect if you encountered Jean Van de Velde in an expansive mood, particularly after an adult beverage or three, he’d set you straight, if you had doubts.

Jean Van de Velde stepped to the tee on his 72nd hole in the 1999 Open championship with a three-shot lead. But not just any hole. It was the 18th, a conniving, vengeful mixture of turf and murk that mutilates dreams and dismantles careers.

What happened on that hole that late afternoon recalibrates the essence of tragedy, which in order to be truly dark, the victim must have helped spin his own demise — with, of course, "outside" influence. Needing only a double bogey to win the Open Championship, Van de Velde took seven, falling into a playoff with Paul Lawrie and Justin Leonard, and eventually won by Lawrie.

What follows is the account on wiki:

Van de Velde nearly achieved an upset victory at the 1999 Open Championship at Carnoustie, when he was the clear leader playing the closing holes. He arrived at the 18th tee needing only a double bogey six to become the first Frenchman since 1907 to win a major tournament. He had played error-free golf for much of the week and birdied the 18th hole in two prior rounds.

Despite a three-shot lead, Van de Velde chose to use his driver off the tee, and proceeded to drive the ball to the right of the burn and was lucky to find land. Rather than laying up and hitting the green with his third, Van de Velde decided to go for the green with his second shot. His shot drifted right, ricocheted backwards off the railings of the grandstands by the side of the green, landed on top of the stone wall of the Barry Burn and then bounced fifty yards backwards into knee-deep rough.

On his third shot, Van de Velde's club got tangled in the rough on his downswing, and his ball flew into the Barry Burn, a water hazard. He removed his shoes and socks and gingerly stepped through shin-deep water as he debated whether to try to hit his ball out of the Barry Burn, which guards the 18th green. Ultimately, he took a drop and proceeded to hit his fifth shot into the greenside bunker. Van de Velde blasted to within six feet from the hole, and made the putt for a triple-bogey seven, dropping him into a three-way playoff with Justin Leonard and Paul Lawrie. Lawrie would eventually triumph in the playoff.

This account is Shakespearian. I’d forgotten Van de Velde had to make a nervy 6-footer to get into the playoff, but it was a moot point by then. Or a moat point as they mutter at the burn.

Fans of the play OTHELLO might agree that if a golf hole has endorsed the motive of an evil character, that the 18th at Carnoustie is the perfect Iago … a scheming, whispering menace whose lust for power and position combined with passionate, vindictive purpose to not only succeed but mostly to destroy. And eventually his ploys create the havoc that he'd imagined ... other than the torture that awaits himself ... but at the end of OTHELLO, Iago has not "paid for his deeds."  Perhaps he did. Perhaps not.

But I digress.

Who knows why Van de Velde kept risking his lead? Could it possibly be the voices in his head, a la Iago, that kept muttering, “You can do this. You can do this.”

While the sane portions of Van de Velde’s brain apparently had crashed and failed to reboot.

Along these lines:  (And again from Wiki) the term CARNOUSTIE EFFECT exists, and though part of the definition/explanation concerns Sergio Garcia —nobody's choice for the kind of person who handles adversity in the worst of circumstance — it is revealing nonetheless:

From Wiki: The term CARNOUSTIE EFFECT dates from the 1999 Open, when the world's best players, many of whom were reared on manicured and relatively windless courses, were frustrated by the unexpected difficulties of the Carnoustie links, which was compounded by the weather. One much-fancied young favourite, a 19-year-old Sergio García of Spain, went straight from the course to his mother's arms crying after shooting 89 and 83 in the first two rounds. The CARNOUSTIE EFFECT is defined as "that degree of mental and psychic shock experienced on collision with reality by those whose expectations are founded on false assumptions." This being a psychological term, it can of course apply to disillusionment in any area of activity, not just in golf.

In short, this links course is a savage mofo that tortures, then destroys souls. And as the victims trudge off the battlefield with bent armor and broken swords, they suffer the final insult ... the echoes of maniacal mirth emanating from the Barry Burn where the Carnoustie Effect Spirits gather and dance on the psychological graves of those who tried to tame their golf course.

A cosmic HA, if you will.

Carnoustie — Pressure (The Actual Kryptonite)

Suppose on a decent weather day, though I'm not certain how "decent" is defined in such as places as Angus, Scotland, where one finds Carnoustie Golf Links. Let's suppose then that the wind is down, the pins have been placed in mostly the center of the greens, and there's no rain or massive heat. Does this happen in Angus? Okay. Let's imagine.  

And, even luckier, you have a tee time on the championship course. 

You have won the lottery twice.

Perhaps you're fortunate to be playing with people you know, and even like.

Three lottery wins in a single day.

Can it continue?

Your friends suggest that you play from the championship tees to allegedly simulate tournament conditions.

The only direct parallel with what you are doing and any form of contest at Carnoustie, is the name of the course. You are in a valium mist in comparison.

And this gets us back to the 18th, where Jean Van de Velde needed 6 to win The Open.

Suppose Jean VDW was in your group on that mild, Jimmy Stewart kind of afternoon, he likely stripes the drive, hits the green, and does no worse than 4. Easy peasy.

Pressure is why we become so engrossed in live events. Some of us are likely watching the World Cup. Consider the wonderful chances Mbappe gave Giroud yesterday, and poor Number 9 could finish none of them. Maybe in a friendly that's another tale. Or ponder England's Sterling, who is a pest that has not finished in this World Cup, yet has to be marked anyway.

Pressure takes one from performing in the moment to that netherworld of what the moment means. 

Thus, pressure seduces genius to forgo process, and become totally aware of WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN, or WHAT IS WANTED TO HAPPEN.

This is lethal.

To lose process with the shot at hand in golf is akin to walking a high wire with vaseline on the bottom of your feet in a wicked gale without a net. Gravity is not your ally. And neither is your mind. A parachute, however, would be a great app on your phone.

Pressure induces a gargantuan dose of self-absorption at the worst time. It takes you out of yourself so much that you are seeing yourself in your own film. You are not now. You are not back then. You are ahead, and thus nowhere you need to be.

One of my pursuits is acting. Everything I've suggested about golf is also true for work on stage. A rehearsal in street clothes is just like that balmy afternoon at Carnoustie … where it is not difficult at all to play close attention second to second — the metaphor is that just about anyone can make less than 7 at Carnoustie.

But bring in the crowd, put on the costumes, turn on the lights, and DO THE SHOW FOR REAL? This is a far different creature, even though it is the same room where you've have had continued success for quite some time. And the metaphor turns on itself and just about anyone can make 7 at Carnoustie. Or worse.

The actor must stay in the moment, and one of the keys for me is to remember to listen. The instance that I stop truly hearing what is being said, I am on the way to getting in my head — I am no longer anywhere when I start thinking.

Same is true for hand-eye and foot-eye endeavors — you can’t think.

When you are using your mind, you are likely ahead or behind the moment.

Handling pressure then, imo, is simply staying present. There is no past. No future. Just now.

I realize this sounds wavy gravy on Woodstocky tofu … But it is true.

In my experience and view, it is not so much a player rises to the occasion, it is that the player does not allow the occasion to get in his way.