In the world of golf, today begins the U.S. Open, one of the four major tournaments in professional golf. This year, it’s being held at the historic and extremely difficult Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, outside Pittsburg. A hundred and twenty-five golfers qualified to play in the Open, and after two rounds, the field will be cut to sixty (plus any others who tied for the last spot) for the last two rounds. The winner will take home $4.3 million, while even the 60th place finisher will pocket something like $43,000.

Apparently, some of the professionals who qualified to play in the tournament have been complaining about the length of the rough (the grass outside the comparatively manicured fairways).

My sympathy for those complaints is ambivalent. First, the rough is there to penalize golfers with less control of their game. Second, the rough is there for all players. Third, by design golf is a game/profession designed to test those who play it because there are so many variables that can affect a player, and they’re often capricious. The wind can pick up or die down at times. Rain between rounds can change how fast the green is or how heavy the sand in a bunker might be.

Every golfer faces those varying factors, and professional golfers work extremely hard to sharpen their game to minimize their impact. But when a single stroke can make a difference of anywhere from thousands of dollars to over a million dollars, it can be difficult to be philosophical.

One young and moderately successful (and single) young pro golfer actually posted what it cost him to play the pro tour, and his rough estimate was $6,000 a week, and that was with comparatively basic costs. Given that the PGA tour consists of something like 32 tournaments and seven other events, there is certainly a fair amount of mental strain as well.

All of which might also explain why I gave up golf young, especially since, despite all my efforts, I was a high handicap amateur.

Why do most human societies end up building houses, roads, and other structures?

The usual answer to that question is that people wish to provide shelter and protect themselves from the elements and other unpredictable threats, or some variation thereof.

I’ll submit that the physical growth of societies is an outgrowth of the human desire to reduce uncertainty. Human belief systems in lower-tech societies often reflect that desire as well, with prayers to the gods viewed as most capricious, which is why the native Hawaiians worshipped Pele as their most important deity.

Laws prescribe certain codes of behavior, with the goal of reducing the uncertainty caused by violence.

And that desire for certainty affects the political system as well. Older voters want to be able to count on Social Security. Most investors want comparatively predictable rates of return. Businesses worry about government policies that affect the cost of production unpredictably because they can’t plan for the future effectively.

People worry about large numbers of immigrants because they’re unknown quantities and therefore unpredictable and possibly dangerous.

Zoning laws have become increasingly stringent over the years because people fear, that without zoning, their property values could suddenly decline in an uncertain fashion.

One of the “downsides” of the “woke movement” is that its apparent goal or result to many people was to upset long-held beliefs about gender and ethnicities, creating social uncertainty. At the same time, modern technology is definitely increasing uncertainty in all areas in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

Whether they like it or will admit it, most people prefer certainty over uncertainty, and on all fronts, prior to the last election, and even now, the Democrats are perceived as creating uncertainty socially, economically, and politically.

Trump’s appeal to the majority of voters lay in the certainty he projected in a time of uncertainty. Out with immigrants! Build manufacturing jobs here in the U.S.! Decrease taxes!

For the Democrats to merely oppose Trump won’t create certainty, and right now the Democrats can’t unite on a positive program which radiates certainty, and while they might take back the House in mid-term elections, they won’t hold that without dealing with the certainty problem.