When I learned about what happened over the weekend at the Ryder Cup in at the Bethpage golf course in New York, I felt like I was seeing America’s rot on display. Not just the loss of decorum, but something far more dangerous.
And then there was this abhorrent racist social post that Donald Trump shared after his meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. It was beyond abhorrent. It was sick and demented. It further proves that decency is dead in America when filth flies out of the Oval Office.
Trump continues to prove what that he is an abject racist,
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The behavior of spectators was far away from the basic decency that underpins a civil society. Their shouts, insults, and use of hideous slurs weren’t just loud or rude. They was emblematic of a culture that now believes there are no consequences for cruelty.
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What it demonstrated was that anger is not only acceptable, but admirable, particularly when it’s delivered in the harshest of ways.
I’m reminded of a day many years ago when my friends and I snuck beers onto a golf course in suburban Maryland, drank a lot, and got obnoxious and loud, annoying the other golfers. We crossed lines while we were crossing fairways into other people’s games.
Eventually, security came and kicked us off, because we breached the unspoken norms on a golf course of respect, restraint, and civility. We acted like jerks.
I thought about that regrettable incident when I saw what U.S. fans did to Rory McIlroy and European players this weekend. They were worse than drunken jerks. The homophobic slurs hurled at McIlroy, the way crowds jeered at basic human dignity, it was disgraceful. I heard some people say something to the effect that such behavior was typical of New Yorkers, but this seemed so very different.
Many of those doing the jeering were dressed as if they were about to storm the U.S. Capitol.
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Many overseas were watching, and not with curiosity or sympathy, but with disgust. I reached out to a European friend, a golf addict, who watched the Ryder Cup from a bar outside of London. He said, “We beat you, so payback is a bitch … with Trump, you guys are so much worse, and not just the golf.”
He and his friends weren’t just mocking the U.S. for losing golf matches; they were mocking a nation they believe has become coarse, mean-spirited, and cruel. “Americans always thought that they were so much better than everyone else,” he said. “Now they just seem like a-holes and wankers.”
I know one person’s view doesn’t represent what the world thinks. But I also believe that weekends like this one don’t happen in a vacuum. There has been a creeping dismantling of norms, in my humble opinion, and for someone who obsesses about news and trends, it’s been unmistakable.
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Kindness, mutual respect, and definitely responsibility are losing ground to the opposite of those attributes. We once assumed the good stuff was a normal part of our society. But Donald Trump is now focused on the bad stuff, and he has made it safe, even admirable, to behave badly.
Trump has not strayed from what he’s done all his life, in fact, he’s upping the ante. Now more than ever, he revels in insults, in cruelty, in mockery, trashing women and queer people, and lately has been stepping up his encouragement of violence against his perceived enemies.
More so, sending troops into places like D.C. and Chicago, and thuggish ICE agents across the U.S., the message is clear. Hate, discrimination, demeaning, shaming, and anything else that is abominable is what is being infused in American society today.
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Compared to his first term, I think his vulgarity and his actions against the marginalized have seeped even deeper into our culture. And his supporters seem to be taking it to the next step. He’s giving them license to do that.
What we saw at Bethpage was not a coincidence or rogue New Yorkers. It was a reflection of Trump’s erosion of dignity in the United States of America.
Since January, the Trump administration and prominent voices on the right have bragged about eliminating “woke” culture, dismantling diversity and equity programs, and purging institutions of anything that smacks of inclusion.
The language is no longer coded or guarded. Now it’s abrasive, and exclusionary. At the same time, there’s been a noticeable rise in harassment and hate incidents targeting LGBTQ+ people, women, and Black Americans.
I’ve felt it personally. Last summer, my best friend of 40 years turned on me, hurling homophobic and transphobic language and complaining that as a straight white man, he was being shoved aside in favor of women, Black people, and gay men like me.
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It was more than just hurtful. It was shocking. This was someone who knew me well and who suddenly saw me as an enemy. I told our mutual friends at the time, “If Trump wins, what he said to me will become part of the daily discourse.” And now it has.
So when I saw McIlroy being bombarded with homophobic slurs at Bethpage, I thought about my own experience. If that kind of abuse is hurled at a world-class athlete for no reason other than to offend, imagine what it feels like for someone like me, just living my life as a gay man.
The vulgarity at the top slides downhill. Trump’s open cruelty becomes permission for others to indulge their worst instincts. It’s as if decency itself has been declared partisan.
Democracy depends heavily on norms of fairness, of compromise, of respect for people we don’t agree with. But decency is even more fragile. That’s because it is what allows democracy to breathe.
If we lose the idea that insult is shameful, that cruelty offends our conscience, then what guardrails remain? They are disappearing in our rule of law, and disappearing in a normal society.
History shows us that when democracies slide, it’s not just institutions that suffer; so does the character of the people as they become dissatisfied and disaffected. Authoritarian leaders do not merely dismantle legal checks and balances — they affect how we speak, and how we treat one another.
Trump has already done that. He has made hatred fashionable. He has made cruelty patriotic. He has made decency seem like weakness.
We should not be surprised at Bethpage, but we should be very alarmed. If we let what happened there go unremarked, unpunished, we lose more than a sense of sportsmanship — we lose a piece of what makes us human, and Americans.
We might look back at the Bethpage spectacle someday and think, Well, that wasn’t so bad. If that happens, we’ve lost the very fabric that keeps our society honorable. And to be honest, after seeing the racist Jeffries/Schumer video, we’ve gone way beyond honorable.
The slurs grow louder and more destructive, the threats more frequent and more violent, the inhumanity more commonplace. By then, we may realize the loss of democracy we’ve been talking so much about was always accompanied by a more personal slide.
Democracy may protect our rights, but only decency preserves our dignity. And without both, we’re lost, and I fear we’re heading for an epic failure.
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