Why I won't be playing golf in Oman

The Column: 06.28.23

I had blurry vision for a couple years and found it hard to read the newspaper and then an ophthalmologist at Mayo did a three-minute painless laser procedure and a few days later I could read the paper, no problem, clear as day, and also watch a ball game on TV and keep track of the triple as it caromed off the right field wall. Literacy does have its drawbacks, of course. You get more tangled up in the details of malfeasance and depravity than you would like to be. I come from evangelical people who read Scripture and didn’t linger on Cain’s murder of Abel or David seeing the naked Bathsheba and sending her husband off to war. So the thump-thump-thump of the Donald is tiring, though it’s also impressive to read about how the other 1/1000ths of one percent do business, such as the story about the multibillion-dollar golf course and hotel development on the coast of Oman where migrant workers are laboring in 103-degree heat for $340/month on a project where villas will sell for up to $13 million, a project financed by Saudi and Omani money, in which a managing sweetheart partner who put no money down will be the guy who’s the victim of the biggest and most vicious witch hunt in the history of the United States.

The ethics issues are dizzying. The guy was once Leader of the Free World and intends to resume the position, which is his by right. As such, he deals in foreign policy in behalf of the people of the United States. Their interests are not identical to those of oil trillionaires. Clearly, the gentleman is steering us into uncharted waters, as he has so assiduously done for many years. He occupies a realm previously belonging to fiction.

I was worried when the submersible went down with the Titanic that he might’ve paid a quarter-million to go down and view the wreckage and see how he could bring it up and monetize it piece by piece, but luckily he did not. He is busy steering the Republican Party toward the iceberg of established law and if he hits it and it splits into chunks and he sells them to the Saudis to chill their drinks, then there is no point in teaching law anymore. Look back in history: did Trump University have a law school? No, it did not.

If the law doesn’t apply to the big guys, then the peons and pissants are not going to abide by it either. Gangs will roam the streets, taking what they will, and we whose parents brought us up not to lie or steal will need to find hired guns to keep the mob at bay. It’ll be the Wild West but on steroids.

My fellow Democrats were wrong when we scorned Lawn Order as inherently repressive back when Republicans were in favor of it. Lawn Order is to the benefit of the children, the most vulnerable among us, and the elderly and infirm, and dreamy idealists such as my fellow English majors. I see them in the park with their little notebooks, writing something about trees and clouds. These people are a sitting target for any bully with a paring knife. This is why defunding the police is the biggest fraud to come down the pike since the sale of the Brooklyn Bridge. We who sit in the park and write sonnets need crooks to be afraid of cops. Criminals tend to be incredibly stupid but they know that guns shoot and bullets hurt.

You and I do not have the skill set that the Trump family has. Think what you will about Hunter Biden, he didn’t have the savvy of Jared Kushner who got the Saudis to drop two billion into his investment firm Affinity. What Taylor Swift is to teenage girls, Donald is to grown-up vandals. But we need the Trumps to know there are Jack Smiths on the job. And call me naïve but when I tune in the ball game, I honestly believe the home plate ump is not on the other team’s payroll. I can’t prove it but this faith makes it possible to enjoy the game, and if there’s no pleasure in it then why are we paying so much attention?

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