Cerrar Menú Blogs
Las opiniones de los blogueros son de su estricta responsabilidad y no representan la opinión de este portal.
Profile image

Ingresa o regístrate acá para seguir este blog.

Seguir este blog

@radiobrendan
Many people still don’t seem to get it. Or they wish it wasn’t so in any case.

Basically, a significant reason US President Donald Trump proved to be — and still proves — popular across Middle America, away from the east and west coast echo chambers that is, is that he speaks a straightforward language.

Donald Trump: Tells it as he sees it, which is refreshing for many in this day of stage-managed politicians.

He tells/tweets it as he sees it — for better or for worse. Unlike ‘mainstream’ politicians, not everything, nay nothing in terms of tweets anyway, is precisely planned, framed in ‘must not offend’ diplomatic speak.

In the ‘politically correct’ West, where the leftist discourse has taken a strong hold in the universities, shaping in such a way many of our current and future key opinion leaders, somebody deviating from the accepted script is bound to find favour with those ‘not in the club’.

This is not to say that all Trump supporters are dumb hillbilly racists, the standard charge levelled at them. Indeed many ‘Trumpists’ I know find his controversial, excessive tweeting irritating. Neither do they agree with all his utterances — in fairness it can be hard to keep up with them in any case.

What happened to the ‘names will never hurt me’ stance?

Yet, it’s the feeling that despite his many flaws, he is about as honest as they come. He doesn’t hide behind political advisers. What you see is what you get.

In this day of carefully groomed, mannequin-esque politicians, this resonates. (That the US economy is performing well under Trump’s watch is another important plus point.) It’s a question of “Who do you really trust? Somebody who comes across as ‘holier than thou’ or a guy seemingly showing us his warts and all?”

Not-so-easy PC
Trump’s presidency and other similar eschewing of the standard political system elsewhere have been the inevitable backlash against the over-the-top political correctness we’ve had to stomach for the last couple of decades.

Where did our childhood act of defiance to ‘hurtful’ words go? You know, the old schoolyard rhyme, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.’

We realised back then that acts of real violence could be lethal, but name-calling? Whatever. We could rise above it.

Now, however, many of our law framers and influencers have become ‘too cool for school’. “You can have your free speech but you can’t say this and you sure as hell (OMG, did I just say ‘hell’?) can’t use that word.”

We’re in the process of creating an impotent, sterile bunch of human beings. Like the announcer at the bumping cars (do they still exist or have they become too ‘unsafe’, imparting evil habits in our young?) in a funfair used to say ‘one way round only’, now it’s ‘one discourse only’, even if it goes against biology, to name but one area of contention. (How many genders do we have now? It’s difficult to stay, um, abreast of the accepted pronouns these days.)

The British intellectual, amongst many other things, Stephen Fry has a refreshing approach to all this craziness. At a debate on political correctness earlier this year he said that if somebody wants to call him a ‘fagot’ — he is gay — then so be it. It’s not the end of the world. There are far greater things we should be crusading against.

Colombia has a refreshing approach.

It’s not the case where we want things to become overly verbally abusive — radicals or fundamentalists on all sides are adept at that already — but we don’t want people having to consult a lawyer every time they want to speak lest they offend some unsuspecting bystander.

Fry’s ‘common sense’ view is nothing more than we’d expect from a man of his standing. Yet, worryingly, he doesn’t seem to be in the majority in the ‘intellectual’ world.

Hello fatty!
In Colombia, one of the refreshing things about life here is how it’s normal to call somebody by their outward appearance. So you have people being affectionately called ‘fatty’, ‘blacky’, ‘thinny’ and so on.

Imagine how that would go down these days in most ‘First World’ countries. The courts would be on the go 24-7.

With all that in mind, we’re now just over two years away from the next US presidential election. The big question is, if he survives all the scandals and potential impeachment, can Trump get re-elected?

A lot, of course, will depend on who he’s up against. The danger for the Democrats is that in their desperate bid to win back the White House they’ll opt for an ‘everything for everybody’ candidate. A product of our ‘one size fits all’ globalised world. “Tell us what we want to hear, regardless of the reality.” Ah yea, that makes it all better.

The Democrats would be doing us all a favour, everywhere, if they look more towards the centre-ground.

Alas, the radical left will do their bit to make sure that doesn’t happen. Trump will happily toot to that.
___________________________________________________
Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan – The Blog & IQuiz “The Bogotá Pub Quiz”.

(Visited 265 times, 1 visits today)
PERFIL
Profile image

La vida en Colombia desde la perspectiva de un periodista y locutor irlandés, quien ha vivido en el país desde 2011. El blog explora temas sociales y culturales, interacción con los nativos, viajes, actualidades y mucho más. Escucha su podcast acá: https://anchor.fm/brendan-corrigan.

Más posts de este Blog

Ver más

Lo más leído en Blogs

1

La intemporalidad perdida, de Anaïs Nin, compila dieciséis cuentos que nunca(...)

2

Existe un lugar paradisíaco en la vía que conduce al mar(...)

3

OPINIÓN Unos escucharon y sabían de unos contratos y otros de(...)

0 Comentarios
Ingresa aquí para que puedas comentar este post
Reglamento de comentarios

ETCE no se responsabiliza por el uso y tratamiento que los usuarios le den a la información publicada en este espacio de recomendaciones, pero aclara que busca ser la sombrilla de un espacio donde el equilibrio y la tolerancia sean el eje. En ese camino, disponemos de total libertad para eliminar los contenidos que:

  1. Promuevan mensajes tipo spam.
  2. El odio ante una persona o comunidad por su condición social, racial, sexual, religiosa o de situación de discapacidad.
  3. Muestren o impulsen comportamientos o lenguajes sexualmente explícitos, violentos o dañinos.
  4. Vulneren o atenten contra los derechos de los menores de edad.

Además, tenga en cuenta que:

  • - El usuario registrado solo podrá hacer un voto y veto por comentario.
Aceptar
¿Encontraste un error?

Para EL TIEMPO las observaciones sobre su contenido son importantes. Permítenos conocerlas para, si es el caso, tomar los correctivos necesarios, o darle trámite ante las instancias pertinentes dentro de EL TIEMPO Casa Editorial.


Debes escribir el comentario
¡Gracias! Tu comentario ha sido guardado
Tu calificación ha sido registrada
Tu participación ya fue registrada
Haz tu reporte
Cerrar
Debes escribir tu reporte
Tu reporte ha sido enviado con éxito
Debes ser usuario registrado para poder reportar este comentario. Cerrar