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I always love reading your longer posts, you always seem to provide a fresh perspective on things for me.
I never really understood the appeal of golf. Does Trump love the game for what is truly is, or does he love it because it's a rich person sport you can brag about with other rich people that play that sport? Based on his skills and anecdotes, it sounds like he actually is passionate about the sport.
Gave me a chuckle, I think I might take on your recommendation and read Reilly's book just for making me laugh.
Maybe I'm just not awake yet but what did Reilly get wrong exactly? Trump is still married to Melania and she continues to serve as the woman by his side on public appearances. I guess the claim that Trump is 100% faithful to Melania is technically untrue since everyone now knows about the Stormy Daniels story but isn't Melania his 3rd marriage? Did Trump actually have a reputation for being a 100% faithful guy back in 2007?
I imagine years of your character being attacked would be enough to break anyone. There may not be a single person on earth who's had more negative coverage about them than Trump in the entire world. I'm certain before he got involved into politics most interactions Trump had with the media was positive
I ponder that too from time to time. I don't think the current world of politics and discourse would have been even considered a possibility to myself from 10 to 15 years ago. What a time we live in.
This is speculation of course, but when I watched Trump and Melania at the RNC, to me they pretty clearly had the body language of two people who are not having sex with each other anymore. And knowing Trump's life-long appreciation of beautiful women, I doubt that he has simply stopped having sex altogether.
What was it about their body language that gave you that impression
Lack of eye contact, stiff body postures, awkward kiss on the cheek.
Ah yeah - glad I asked since that's what I thought you meant (the awkward kiss on the cheek)
In my experience when a woman gives you that particular juke it's because she doesn't want you to mess up her make up. I'd imagine that applies 100x if you're a literal super model and 1000x if you're in front of the entire country
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Golf is an endless difficult and rewarding sport. It's a game that just throws endless euphoria and disappointment at you. I love it desperately (I just came back from a holiday where I played golf every day, sometimes multiple times, for two weeks) and I understand why some might not. But Trump loving golf makes a lot of sense to me.
I recently read Nikaidou Hell Golf , which a manga series about a man trying to go pro but failing over and over again. Unlike a lot of manga, which is aimed at a younger audience and usually carries a theme of success and triumph, Nikaidou Hell Golf is a seinen manga (target audience being young adult men and older) and it is a story of failure. I think it did touch on golf being a "endless difficult and rewarding sport", the protagonist, Nikaidou Susumu, is a loser with mediocre skills that relies on the sponsorship of others to be able to attempt to become pro.
However, he never gives up (at least up to the most recent chapter) despite watching countless peers of his give up on their dreams to become an adult and take a job that pays the bills, despite being ostracized by those who once saw him as their hope of creating a successful pro golfer and by his much younger peers in the same program, and despite losing his sponsorship and having to come up with his own way of getting money to try to go pro (including taking money from his own retired mother that saved money for a vacation).
You essentially have a man with no future, who continued to take advantage of the goodwill of others in pursuit of his selfish dreams, and is unable to face reality that he should just give up on his dreams and move on with his life. Yet, if you read the story, it becomes clear the man is very aware of his own flaws, he knows he's taking advantage of those around him and feels immense guilt. In a sense, he is an addict, an addict to the game of golf, and to the idea that if he just goes pro he can fix all his mistakes and earn the adoration and respect of those around him.
The story is still ongoing, so it's not 100% clear exactly what the message the author intends to convey with the story. But it does touch a lot on the themes of adulthood, failure, dreams versus reality, and of course, euphoria and disappointment, all centered around one man's relationship with golf.
When golf presents itself in a story like this, I don't mind having to read about it. However, rather than enjoying golf in and of itself, I'm finding entertainment in the stories golf might create. I usually don't find any entertainment in watching an actual game of golf or looking at stats through golf (it also doesn't help that I actually don't play the sport, so those stats mean very little to me). It might just be because I don't create my own stories around these events, while those that do enjoy golf are able to immerse themselves in some kind of greater narrative beyond the game of golf. In a similar vein, I find baseball to be utterly boring, despite finding Michael Lewis' Moneyball to be a fascinating read.
Part of the reason I might not be able to formulate my own stories could be I'm just not in a bubble where anyone actually cares about golf. I work in a more technical role in a tech-focused company, where I rarely interact with executive level people (but I don't think even they really play golf). So none of the coworkers I interact with daily play golf, nobody in my family plays golf, the only time I really knew anyone that played golf was in college because some of my peers worked and played golf at the nearby country clubhouse. But those guys were in a different social group, with a different background. They were from rich, upper class families, while I attended the school on scholarship (and I chose the school precisely because it would cost me the least amount of money to graduate from). I didn't play the networking game well and that's my one regret in college, but honestly, even now I'm not sure, I could've done a good job at it. I don't think I would ever really be close friends with most of them. Perhaps if I did, I might have come to appreciate golf more for what it is.
But alas, golf to me just isn't something I can find myself to really be excited about. At best, it can serve as a medium for storytelling, and I can appreciate it through that, but as a sport in and of itself I can't find myself enjoying. For a guy like Trump, who probably grew up playing golf, who is surrounded by many others who engage in the sport, and who has many stories and experiences with surrounding it, I'm sure golf resonates with him on a deeper level. He's a big man with big stories, after all.
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It's an outdoor activity that is neither too jocky like playing actual sports, too blue-collar like hunting or fishing nor too nerdly like flying model planes.
It's also doesn't require a rare location like a snowy mountain or a sea.
So when you want to meet with another manager in a casual environment, there aren't that many other options.
Neither hunting nor fishing are particularly blue collar in a U.S. context, although they are conservative coded. Elites do these things more expensively than working class folks, of course, but engaging in the activity doesn’t in itself indicate any particular spot on the class ladder.
Indeed, a manager inviting another manager out on his boat to go fishing is reasonably common.
I agree, but it's more boating than fishing.
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Interestingly in England, the home of golf, this is known as ‘the pub’.
Scotland is NAE the same place as England!
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Golf also has the advantage of being random. I can run with /u/Walterodim a dozen times, he'll be faster than me every time, he'll only stay with me by holding back. There will never be a day when, just randomly, I'm faster than him for a bit.
Trump looks like vintage Tiger Woods compared to me, but if I joined the scramble group here, I'd probably make a couple good shots, maybe just lucky chips or long putts anyone has a lie percentage chance at. I'm terrible, but at least a couple times a round I'll hit a ball so well that I'm thrilled.
Where in say, weightlifting, I'm always going to deadlift less than my concrete contractor and more than my wife, in golf I'll sometimes get lucky and hit one better than a pro would, and sometimes duff it completely.
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As far as I can tell Trump has always denied that anything happened between him and Stormy Daniels.
Her story sounds like one of the Harvey Weinstein accusers: she's invited to his room, goes to use the bathroom, comes out to find Trump undressed, he blocks the door when she tries to leave. The Weinstein story broke in 2017, Stormy's story went public in 2018. Here's the NYT liveblogging the trial:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/07/nyregion/trump-trial-hush-money-stormy-daniels
Her prior recounting of the story in 2011 to In Touch Weekly doesn't contain such details:
https://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/stormy-daniels-full-interview-151788/
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Certainly when I read it at 15 or 16, I never would have even considered the possibility of Trump fucking other women on the side as fitting within "loyalty" to his wife, and I don't think Reilly would have either, he was basically conservative in his moral views (most notably at the time reflected in his steroid coverage). Open relationships or "having an understanding" was for the Savage Love column in the back page of The Onion, not the back page of SI.
I don't think there's a fundamental difference at this point between Trump enjoying things rich people like and enjoying things in themselves. But if there is a distinction to be drawn, it's golf. He's been an avid golfer and builder of golf courses for most of his life at this point. The competition, the show off, the social game, all things that are Trumpian. Even his game itself reflects him: Drive for show, putt for dough; that's how he plays.
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While this is not as true in recent days, for Trump's generation of business men, golf was an absolutely essential part of success. I had friends getting the MBAs in the 90s that said, while it would be strange for the business school to actually make golf lessons a required class for the degree, if you were serious about your career it really kinda of was. A lot of negotiation and deal making happens on golf courses.
Women probably to some extent killed the golf course as a central venue for dealmaking.
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