Korea & GOP Dummies

I’ve been watching the Presidents Cup golf for the past two days, being contested in a country I visited sixty-three years ago, in a war most people would rather forget, a place that I would never have believed could now look so lovely and prosperous, that back then looked so backward and desolate and devastated. Korea then, Korea now. These views of the Jack Nicklaus designed course in Incheon, with the majestic bridge behind and the towering skyscrapers of Incheon on the horizon, make me feel good about the future of worldwide golf and the efficacy of democracy and free enterprise in those nations that choose to go that way.

Do I see any golf courses and prosperity in North Korea? No. Do I see them in Syria or Palestine or Iran or Afghanistan? No. But they both—golf and a democratic system—seem to be increasing around the world. I watched the LPGA tournament in Malaysia, at the Kuala Lampur Golf and Country Club, where the Malaysian queen had a bit of fun on the putting green. Who would have envisioned such a sight half a century ago? No one. And the two ladies near the top of the leaderboard after the first round, Xi Yu Lin and Shanshan Feng, are from China. Who would have ever envisioned that? No one. My wife and I and all those others of our vintage have lived through a really remarkable number of changes in the world, some not so good, but most a sign of positive things to come. We’re presently teetering on the brink of harmonious world peace/prosperity and the possibility of cacophonous destruction of the earth by terrorism or natural calamity. I hope I live long enough to see world-wide peace/prosperity. I hope I live long enough to see Tiger win his 19th major. I hope I live long enough to see golf as a major sport in Turkey or North Korea.

And, by the way, I hope I love long enough to see Hillary Clinton as the next U.S. president. Or any other woman, for that matter. I want to see the end of senseless racial and sexual discrimination. In the meantime, I want to underline what was recently reported by Grammarly regarding the grammatical intelligence of those people who commented by Facebook on the various candidates now running for president. Here’s how they did it: A random sample of 180 comments (all negative comments first filtered out) on each candidate’s Facebook page were examined for grammatical errors (misspellings, punctuation) and then calculated on the number of mistakes per 100 words. Republican average was 8.7 errors per hundred, Democratic average was 4.2 per hundred. Fiorina and Clinton were tied at 6.3. And the winner (or loser?) on either side was Trump, with 12.6 errors per 100 words. I guess that must say something about the intelligence of those who would support The Donald as our next president.