Trumped Up

As a follow up to yesterday's post, I am currently reading Rick Reilly's book: Who's Your Caddy?. I'll give my overall impression of the book when I am done (like i promised
a long time ago...and no, I never finished Stealing Elections). But the basic premise of the book is that Reilly spent a couple of years caddying for various people. Of course, one of the people who took him up on his offer was Donald Trump. The chapter confirmed a lot of the things I have come to think about Trump. Trump is an ego maniac who only values things by their monetary worth. As I said yesterday, the theme song for his show is about money and he always implies that the number and worth of the things you own are how you measure success. He usually introduces tasks by calling the company sponsoring the task as the best in their industry or they have X amount of revenue. It gets annoying. Well, according to Reilly, that's just the way he is. Everything he does has to be the best. And he'll tell you how much he spent to make it so. As Reilly notes, his golf club up in New York has the "best cheeseburger chef in the East" or something along those lines. As Reilly quipped, "they rank cheeseburger chefs?" Everything boils down to a dollar figure with Trump. That's the only way he knows how to measure something. But is he really that unique? I think many Americans are like that. We live a culture that is saturated with possessions. So the only way we can tell a difference from one another is by who spent the most on their possessions. I am fortunate enough to have an education that put me into a career where I will have to opportunity to have a nice living. I just pray that I don't measure its worth in dollar signs. I pray that I will be a generous person and that I won't get caught up trying to have what the Joneses have.