Playing Golf with Pharaoh
I was watching one of Rick Roderick’s lectures again. Everyone should see them. Even if you’re not into philosophy. He was one of the sharpest social critics out there. Funny, precise, and uncomfortable in the right way. The strange thing is how little they’ve aged. These lectures are from the 1990s. They could have been recorded yesterday.
At one point, he offers an image that sticks.
In the past, he says, they fought Pharaoh.
Today, they play golf with him.
Exaggerated. But it lands.
Once, the role was clear. The biblical model leaves no ambiguity. Moses stands before Pharaoh and says no. He confronts power. He leads people out of bondage.
That was the job.
Stand outside power.
Oppose it.
Break it.
It’s about access. Being invited. Being included. Finding the right tone so the relationship holds.
You sit together. You talk.
You play golf.
What’s striking is not that this happens.
It’s that no one finds it strange anymore.
No one asks: wasn’t this supposed to be different? Wasn’t there once a distance built into the role? A function that depended precisely on not being part of the game?
Now it’s just normal.
And this is the shift. Not just in religion, but across institutions that once claimed independence from power.
Journalism that once scrutinized power now depends on access to it.
Universities that once positioned themselves as spaces of critique operate within networks of funding, politics, and reputation.
Public intellectuals who once spoke from a distance now sit at the table as advisors, commentators, invited voices.
Proximity becomes the currency.
And with proximity, language changes.
A clear no turns into “we need to consider all sides.”
Confrontation becomes “dialogue.”
A break becomes a process.
It sounds reasonable. Mature. Responsible.
But it changes the role.
Because once you’re inside the game, you don’t question the game.
That’s the point. Not a moral accusation. A diagnosis.
Distance erodes.
And with it, the function that depended on it.
Institutions that once acted as counterweights become part of the same circuitry. They stabilize what they once disrupted.
Not through bad intentions.
Through adaptation.
Through invitation.
Through participation.
Through small shifts no one notices in isolation.
Until everything runs in the same loop.
Power, critique, morality. Circulating in the same space.
That’s why the golf course metaphor hits.
No chains.
No force.
No open coercion.
It’s enough to stand there together.
To know each other.
To get along.
To no longer be separate.
Conversation replaces rupture.
Proximity replaces distance.
And over time, almost no one remembers it was supposed to be otherwise.
That someone once stood before power and simply said no.
Not to negotiate.
But to lead out.
That may be the deeper loss.
Not that critique disappeared.
But that it no longer comes from the outside.