Many years before the recent Ryder Cup match in New York last week, I was watching the golf tournament on the television. As always in those days, the commentator was the late, great Peter Alliss. One of the top players of the time – and it was well known he and Alliss had some history – was being a total dick to a photographer who the player thought was standing too close to him as he prepared to play his shot. It was all there: rudeness, entitlement, an unrepentant “do you know who I am” vibe. Alliss, as was his way, addressed the situation by way of an anecdote. Last week he’d been to see a dying friend, he said. They’d talked with a candour that perhaps came from the strong possibility that they might not get another chance. Alliss asked his old friend if he had any regrets.

“I just wish I’d been nicer,” said the friend.

That exchange came to mind when witnessing the appalling and relentless personal abuse being meted out to the European team and their families during last weekend’s Ryder Cup. When did we stop being nice?

The defence often offered is that having paid my entrance fee I’ve earned the right to say whatever I want. But the story is told of the father of the England midfielder Owen Hargreaves who was at Wembley watching his son play. The guy next to him was giving the most dreadful abuse to the player, to the extent that the father asked him to tone it down as it was upsetting to see a loved one treated like this. The man told him in no uncertain terms that, having paid for a ticket, he was entitled to say whatever he wanted.

The father noted that the guy had a young man beside him. “Is that your son?”, asked Hargreaves senior. The man allowed that it was. The player’s father then took out his wallet and offered the man fifty pounds. “What do you want me to say about him?” he asked.

In more recent times, there was Netflix documentary about the riots on the day of the Euro 2020 final in London where tens of thousands of ticketless fans, breaking Covid protocols and fuelled by booze and industrial levels of cocaine, attempted to break into the stadium. The situation was only alleviated when England lost the penalty shootout, which prevented a pitch invasion that security personnel feared would have meant potential loss of life. But just as dispiriting was the vicious online racist abuse of the three black players who had missed from the spot.

Since the Ryder Cup, a number of friends who are not golfers or golf fans like me have asked me why the ugly scenes at Bethpage happened. No doubt they’re surprised because they are more used to the genteel atmosphere of Augusta or St Andrews, and in trying to answer the question I think it goes way beyond a master of ceremonies leading the crowd in a chant of “Fuck you Rory”, or Keegan Bradley running up the fairway in an American flag.

The Russians have a saying. “A fish rots from the head”. A supporter interviewed for the Netflix documentary made a telling remark when explaining his reasoning for storming Wembley stadium. He’d been in lockdown he said, following the rules like the rest of us. And then Partygate happened. He didn’t have to spell it out. Why follow the rules when they aren’t being followed by the very people who make them?

This is what I think Bethpage was about.

Jules Feiffer, the great writer and satirist, called it perfectly on Trump’s America. “He’s licensing his followers to behave as badly as they once fantasised but didn’t dare. And he’s saying, ‘let’s stop fucking around. This is what we always were”.

We are living in really dangerous times.

Influential people – not just Trump, but many others – do whatever they want without facing any consequences whatsoever. Actually, it’s worse than that, because they are rewarded for their cruelty, for their avarice, for their stupidity. And for this they are called “saviours of democracy”, or “liberators”. But what precisely are they liberating us from? From self- censorship? From self-awareness? From empathy? From compassion?

And I can’t say this loudly enough. These people are not on your side. They are feasting on your insecurities. They are endorsing your darkest thoughts. Stop fucking around, they’re saying. This is who you always were. And they’re doing it because it serves their interests. And we are all cheapened by their cynicism.

And when they are challenged on this, their defence is, always, freedom of speech. But with freedom comes responsibility, and having the right to say something isn’t the same as having the right to say anything. By conflating freedom with the right to say and act without repercussions means that civility is gone. Decency is trashed. The social contract that saves us from the worst versions of ourselves is strained, perhaps terminally.

At the time of the Nixon presidency and Watergate, Jules Feiffer wrote a parable for one of his cartoons. As an explanation for what happened at Bethpage it’s surely hard to better.

“Once there was a people who discovered their leader had no values, no morals, and no ethics. And they said ‘someone should do something to get rid of him’. But no-one did. So they said ‘the right people should get rid of him’. But no right people could be found. So they said: ‘the leadership should get rid of him’. But the leadership excused itself. So they said: ‘the law should take care of him’. But no law came forward. So they said: ‘we’re tired of hearing about it. Time will take care of him’.

And after a time many of the people died.

And those that were left said: ‘what did he do so bad in the first place?’”

To which their children added: “beats me, he’s exactly like the rest of us”.